Black Shark 5 Pro Review: Top-notch esports experience with fine grinding
Netizens who may know me well know that for more than a year, I have been carrying 2 mobile phones with me. One is the main mobile phone that focuses on taking pictures, and the other is the esports mobile phone that focuses on games. Among them, the main camera phone I may keep changing with the change of evaluation needs, but the main game phone often only changes once a year, that is, the newly upgraded Black Shark series every year.
From the first day I met Black Shark, I was very satisfied with this mobile phone brand: whether it was the screen pressure or the physical shoulder button, to the later frozen cooling back clip and Fengming TWS headphones - it can be said that from the phone to the peripherals, Black Shark is constantly improving my mobile phone gaming experience.
The Black Shark 5 series released this time is further upgraded on the basis of the previous game.
The Front of the Black Shark 5 Pro features a 6.67-inch 144Hz high-brush OLED flexible straight screen, and the front camera is located in the middle of the top of the screen. This screen supports 10-bit color depth, has 1.07 billion colors, and has reached the industry's top level in terms of brightness, contrast, color accuracy and color performance.
In order to further enhance the visual experience, the Black Shark 5 Pro on the one hand for the first time to apply AI super-score technology to video scenes, so that gamers can enjoy high-resolution video experience without membership.
On the other hand, Black Shark also cooperates with mainstream video manufacturers and game manufacturers to provide players with a high-frame video and game content experience. For example, Black Shark 5 Pro has obtained Youku 120Hz frame to enjoy ultra-HIGH DEFINITION certification, so players can enjoy 120Hz Black Shark high frame content area in Youku video; for example, Black Shark 5 Pro took the lead in completing 14 144Hz games, 4 120Hz, and 5 90Hz high-frame game adaptations;
In addition, for the first time, the Black Shark 5 Pro introduces dual front and rear light sensors, which can detect ambient brightness at 360° and provide 16,000 levels of fine brightness adjustment. In this way, players can no longer worry about the problem of brightness misidentification when the game is held sideways.
When playing, reading, browsing the timeline and other different scenes, the Black Shark 5 Pro can also dynamically switch the refresh rate to achieve the best balance between power consumption and display.
At the same time, this screen has also obtained HDR10+ certification and SGS eye care high-quality display certification.
Holding the phone, I found that the overall thickness of the Black Shark 5 Pro is much thinner than the previous generation, which should be related to the internal stacking process upgrade.
However, I also noticed that the middle frame of the Black Shark 5 Pro has been finely polished, and its high-gloss metal surface has also added some chamfering, so the whole machine will look more delicate and thin in the visual.
In the position of the shoulder key, the Black Shark 5 Pro has added a U-shaped guide groove that fits the curvature of the finger, this small detail allows the user to locate the shoulder key position more quickly and conveniently; with the delicate touch of the dial button batch, the player can quickly enter the game mode by locking the position in one step.
The back of the Black Shark 5 Pro's fuselage maintains a more restrained style as a whole. However, in the camera area, the overall shape arc angle and surface are balanced through asymmetrical styling design, and the esports elements are retained by the SharkEye RGB light.
Compared with the conventional design processing, the gradient processing can not only visually further weaken the perception of thickness, but also reveal the technical level of exquisite and refined.
Among them, the battery backplane of the Black Shark 5 Pro uses 3D curved glass, and the multi-axis nano-optical coating creates a technological texture and exquisite color details that represent the future through microscopic optical structure.
In terms of pattern design, Black Shark 5 Pro uses simple linear elements to form a matrix space on the flat background, and then through the combination of solid lines with different thickness and rhythm and functional guidance design elements, it constitutes a solid and stable mechanical device surface visual perception, and forms a staggered visual layer with the underlying light and shadow texture and matrix space.
SharkEye, on the other hand, is the "light of faith" that belongs to the Black Shark. By adjusting the weight of weight, SharkEye has a crisp and sharp and highly oriented light effect graphic, which is very recognizable. Even in everyday use, the overall pattern of the lamp can be seen as part of the overall texture without a sense of obtrusion.
In terms of performance, The Black Shark 5 Pro is equipped with a new generation of Snapdragon 8 processors, and with the industry-leading disk array system 2.0, AntuTu runs for 1023430 points.
It should be noted that the new generation of Snapdragon 8 equipped with the Black Shark 5 Pro after many manufacturers have "stepped on the thunder" in the past few months, it has been proved that this is a SoC that will bring higher heat while providing high performance, and only when the mobile phone provides more powerful heat dissipation ability can it release stronger performance, so the Black Shark 5 Pro adopts a new reverse gravity dual VC liquid cooling system.
On the one hand, through the design of the reverse gravity track, the liquid circulation speed in the VC vaporizer plate is accelerated; on the other hand, it is equipped with two VC components on both sides of the SoC, so as to achieve the purpose of rapid heat dissipation, which also makes the total VC area of the Black Shark 5 Pro as high as 5320mm, which is also the largest VC liquid cooling area in the mobile phone.
Considering that the 144Hz high-brush screen used by Black Shark 5 Pro has a very good adaptability, in this actual testing session, we mainly select the four mainstream mobile games of "Glory of the King" in 120 frame mode, "Peace Elite" in 90 frame mode, and "Original God" and "League of Legends Mobile Game" in 60 frame mode for testing. In the test environment of room temperature of 18 °C, the surface temperature of the whole machine is about 21 °C in the standing state.
League of Legends Mobile Game currently only opens 60Hz mode, and 90 and 120Hz need to be updated later.
In the 30-minute test, the Black Shark 5 Pro ran a full frame of 60.24 frames.
On the graph, the 60-frame "League of Legends Mobile Game" will not cause any burden on the Black Shark 5 Pro, and the frequency and CPU load are not high.
After 30 minutes of gameplay, we measured the surface temperature of the Black Shark 5 Pro with a temperature gun, and the maximum surface temperature of the phone was only 33 °C, which was stress-free for handheld games.
This was followed by Peace Elite in 90-frame mode.
Also in the 30-minute test, the Black Shark 5 Pro ran a full frame of 89.82 frames.
At this time, the frequency of CPU load and CPI is also not high.
After 30 minutes of gameplay, we measured the surface temperature of the Black Shark 5 Pro using a temperature gun, and the maximum surface temperature of the phone was 36.7 ° C, which had a weaker sense of heat.
Then there's Glory of Kings, which fits 120 frames.
At this time, the Black Shark 5 Pro is also easy to full frame.
From the graph, in the 120-frame "Glory of Kings", the call rate of the Black Shark 5 Pro supercore gradually increases with the progress of the game (from the line period to the team battle), but the overall load pressure is low, which is an ideal running state.
After 30 minutes of gameplay, we measured the surface temperature of the Black Shark 5 Pro using a temperature gun, and the maximum surface temperature of the phone was 36.4 °C, which had a weaker sense of heat.
You can see that the above three competitive mobile games for the Black Shark 5 Pro running and heat dissipation pressure are not high, in the end we still have to see the "Original God" actual test performance that will bring higher load pressure, for which we conducted a total of two rounds of tests. The first round was a 30-minute stress test to see the Black Shark 5 Pro's cooling capabilities, performance scheduling, and frame rate fluctuations under long gaming.
After a 30-minute test, the Black Shark 5 Pro ran a full frame of 59.40 frames, and the stuttering and worst-case drops were good.
Since we chose to stay still in the main city of Inari when conducting a long stress test, we can see that the overall CPU frequency is not high, the main frequency is only 1.6GHz, and the 3 large cores are also at 1.55GHz; but the overall CPU load is not low, and the super core is basically maintained at about 80%.
After 30 minutes of play, we used the temperature gun to measure the surface temperature of the Black Shark 5 Pro, at this time the maximum surface temperature of the phone is 45.4 ° C, there is a more obvious sense of heat, it is recommended that users can best use with active cooling peripherals.
This is followed by a 5-minute game test, including actual game scenarios such as completing daily tasks and quest challenges, at which point there will be more frequent skill releases, character switching, and the stability of the phone in a truly high-load scenario. At this time, the Black Shark 5 Pro provides a high frame count of 58.06 frames, and the worst dropped frame of 15 frames, which is still quite good.
From the overall curve point of view, in the measured scenario with significantly higher load, the Black Shark 5 Pro will dynamically and significantly increase the overall SoC call rate under high load scenarios. However, it may be due to temperature control problems, the actual game will quickly reduce the frequency from 3.0GHz to 2GHz - this is also the same as our previous conclusion, it is recommended that high-load scenarios are used with active cooling equipment.
Overall, when dealing with several mainstream competitive mobile games, the Black Shark 5 Pro can be easily qualified; and when facing games like the original god, it is best to use it with peripherals such as its own frozen heat dissipation back clip.
Finally, let's talk about several upgrade points in the software of the Black Shark 5 Pro.
The first is, of course, the control aspect, on the basis of the previous generation's standard magnetic power shoulder button and the screen dual-zone pressure feeling, the longitudinal pressure sense is added. This feature is mainly aimed at MOBA competitive games such as "Glory of Kings" and "League of Legends Mobile Game", players can shake the mobile phone after the screen pressure is pressed to adjust the direction of skill release.
However, in my opinion, this function is somewhat tasteless and regrettable. First, in the competitive confrontation where every second counts, such operational accuracy is difficult to ensure, and it is really expensive to adapt to such an operation.
In fact, it is not as good as the operation at the moment of finger pressing is completely mapped on the skill button, and the direction of casting is adjusted directly by dragging the finger, but it is speculated that there may be many compatibility and other issues so it cannot be achieved.
The second is Shark Sauce and Smart Cube. The former will not only use sweet sounds to make system-level notifications such as charging and temperature changes, but also act as a game assistant for voice reminders, while the latter provides many interesting little functions inside and outside the game.
For example, the percentage prompt of charging power in daily life scenarios, the reminder of low battery, the reminder of brushing teeth, going to bed early, drinking water in the health dimension, as well as WeChat grab red envelopes, one-click opening health codes, and so on.
For the game scene, this time Black Shark 5 Pro adapts to more mainstream games, including "QQ Speeding Car", "Crossfire", "Call of Duty", "Original God" and so on.
I think one of the most useful is the quick-to-pick treasure chest feature in Original God, which automatically picks up dropped items when I'm close to the popcorn, without me having to tap the screen repeatedly.
And Black Shark 5 Pro also made special optimizations for the mobile phone SLG game "Gone with the Wind" this time, allowing players to receive grain, wood, conscription, and wild fields in one click in the game; after returning to the desktop, it also provides a task timer, which automatically returns to the game after the time expires.
The third is the newly upgraded audio system, this time the Black Shark 5 Pro uses two top speakers to provide very good power amplifier effects, in the game and video scenes can provide a very good bass effect.
At the same time, on the basis of the original three microphones, the Black Shark 5 Pro also added a fourth microphone to the back, bringing better noise reduction and sound reception.
It is worth mentioning that when used with the Black Shark 5 Pro synchronous release of the Black Shark Fengming True Wireless Bluetooth Headset Noise Reduction Edition, players can also experience extremely low latency and a good noise reduction experience, and we will also conduct detailed evaluations in the future.
In terms of imagery, the Black Shark 5 Pro adopts a rear triple camera combination of 108MP main camera + 13MP ultra-wide angle + 5MP macro.
There is no obvious color style optimization or orientation in the sample, but it is completely sufficient for a gaming phone.
The Black Shark 5 Pro also offers decent dynamic range at night.
Finally, look at charging and battery life. The Black Shark 5 Pro has a built-in 4650mAh battery, supports 120W bypass charging, and it takes 21 minutes to fully charge the entire phone.
According to our 2-hour B station 1080P video playback, 1 hour 4K video recording and 30 minutes of "Peace Elite" endurance test model, the whole machine still has 38% of the power left.
In general, the Black Shark 5 Pro is equipped with a new generation of Snapdragon 8 5G mobile platform, and adopts a counter-gravity dual VC liquid cooling system with a large VC heat dissipation area; in terms of control experience, Black Shark 5 Pro follows the magnetic powered entity shoulder key design that I like, and is also equipped with a new generation of dual-zone pressure sensitivity technology; coupled with the new TWS headset of the latest QCC3056 chip of Qualcomm, it can be said that once again elevated my gaming experience to a new height.