nubia has recently dropped its newest gaming phone lineup, and one model I got my hands to was the nubia Neo 5 Pro 5G.
Spoiler alert: this guy is priced at under Php15,000 making it “not-so-budget” of a gaming phone anymore, considering this is a Neo series model. At this point, it has practically entered the midrange segment.
So, what does it bring to the table? Let’s find out in this review.
Design and Construction
Starting with the looks, this one’s no different from nubia Neo phones that we have reviewed before. In fact, this Neo 5 Pro in particular, which is the White Hailstone version, closely resembles the nubia Neo 3 GT Limited Edition from last year.
They look exactly the same, and they both literally pack the same exact internals.
The phone still has that all-plastic build sporting a matte back panel, octagon-shaped camera lenses, and of course, the eye lighting design. Weirdly enough, it’s also just limited to white LED lighting, making it more obvious that might just be a rebadged unit.
For I/Os, it has the usual layout with the volume rocker and power button found on the right side along with the shoulder triggers. There’s nothing on the left, the top houses a mic, and the bottom has the dual nano-SIM tray, USB-C port, another mic, and the speaker grill. Sadly, no expandable storage here unlike its non-Pro counterpart.
For extra protection, the phone is IP64-rated for dust and splash resistance.
Flip it over, it sports a 6.8-inch Full HD+ OLED display with 120Hz refresh rate and a peak brightness of 1300 nits. The bezels here are quite thin and uniform all around.
The viewing experience is decent with nice colors and deep blacks, good enough for daily use and watching content. However, the listening experience falls a bit short. Its dual stereo speakers, which has DTS:X Ultra tuning by the way, is not as loud as I’d hoped. Sound quality is mid at best, rocking respectable highs and mids, but mostly lacking in bass.
This might come off as a nitpick, but the speaker placement here is a bit awkward. It’s placed in an area where my palm rests, so the problem here is that there’s a high chance you’d easily block the speaker.
Since the shoulder triggers are on the right side, it just makes sense to hold it in a certain orientation when gaming or watching videos. Thus, you kinda have to adjust your grip to avoid blocking it the speaker grille.
For biometrics, the phone support an under-display fingerprint sensor along with face unlock. Both methods are quite fast, but as always, I’d suggest using the fingerprint sensor as it’s generally more secure than face recognition.
Cameras
This being a gaming phone, cameras are not its strongest suit as expected. It features a 50-megapixel main shooter and a 2-megapixel depth sensor at the rear, while up front, there’s a 16-megapixel selfie camera.
Looking at our sample shots, the image quality is a hit or miss. For the most part, the Neo 5 Pro can capture decent shots, especially in well-lit environments. But sometimes, the shot can get overexposed and the color accuracy tends to be inconsistent at times.
Shots taken in low-light environments are still surprisingly usable, and selfies are okay with no beautify effects enabled by default whatsoever.
For video, the phone can record up to 4K at 30 frames per second (surprisingly), and the video quality is serviceable. It’s good enough for casual shots, but I wouldn’t recommend this for content creation. It also lacks some form of stabilization, so the footage comes out shaky all the time.
Performance and Benchmarks
Now, let’s talk about the part we’ve all been waiting for: performance. The nubia Neo 5 Pro is equipped with the UNISOC T9100 combined with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage.
In AnTuTu version 11, the phone managed to get a decent score of 700K+ points, which is actually not bad, but could’ve been better considering its price.
| Benchmark | nubia Neo 5 Pro 5G |
|---|---|
| Chipset | UNISOC T9100 |
| AnTuTu V11 | 749,017 |
| AnTuTu Storage | 84,275 |
| S.Read Speed | 957.0 MB/s |
| S.Write Speed | 839.2 MB/s |
| 3DMark Wild Life | 2,048 | Avg. FPS: 12.26 |
| Geekbench 6 CPU Single-Core | 2209 |
| Geekbench 6 CPU Multi-Core | 2673 |
| Geekbench 6 GPU Vulkan | 2746 |
| Geekbench 6 GPU OpenCL | – |
| PCMark Work 3.0 performance | 14,490 |
For daily use, it’s still quite fast and we didn’t encounter any obvious slow downs, even when opening multiple apps. The gaming experience, however, has different layers into it.
In MOBA titles like Pokémon Unite, the phone confidently ran at 60 FPS at at High graphics settings. The same goes for shooter games like Garena Free Fire, also reaching 60 FPS without noticeable stutters. The shoulder triggers also proved to be quite useful with these type of games.
With console-level controls, I could easily map each shoulder trigger to certain button or action like using a scope.
Surprisingly enough, for fighting games like Mortal Kombat, the phone managed to ran around 70 FPS. However, in the more graphically-demanding games like Wuthering Waves, the frame rate hovered less than 30 FPS even at the Lowest graphic settings and with Game Space enabled.
Probably the best thing about our testing is the phone’s thermals. It remained relatively cool even with heavy, sustained workloads.
We have a dedicated gaming review of the Neo 5 Pro on our YouTube channel, so you may watch that here if you haven’t already.
OS, UI, and Apps
On the software side, the phone ships with MyOS 16 built on top of Android 16. That said, nubia isn’t really known for being transparent about their update policy. So, I’m not really sure where to stand in this regard.
The UI also looks a bit outdated to my liking. Everything works fine and I appreciate the custom icon pack for it to look more gamer-coded. But it lacks that kind of flair that you’d see from other Android skins.
For example, the animations look cheap and I think it doesn’t really have a consistent design language throughout the UI.
Exploring MyOS further, it packs some AI tools to work with. The main highlight is probably “Demi” the phone’s own AI “gaming chatbot.” It essentially acts as a an AI assistant and a gaming coach, mainly to improve how you play games.
There are some bloatware present, tucked inside app folders, and there are also nubia first-party apps pre-installed.
Connectivity and Battery Life
Battery-wise, the phone packs a 6000mAh unit paired with 80W of fast charging.
Despite the larger-than-usual battery pack, the phone seemed to deliver a less optimal battery life. In our PCMark test, it only lasted 8 hours and 51 minutes, so that explains a lot already about the kind of optimization this phone has or the lack thereof.
In our video loop test, it had significantly better result with 19 hours and 46 minutes of uptime. Based on experience, unless you’re using it for heavy tasks or gaming, the phone can still last almost an entire day of typical use.
When it’s time to charge, the 80W charging brick can replenish the battery to full in just about 40 minutes. And there’s also bypass charging to boot.
For connectivity, the Neo 5 Pro supports 5G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, but no eSIM here.
Conclusion
Moving on to our verdict, I honestly have mixed feelings about this.
Sure, it’s got that typical nubia DNA that makes for a good gaming smartphone. Features like the shoulder triggers, “Falcon-eye” lighting design, and the dedicated gaming chipset make the Neo 5 Pro a fairly viable option for gaming.
However, when you take the price into consideration, that’s when it becomes a bit of a letdown. The nubia Neo 5 Pro 5G retails for PHP 14,999 (12GB + 256GB). That’s not exactly “gaming phone on a budget” anymore.
For the price, there are alternatives out there, which aren’t gaming-centric phones to begin with, that offer relatively better performance than what the Neo 5 Pro has in store.
The only time we’d recommend getting it is probably during a sale. Once they slash the price down to as low as Php11,000 or less, then at that point, it’s a steal already.
What we liked:
- Crisp OLED display
- Decent gaming performance
What we didn’t like:
- Recycled design
- Underwhelming battery life
- Outdated UI design
nubia Neo 5 Pro 5G specs:
6.8-inch FHD+ OLED display
2392 x 1080 pixels, 120Hz refresh rate
1300 nits peak brightness
UNISOC T9100
6nm, octa-core, up to 2.7GHz
12GB RAM
256GB storage
Dual rear cameras:
– 50MP main
– 2MP depth
16MP selfie shooter (punch hole notch)
Dual nano-SIM
5G, 4G LTE
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth
GPS
USB Type-C
Under-display fingerprint sensor
IP64 dust and splash resistance
Dual stereo speakers, DTS:X Ultra
Shoulder triggers, LED strip
MyOS 16, Android 16
6000mAh battery
80W charging (wired)
Supports bypass charging
166.1 x 78.8 x 8.48 mm (dimensions)
210g (weight)
White Hailstone, Black Twilight (colorways)