Black Shark is perhaps one of the brands most synonymous with gaming smartphones, which recently debuted the Black Shark 5 and Black Shark 5 Pro in China. They’ve now confirmed that both of these devices will be coming to Malaysia, with a launch event slated for the 8th of June. However, Black Shark did not reveal any details just yet regarding pricing or pre-order promotions for the Black Shark 5 series.
Black Shark 5 Pro specs
The Black Shark 5 Pro is their flagship smartphone, and features the usual gamer aesthetic with RGB lighting too on the upper right of the back of the device which lights up when the display is on. Speaking of the display, the Black Shark 5 Pro has a 6.67-inch, FHD+ AMOLED display which is capable of a 144Hz refresh rate and a 720Hz touch sampling rate too. The display also features Black Shark’s Magic Press, a dual zone pressure sensitive technology that lets you use the two halves of the display as additional buttons. You can press on the screen to trigger extra actions in game, with up to 7 levels of pressure sensitivity available.
Under the hood, you have the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 system-on-chip of course for its flagship mobile gaming performance with the Adreno 730 GPU. This gets mated to either 12GB or 16GB of LPDDR5 6400MHz RAM with 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage. It runs JOYUI13 out of the box based on Android 12, which should be very familiar to users of MIUI devices.
Keeping all the silicon cool is what Black Shark calls an anti-gravity dual VC liquid cooling solution, which essentially is two large vapour chamber plates on each side of the device. You’ll be able to tweak performance modes in the settings too, with a ‘Ludicrous Mode’ for when you really want to squeeze every last frame out of the Black Shark 5 Pro.
Now cameras are typically not the main concern for Black Shark devices, but you are still getting a triple rear camera setup here with the Black Shark 5 Pro. The main camera is a 108MP, f/1.75 shooter using the Samsung ISOCELL HM2 sensor, which is flanked by a 13MP, f/2.4 ultrawide camera and another 5MP, f/2.4 telephoto macro lens. The front of the device meanwhile has a 16MP front facing camera for your selfie needs.
Another feature of note is of course the physical magnetic trigger buttons on the side of the Black Shark 5 Pro which you can pop up or push down with a flick of a switch next to each trigger. Black Shark says you can press them over a million times before they give up on you, and just like Magic Press you can set them up to act as extra buttons in game. Alternatively, you can also set up the triggers for other shortcut functions, such as acting as a physical shutter button for when you’re taking photos with the camera.
Powering it all is a dual cell 4,650mAh battery which might not actually seem like much, but does come with 120W fast charging. The 120W charging brick is bundled with the device too, and according to Black Shark will be able to charge the Black Shark 5 Pro to 100% in just 15 minutes. If you’re going to be playing for some time, you can also bypass the battery altogether and directly power the device from the wall. Unfortunately, there’s no 3.5mm audio jack but you do get stereo speakers which, according to DXOMark are the best out there now.
The Black Shark 5 Pro will come with 5G support in Malaysia too, along with WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2 and NFC connectivity. You’ll be able to choose between Stellar Black and Nebula White colourways when it becomes available in Malaysia.
Black Shark 5 specs
Both the Black Shark 5 Pro and Black Shark 5 are actually extremely similar, except for some crucial details here and there. At first glance, there’s almost nothing much distinguishing the two, with the Black Shark 5 having a slightly different gamer aesthetic on the rear of the device.
However, under the hood it’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 chip, the same one in the Black Shark 4. It also has lower speed 5500MHz LPDDR5 RAM, with the base model having 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage while the higher spec Black Shark 5 has 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Keeping the silicon cool meanwhile is a ‘sandwich cooling’ system. The Black Shark 5 also has slightly weaker stereo speakers, while the display doesn’t have the same 10-bit color depth as the Black Shark 5 Pro.
Elsewhere, the main camera of the Black Shark 5 has also been downgraded from its Pro sibling. The Black Shark 5 will come with a 64MP, f/1.79 main shooter with a 13MP, f/2.4 ultrawide camera and a 2MP macro lens next to it. It still however has the 16MP selfie camera on the front of the device.
Other than that though, it’s pretty much identical to the Black Shark 5 Pro, complete with the physical trigger buttons on the side, the Magic Press feature on the display and a 4,650mAh battery with 120W fast charging. The Black Shark 5 will come in two colours too, namely Mirror Black and Explorer Grey.
