With a number of cheap and mid-range devices available to challenge the Galaxy Note 5, several experts are reluctant to bill the new phablet from Samsung as the outright winner. Here is how it compares to the bigger and cheaper Xperia X5 Ultra.

Design

The device from Sony has a metal frame and looks likes other phablets that the company has churned out over the years. Additionally, it has glass on its front and back and the frame has an extra layer of protection on its corners. However, it does not have a stylus or a fingerprint scanner — features which are present on its competitor.

The Galaxy Note 5 also has a metal frame and has Gorilla Glass 4 on its front and back, which is actually not very sturdy compared to other devices which have a full metal body. However, the S Pen Stylus has been improved, which can now can be ejected from its slot within the phablet. Users will just have to click on the top portion to use the stylus. Comparing the colors, the Xperia C5 Ultra has three options: white, black and mint while the Note 5 comes in white, black, silver and gold.

Display

The display on the Note 5 is already being labelled as one of the best available on phablets. It features a super AMOLED screen measuring 5.7 inches with a resolution of 1440 x 2560 pixels and a density of 518 pixels per inch. On the C5 Ultra is a bigger 6.0-inch IPS LCD capacitive screen but it is not as sharp as the version on its competitor, as it only has a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels and a density of 367 pixels per inch.

Specs

The hardware in the Note 5 allows it to beat others in terms of speed and therefore effortlessly wins this category. It comes with the latest Samsung Exynos 7420 chipset coupled with an octa-core CPU that consists of four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.5 GHz and four Cortex-A57 cores clocked at 2.1 GHz along with a Mali-T760MP8 GPU. As for the C5 Ultra, it has a Mediatek MT6752 chipset, a CPU with eight cores clocked at 1.7 GHz and a Mali-T760MP2 GPU.

Memory

Samsung surprisingly decided not to include a memory slot on the Note 5 this year, therefore extra storage cannot be tacked on. As for the C5 Ultra, its slot can be used to add up to 200 GB of storage. When it comes to RAM, however, the Note 5 wins as it has 4 GB and the C5 Ultra only has 2 GB.

Camera

The C5 Ultra has a 13 megapixel rear and front camera, so it takes better selfies than the 5 megapixel camera which the Note 5 has. However, the Note 5 has a better rear camera as it comes with a 16 megapixel version with optical image stabilization.

Price

The starting model of the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 is priced at $249.99 with a two-year contract. The Sony Xperia C5 Ultra's price tag, however, has yet to be announced.