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As was hinted at earlier, BQ has clearly invested a bit in the camera of the M5. It comes with an army of LEDs, a decent megapixel count and a wide aperture, facts that also apply to the front-facing effort. The real question is, do these specifications translate into real-life performance?
The answer? Somewhat. With a 13MP 1/3.06 sensor, the M5 was never going to win any awards for image quality, but surprisingly, the images produced are really quite decent, at least in good light.
In the sun, the BQ manages nice punchy colours, decent detail and no evidence of over-sharpening. This situation quickly degrades in low-light, helped in no small part by the lack of OIS and the sluggish autofocus, but still, it is far from the worst phone I have tested for this.
As for the 5MP selfie camera, it is decent for a budget effort, but auto-portrait lovers will likely be far better served by the likes of the selfie-obsessed OPPO F1 Plus.
When compared to previous iterations, the camera app produced by BQ has improved considerably. Although the layout is still relatively unintuitive, it is far quicker to operate than it has been on previous devices. The HDR mode too produces a nice effect, serving as something more than a 'shadow-brightening' mode.
As for video, well the less said the better, as the results are full of artefacts and digital noise.
In all, this is a dependable workhorse for the average person, not a tool for the pros. In most situations, the M5 will produce something shareable, in others it will cough up something you can be proud of, and really that's something of a compliment to its overall competence.
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