Samsung Galaxy J5 (2016) review: Quality control

Gallery

The TouchWiz gallery orders photos by time, but you can switch to folder-based Album view. Sharing options include wireless printing, Android Beam and Wi-Fi Direct, but no DLNA (or other way to send an image to your TV).

TouuchWiz Gallery

Several image editing tools are available - from basic cropping, to collage making, to a more capable editor (which supports image correction, effects and drawing).

An additional option lets you pick several photos and stitch them into an animated GIF.

Music player with advanced EQ features, FM radio

The Galaxy J5 (2016) features just the Google Play Music app. It gets the job done by allowing you to sync your music across devices and gives you some control over sound via an Equalizer.

Google Play Music

The player itself has a straightforward UI with most functions available as shortcuts on the Now Playing screen.

The Galaxy J5 (2016) also has an FM radio built in (something many Galaxy flagships do not). It can record radio broadcasts (though this may be disabled in some regions). There's no RDS though so the app won't show the name of the station.

FM radio • All stations (with no RDS names)

Video player

The video player is the only app that works in pop-up window, a feature dating back to the Galaxy S III.

You also get full subtitle support with advanced features to modify their appearance.

The app lets you play only the audio (if you just want to listen to a music video) and to play the audio via Bluetooth (if you have a BT-enabled speaker handy).

Video player • Subtitle settings

There's an "Editor" option too though that may be overstating it - it just lets you trim the video.

Again, there's no DLNA or another wireless method of sending the video to a bigger screen. No wired ways to do it either.

Audio output is surprisingly loud, decently clean

The Samsung Galaxy J5 (2016) went off to a great start in our audio test. When used with an active external amplifier its scores were as high as you’d expect and loudness was easily above average for an impressive performance for a mid-ranger.

Plugging in our standard headphones led to worsening of the stereo quality and added some intermodulation distortion. Volume levels remained high though and the other readings remained unchanged so the overall results were much better than we expected.

Here go the results so you can do your comparisons.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Samsung Galaxy J5 (2016)	+0.02, -0.24	-92.4	91.2	0.0054	0.024	-95.4
Samsung Galaxy J5 (2016) (headphones)	+0.25, -0.08	-92.3	91.3	0.030	0.215	-53.3
Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus	+0.02, -0.08	-93.8	92.8	0.0037	0.034	-91.3
Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus (headphones)	+0.09, -0.03	-93.5	92.6	0.070	0.075	-49.0
Huawei Honor 5X	+0.02, -0.08	-93.4	90.1	0.0028	0.012	-93.4
Huawei Honor 5X (headphones)	+0.10, -0.03	-92.9	89.8	0.0048	0.071	-78.2
Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)	+0.02, -0.07	-94.3	92.2	0.0065	0.010	-95.0
Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016) (headphones)	+0.42, -0.01	-93.4	87.1	0.029	0.254	-53.0

Samsung Galaxy J5 (2016) frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.