Cooler's 5th form is the same as Golden Freeza

[Bacon Skittles]

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[TheDevilsCorpse]

I doubt they're the same form. Coola's transformation is even called a Super Evolution, while Freeza's is called an Ultimate Evolution.

[MindForgedManacle]

They're clearly not the same. We know that it took Frieza most (if not all) of that training time to attain his new form, as he admits that he rushed to Earth as soon as he got it. Coola didn't make it sound like he just got that form, not to mention (as the previous poster mentioned), those forms are referred to in a way that indicates the superiority of Freeza's transformation.

[Pantalones]

Cooler's extra form doesn't provide the massive increase in power that Freeza's does, doesn't come with "bulked-up 100%"-like energy drain as far as we can tell, and is a much bigger change physically, more along the lines of a reversed version of Freeza's suppressed forms.

Plus, as has been said, Cooler's form is referred to as "Super Evolution" while Freeza's is "Ultimate Evolution." Going by how those terms have been used in the series previously for other characters, "Super" implies just a basic power boost (like Super Saiyan being 50x stronger, "Super Namekians" being just super-strong Namekians, various movie villains having a "Super" form that's just a one-time boost, etc.) while "Ultimate" implies a form that reaches or surpasses one's limits even including dormant power that they couldn't draw out just from simple training (like Ultimate Gohan.)

Golden Freeza also seemed similar to Super Saiyan 3 due to the energy drain issues, and that one's also been referred to as a form that unlocks its user's full potential (at least before they came out with an official multiplier for the form, anyway.)

Basically, I'd say Cooler's form is a result of mastering his race's innate ability to create new forms to suppress their power, to a point where he was able to take it in the opposite direction (making a stronger form for himself to use his full power in, rather than trying to push further in the bulked-up "100%" state that strains the body?), while Freeza's form like a "potential unlock beyond limits" stacked on top of his bulked-up "100%" state... which also heightens the energy drain of that form along with the power. Cooler's problem was that he wasn't a freakish prodigy who could gain strength to the extent that Freeza could just by training for months, while Freeza wasn't bright enough to counteract his biggest weakness because he thought "just get so much stronger that you can overwhelm everyone" was the solution to everything.

I imagine that a hypothetical "Golden Cooler" (though maybe not actually Golden unless he decided to make his form that color for the same reason as Freeza) would not have the stamina issues Freeza would have... he'd also not be strong enough to fight SSj God-level characters, but at least he wouldn't wear himself out just by staying transformed for a while.

[Herms]

Despite all the talk about Coola being able to transform "one more time" than Freeza, I always looked at his fifth form as his equivalent of Freeza's 100% full power form. He bulks up (but not enough to give him stamina issues) and adds the extra armor and spikes to raise his attacks DB defense even further.

[Desassina]

I thought it was a recursive transformation, like a shell within a shell, which deforms once you power up. In other words, Cooler's true form is a new base to the same transformations that Freeza had (2nd, 3rd, etc). Golden Freeza is more like the SSJ equivalent.

[Polyphase Avatron]

Well the two forms occur in different continuities that have no relation to each other (Cooler never existed in the version of the story with Golden Freeza), and out-of-universe you could maybe say that Toriyama was inspired by Cooler's 5th form for Freeza's golden form, but if you want to try to tie them together in some kind of composite continuity, at most they would be two separate transformations for the same species.

[Zelvin]

Cooler's only gave him a 4x increase, if we go by the V-jump power levels for the games that had Cooler's 4th transformation (5th form) at 470million. Which would actually make sense. Cooler said Freeza had an edge over him. Freeza's 100% on Namek was 120million. If we take the indicated number for Cooler and divided by 4, we get 117.5million. So Cooler's "Max Power" was a touch under Freeza's, thus giving his 'little brother' the edge. And it does fit in line that Goku could still beat him with just using SSJ with his base level reaching 10mil. x50 puts him to 500mil. Better than Cooler, but not so high that it's not a challenge.

Of course PL doesn't mean squat anymore, but at the time this was how we could determine who'd win a fight.