To say OPPO put out a lot of phones is an understatement. The good thing about this is that there is a phone for everyone, no matter what you want and no matter what price range you are purchasing in. There are negatives to this though and we will discuss them further on in the review.
We have also done a few OPPO phones as of late, so we won’t need to go over certain sections of it again, but this phone is one of a trio of smartphones OPPO released under the Find X3 moniker earlier this year. We took a close look at the Find X3 Pro and loved it so when the opportunity came to check out its younger sibling we jumped at the chance (keep an eye out for Dan’s review of the middle child, the Find X3 Neo, coming soon).
The Find X3 Lite sits above the A74 we reviewed a few weeks ago in the OPPO pecking order and carrying the Find X3 moniker it carries a lot of expectations. At SRP of $599 you would expect it to be just a bit more premium and a bit more well built with some better specs. Read on to see what we thought.
Design
The design continues from the A74 design and looks remarkably similar but with the quad rear camera module poking out more from the body of the phone. The model we received is the Astral Blue SKU and the reflective matte finish of the rear gives it a premium feel — it also means that you won’t see fingerprints all over it.
The rear of the device is once again bereft of anything else other than the OPPO logo and their weird penchant for the certifications and model number being printed on the back. I cannot explain how much this decision annoys me and for the life of me cannot understand why OPPO does it when no other big manufacturer does.
The front of the device houses a 6.4-inch 1080P OLED display which means it is a step up from the A74 which although it had a slightly larger display was only an LCD. The 32MP selfie camera is situated in the top left corner of the display in the usual cutout circle — I’m still waiting for an under-display camera to arrive… hopefully/maybe next year???
The bottom and side bezels are also slightly smaller than the A74 meaning more of the front of the device is used — as you see with premium devices. The front of the device also houses an in-display fingerprint sensor which is as fast as even the ultra-premium Find X3 Pro (so it’s one of the fastest you’ll ever used).
Numbers-wise, inside there is the mid to upper end Snapdragon 765G, the same chipset as the Pixel 5, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Unfortunately, there is no support for a microSD card but how many of us need more than 128GB on their phones? The phone is also dual SIM making it perfect for those after a mid-range phone for work and your personal life — as you may have already suspected based on the name of the phone, it does support all your local 5G bands as well.
The camera
The rear camera is a quad camera setup with the cameras including:
- 64MP Main Camera: f/1.7; FOV 80°
- 8MP Ultra Wide-angle Camera
- 2MP Macro Camera
- 2MP Mono Camera
I sometimes wonder if the 2MP sensors that manufacturers include in their camera modules do anything other than just make up the numbers so they can say it has a quad camera system. The problem is that there is no way to test it out — if we could turn off a couple of the lenses it might be possible to see if they make much, if any, of a difference but that is beyond the scope of this review. We just must take their word for it and check out the resultant imagery.
The images seem decent off hand and even zooming them up, and in low light the camera performed admirably — as you would hope from a manufacturer with the highest rated smartphone camera available in Australia.
Software and performance
I don’t need to cover the software again given I covered that just a couple of weeks ago with the A74 and A54 reviews. The software is not much different although there may be a couple of small additions but mostly in the areas related to the different hardware — for example, the fingerprint sensor and the animations for it.
As for its performance I ran into not a single issue. There was minimal, if any, lag switching between apps, going back to home or back a step in the app. Bringing up the Recents menu is much faster than that in the A74 with it fluid and fast without any issues — the 90Hz refresh rate on the OLED display aids in this.
The fingerprint sensor was fast and accurate, opening straight up to wherever I left off without any hesitation. There was not any miss-fingerprinting that you get with some other in-display fingerprint sensors so you could use it reliably at all times if you were not a fan of the incredibly fast face unlock (not secure enough for Google Pay).
One issue with the OPPO software, and this extends to all their smartphones this year — Android Auto. While the lockscreen is on Android Auto will not update and the display will often be shaky at the same time. One solution is to make sure the display is on and unlocked the entire time you are using Android Auto, another is to not have any type of Always-On display turned on and the fingerprint sensor location not showing. The solution I prefer is to have the Always-On display to be on “Power Saving” mode so that the display turns off after a minute or so.
Battery Life and charging
The battery life is yet another feature on this device that you will not have to worry about. Using the device fully for a day, tethering to another phone and a PC, streaming a couple of hours of an NBA game along with quite a bit of YouTube and I still had 22% of battery left at 8pm (starting at 630am). Of course even if you use it more than that there are no issues at all charging the phone, and fast.
The charging is the best charging ever on a mid-range device (equal to realme). This year OPPO have included their proprietary SuperVOOC 2.0 65W charging on the sub-$600 Find X3 Lite (as well as the Neo). Although there is no wireless charging you could argue that is not required given the already great battery life and the incredibly fast 65W charging. Plug it in for 10 minutes and you’ll have close to a day’s worth of battery life! If you want a spare SuperVOOC 2.0 AC adapter they are currently on sale at the OPPO online store for $34.95 with free shipping.
Should you buy the OPPO Find X3 Lite?
The OPPO Find X3 Lite sits at the lower end of the scale of mid-range devices at just $595 and at that price it is difficult not to recommend it if you are searching for a phone in that price range. It outperforms by far even the OPPO smartphones sitting just below it in the price range.
The phone looks great in the matte blue colour (Astral Blue) and will not show any fingerprints on its surface. The camera is decent but not mind-blowing — most smartphones these days can produce decent images. The software is still very OPPO but it has improved a lot over time, so much so that I have no problems using it on a day-to-day basis.
The OPPO Find X3 Lite gets two thumbs up from me with it offering a great experience that belies its price.
