Review the Oppo Find X3 Lite

The Oppo Find X3 line has been announced and the cheapest phone in the bunch is the Find X3 Lite, a mid-range phone that succeeds last year’s Find X2 Lite.

Above it is the Find X3 Neo and at the very top of the price range is the top-of-the-line Find X3 Pro. Oppo fans will notice that this phone is actually a rebranded Oppo Reno 5, available for purchase in other parts of the world.

If you’re wondering if the Find X3 Lite is the right phone for you, read on.

Design and build

The Oppo Find X3 Lite looks very refined. The plastic back is available in Star Black or Astral Blue, while the Galactic Silver variant weighs slightly more overall (180g) as it is covered in glass.

I tried the blue variant and really liked the shiny, glossy finish that comes with the matching metallic material on the edges and on the camera module.

However, it’s easy to tell it’s plastic when you smell it, and you’ll definitely notice the difference between that and a more premium phone. The silver lining is the textured finish takes no fingerprints when you hold it.

With a thickness of 7.9 mm and a weight of 172 g, it is a thin and light device. Like other Oppo phones, it’s bigger. Although this is great for watching YouTube and the like Diffusion, it is not ideal for one-handed use and does not fit fully into a small pocket.

As for ports, it has standard USB-C for charging, a dual SIM slot, and a headphone jack. There is a fingerprint scanner under the screen, although it did not work properly at times. The X3 Lite also has facial recognition, which works well even with glasses, but not with a mask.

Unlike more expensive phones, this device does not have an IP rating, so splash or drop protection is not guaranteed. However, a case is included in the box and a screen protector already installed on the phone.

Screen

The Find X3 Lite’s 6.4-inch Full HD + AMOLED display is bright and clear, even in direct sunlight, and you can adjust the screen’s white balance to suit your viewing comfort by switching between tones cold and hot.

It has a 91.7% screen-to-body ratio and the selfie camera is tucked away on the left side of the screen, rather than residing in a “teardrop” notch like it was in the generation. previous. All this allows for pleasant and almost uninterrupted viewing.

The phone comes with a high 90Hz refresh rate, a decent figure for a mid-range device to match the OnePlus Nord, and good news for mobile gamers.

You can keep the refresh rate high at all times, save battery power by switching to 60Hz, or let the phone dynamically choose either option depending on the task you’re doing.

Specifications and performance

The Oppo Find X3 Lite comes with a Snapdragon 765G processor, paired with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. While it’s nowhere near the same wattage as the latest Snapdragon 800 series chips, it’s still a decent piece of silicon that delivers fast performance and is capable of delivering good mobile games.

There’s no microSD card slot on this phone, so the storage can’t be expanded further, but in the mid-range space, 128GB is pretty standard. In our internal tests, this phone produced numbers close to those of the OnePlus Nord, Realme 8 Pro, and Motorola Edge.

The phone is 5G compliant, although it’s becoming the norm in most new phone launches right now, so it’s not really a standout feature. You will only see the benefits of 5G if you live in an area with the necessary infrastructure, which much of the UK is still waiting for.

Camera

The quad camera setup on the Find X3 Lite is a bit of a mixed bag. It includes 64 MP main lens with f / 1.7 aperture and closed-loop focus motor, 8 MP ultra-wide camera with f / 2.2 aperture, 2 macro camera MP and a 2 MP mono camera. Up front there’s a 32 MP selfie camera with f / 2.4 aperture.

The lens that stands out the most is the main 64 MP sensor. On the outside, the colors are vibrant and the details are crisp. Even when you take a photo at double magnification, details are still captured well. Image stabilization also works well with moving subjects such as animals, which is no small feat for a mid-range camera.

Flirck Gallery

Inside, the camera is not very good. Colors are duller and details appear less crisp and clear. If you have good artificial lighting or can take pictures next to a window in the sun, the picture improves dramatically.

The high-speed lens is useful for larger landscape shots or for taking pictures of large groups (when we can do them), but in general I’d say you stick to the main lens as much as possible. . Colors are noticeably duller on this sensor, compared to the main camera, and the drop in quality is evident.

While most of the detail in Night Mode is sharp, some colors and light sources appear slightly distorted. Also, the time it takes to hold the phone still to get a usable photo is a bit complicated.

This is especially unnecessary if you are trying to get a dynamic snapshot of something that is in motion, a real test for any mobile camera.

The camera’s macro mode is not good at all. I was barely able to focus in close up, and personally you get a better picture if you take one with the main lens and focus on the details you want.

The 32 MP selfie camera is, once again, outdoors, in natural light or indoors, as long as natural light is available from a window or the like. However, if you find yourself in a low-light area, details are softened and lost with this camera.

Battery life

The battery life of this phone is, overall, pretty solid. I have found that it gets about a day and a half of average use; using social media, Google Maps, watching videos and more, between work hours. Both battery tests also support this theory, as the phone lasts more than ten hours each.

The Oppo Find X3 Lite also comes with Oppo’s 65W wired charging feature, which offers great speeds. You can charge the phone to 92% in just 30 minutes. Unfortunately, it does not support wireless charging.

Software

The Find X3 Lite runs on ColorOS 11.1 – based on Android 11. This Oppo software is certainly one of the cleanest Android skins (a notable change from its once overloaded predecessors). There’s not much in the way of clutter of preinstalled apps that you can’t remove, meaning you have more room to install whatever you want.

You can change the layout of the home screen to have your apps in a standard list, a simplified list or by taking advantage of an app drawer.

The phone has a split-screen mode for multitasking across multiple apps, although not all third-party apps support this type of view.

Oppo also includes a sleep mode, which changes the screen to grayscale and activates “Do not disturb” mode. You can set it as a weekly schedule (with different times each day) or configure it to activate when you charge the phone.

If you are a big fan of pure Android, rest assured that this skin is not far from it, and you will find it just as easy to use.

Pricing and availability

The Oppo Find X3 Lite is already on sale in Europe and is priced at $ 469. It can currently be purchased directly from Oppo or Amazon.

The price puts it firmly in the mid-range category, and best of all, it’s slightly cheaper than what the Find X2 Lite cost when it first released.

However, keep in mind that this device clashes with the OnePlus Nord, which remains the mid-range leader, with a great camera for its price. For more options, you can check out our list of the best mid-range phones.

The next Find X device in the chain is the Find X3 Neo, which complements the camera with a Sony IMX766 sensor, as well as a more premium design. However, all of these changes push the price up to 699 dollars. Looking at the two side by side, the Find X3 Lite gives you more bang for your buck.

Verdict

The Oppo Find X3 Lite is a step up from the previous generation, there’s no denying it. The design improvements may be small, but overall they provide a much more refined aesthetic and feel.

That said, the mid-range space is extremely competitive, and this phone’s camera isn’t quite up there with rivals like the OnePlus North, which has similar specs with a better camera. , all for the same price.

However, that doesn’t mean it’s still a solid phone, and one to consider if you want a device that strikes a balance between good features and a reasonable price tag.