Oppo Find X3 Lite review: Lite in price, balanced in features

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Oppo's approach in recent years has been to release a lot of phones at similar price points with small differences between them. It can make comparison tricky, because unless you're aware of Oppo's naming conventions and whether a phone is new stock or end of life, you may become somewhat befuddled.

That's somewhat the story for the Oppo Find X3 Lite. The Find X series are Oppo's premium lines, but the Find X3 Lite – as that Lite suffix suggests – is the lower cost model, more akin to Oppo's more affordable Reno phones such as the Reno4 5G.

There's a lot of competition in the mid-range, 5G capable handset space right now. The Oppo Find X3 Lite doesn't do a whole lot to remarkably stand out, but that's essentially its strength, because it equally doesn't do much in a problematic way either, while delivering good performance for its price.

Design: 6.4-inch 90Hz FHD+ display with in-display fingerprint sensor

Image: Alex Kidman/Finder

The Oppo Find X3 Lite features a 6.4-inch AMOLED display with a 2400x1080 pixel resolution. That's decent but not stellar at this price point, but to sweeten the deal it's also packing a 90Hz capable display for smoother refresh rates in supported applications.

One interesting point of difference here is that there's no onboard "dynamic" mode for refresh rates. You set it to either 60Hz (for better battery life) or 90Hz, and that's all you can do.

Image: Alex Kidman/Finder

The display features a small holepunch style camera at the top left, and an in-display fingerprint reader at the base. Oppo's track record with in-display readers for its more affordable phones has been mixed, but I didn't hit too many problems with identification during my review period.

In Australia, Oppo is offering only 2 colour choices, either in "Astral Blue" or "Starry Black", and it's the latter I've reviewed. Overseas there appears to be a Galactic Silver model, but if you want that colour, you'll have to jump up to the fancier Oppo Find X3 Neo instead.

The Oppo Find X3 Lite has a plastic body, and like so many other shiny black phones, it will quickly become a home for every fingerprint smudge you could imagine. Oppo does provide both a protective case and a pre-installed screen protector in the box, which is always an appreciated touch.

Controls are otherwise minimal, with a headphone jack and USB C port at the base, power and volume on the left, and a vertically oriented camera bump at the top left rear of the phone. The Oppo Find X3 Lite isn't a poor looking phone, but it's an essentially unremarkable one from a design standpoint.

Camera: Quad rear camera, but average results

Image: Alex Kidman/Finder

The Oppo Find X3 Lite features a quad camera array at the rear, with a primary 64MP f/1.7 sensor as the main shooter. It's backed by an 8MP f/2.2 119° Ultrawide sensor, 2MP f/2.4 monochrome camera and the near-inevitable 2MP f/2.4 Macro camera that appears to be a fixed feature of every mid-range and budget phone right now.

Image: Alex Kidman/Finder

Of that recipe, you're only ever really shooting with 3 of the lenses, because that mono lens is purely a contrast machine rather than a way to directly take your arty black and white portrait shots. Oppo does provide a lot of filter and shooting modes within its camera app to get that kind of look if it's important to you, however.

In terms of camera performance, it's all a rather predictable story. The 2MP Macro is, like just about all of them, pretty awful unless you get very lucky with subject, focus and timing. The ultrawide camera is fine, but I did notice some shots tended to have a somewhat oversaturated colour cast when shooting landscapes.

The Oppo Find X3 Lite offers a range of zoom modes, but no actual optical zoom lens. What you're doing here is trading that primary sensor quality for zoom cropping for the most part. At lower zoom levels it's fine, but if you push it to the full 20x zoom level – as I did to capture this slightly obese kookaburra in my back yard – you'll see a big dive in quality.

The front-facing holepunch houses a single 32MP f/2.4 sensor for all your selfie needs. You can apply Oppo's beauty mode here, but like so many beauty modes, it's worth dialling it back from the maximum level unless you love that overly mannequin-style plastic look.

Image: Alex Kidman/Finder

• Oppo Find X3 Lite Sample Photos

  

  

  

  

  

  

Performance: Snapdragon 765 performs well within its price bracket

Image: Alex Kidman/Finder

The Oppo Find X3 Lite is built around the Snapdragon 765 platform, a very common mid-range choice for a lot of handsets.

Oppo equips the Oppo Find X3 Lite with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage, but there's no capability to expand that with microSD cards. That's becoming a very common step for many phones, as much as I might wish it wasn't.

All of that adds up to a phone that should perform well within its class when it comes to benchmarks. Indeed, that's precisely what the Oppo Find X3 Lite does. Here's how it compares to similarly priced mid-range handsets using Geekbench 5's CPU test:

Here's how the Oppo Find X3 Lite's Adreno 620 GPU compares using 3DMark's benchmark tests against the same handsets:

The Oppo Find X3 Lite is 5G capable for sub-6Ghz in Australia, in line with just about every phone you can get right now. With networks expanding their 5G reach, the odds that you'll be able to access 5G are improving, although whether it's on your plan or you'll want to take the inevitable battery hit that 5G brings, is up to you.

The Oppo Find X3 Lite is an Android 11 handset, built like every other Oppo handset on the company's own ColorOS launcher. ColorOS started its life as a blatant iOS clone to make its phones "feel" like iPhones, but it has shifted over the years to instead present a rather more colourful and re-ordered Android looking user interface instead.

It's mostly a matter of taste, and while I like Oppo's hardware generally, I've never been much of a fan of ColorOS's candy-coloured approach and preinstalled apps that ask for a lot of permissions. It's Android underneath, however, so you can pretty easily ignore the installed apps and run your own instead.

Battery life: 4300mAh battery works well, even with 90Hz display

Image: Alex Kidman/Finder

The Oppo Find X3 Lite tells a familiar story for phones in its price bracket. Its 4300mAh battery (split between two cells under the hood, but you'd never notice that unless you looked at the specification sheet) is a little lower than some we've seen of late, but well within specifications.

Where the Oppo Find X3 Lite does differ is in the inclusion of that 90Hz display. Faster refresh rates are great, but they come at the potential cost of battery life. Here the Oppo Find X3 Lite impressed in our standard YouTube battery test, keeping its power up well against the competition. Here's how it compared:

What we look for with this test is a score above 90% to ensure a full day's regular use is generally going to be feasible. The Oppo Find X3 Lite had no issues on this score.

Like other Oppo phones, you also get nicely brisk wired charging with the supplied inbox 65W charger, with the promise of a 5-minute charge supplying up to 4 hours of usable power. What you don't get is any kind of wireless charging. That's still not common at this price point, but it can be had and it's a bit of a missed opportunity here.

Should you buy the Oppo Find X3 Lite?

The Oppo Find X3 Lite isn't a remarkable phone, but that's not a damning condemnation. At this price point, you're still looking at levels of compromise, whether that's performance, cameras, battery life or sometimes all 3.

The Oppo Find X3 Lite doesn't really struggle at any level, while not being outstanding either. That makes it a nicely balanced choice for your mid-range smartphone buying dollar.

Is it worth comparing your other options in this price bracket? Absolutely and always, because everyone's needs and preferences can vary, but if you opt for the Oppo Find X3 Lite you'll be scoring yourself a solid and dependable handset for some years to come.

Pricing and availability

Price

RRP: $999.00

Where to buy

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Specifications

Images: Alex Kidman