Verdict

The Oppo Find X3 Lite isn't a bad phone, delivering decent battery life and processing performance – but you might feel a little underwhelmed by the screen and the camera when compared to similarly priced rivals.

Pros

• Brilliant fast-charging
• Good battery life
• Smart design
• Decent processing performance

Cons

• Screen isn't super
• Camera could be better

The Oppo Find X3 Lite is the junior partner in Oppo’s new smartphone series.

The Lite joins the excellent Oppo Find X3 Pro and Oppo Find X3 Neo in the 2021 range, sitting as the cheapest option if you want a taste of what Oppo is offering.

While it is more affordable, it still makes for a promising overall package, including a 5G chipset, a 64-megapixel camera, and speedy charging.

If you’re hunting for a phone on a budget, is this the right pick? Especially with some other excellent picks in our best cheap phone and best mid-range phone round ups.

Oppo Find X3 Lite design and screen – Appealing appearance, though with some niggles

• The vibrant matte back panel is striking
• It feels lighter in the hand than some clumpier rivals
• No IP rating or SD card support
• The screen is not bad, but a bit dim

For the most part, Oppo gets the design of the Find X3 Lite just right.

Our unit arrived in an arresting Astral Blue colour scheme (black and silver versions are also available), which looks lively and fresh. Even better is the fact that the finish is matte rather than gloss, so it won’t pick up scuffs or smears easily.

The sides are made of polished metal, and the rear panel is plastic rather than glass, which isn’t quite so premium. However, the result of the latter is a device that feels noticeably lightweight for its size, at just 172g.

The fingerprint scanner is embedded in the screen and worked swiftly, without a hitch in all the time I used it. The same can be said for the face unlock option, which is also available. Plus, there’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack to facilitate listening to music or podcasts in the old-fashioned way. You won’t find this on the pricier Find X3 models.

However, nothing is perfect. The Find X3 Lite doesn’t have an IP68 rating, so we don’t know how it will react to water splashes or immersion, and the lack of an SD card slot means you’re stuck with 128GB of storage alongside any cloud services you may use.

The Find X3 Lite’s screen measures 6.43 inches, which is plenty generous, and it has a decent 1080 x 2400 resolution. It’s an AMOLED display and delivers better contrast than its LCD rivals. It has an enhanced refresh rate of 90Hz over the standard 60Hz for smoother scrolling.

My main bugbear with this screen is just that it isn’t all that bright. Typical brightness is just 600 nits – the maximum being 900 – so I found myself having to ramp it up manually rather than leave it on the auto settings when I was using it in brighter conditions.

The screen isn’t at all bad, but those of rivals such as the Poco F3 are significantly better, and so deserve your attention if the display is your priority.

Oppo Find X3 Lite camera — Satisfactory, but not super

• Fairly good performance from the main camera
• Macro camera isn’t up to much

The Find X3 Lite has four camera sensors altogether on the back, with the 64-megapixel main sensor the headliner. In addition to this, it has an 8-megapixel ultra-wide, a 2-megapixel depth sensor, and a 2-megapixel macro snapper.

I was satisfied with pictures from the main sensor, which provided fairly sharp in detail with accurate colours.

The main camera performs fairly well in low-light conditions, too, reducing noise relatively effectively:

While there isn’t a telephoto or optical zoom option, you can use digital zoom to capture close-ups. The photo below was captured with the 5x digital zoom option, taken from distance so as not to disturb the bird, and the sensor’s high resolution means that it’s still just about usable.

However, while the main camera does deliver decent performance, I had hoped for more from a 64-megapixel sensor. Bear in mind that the Pixel 4a costs a bit less and it is among the best camera phones.

The ultra-wide sensor is another useful snapper in case you want to include more in your shot, and the results are fairly good:

The macro camera doesn’t offer much and is rarely useful – but, for whatever reason, it seems that mid-range Android smartphones all offer one these days anyway. Here’s a macro shot of some blossom, which is pretty disappointing:

Overall, this camera gets the job done, and will probably meet your expectations without ever blowing you away.

Oppo Find X3 Lite Performance – Competitive mid-range capabilities

• Good mid-range performance capabilities
• Offers 5G connectivity

The Oppo Find X3 Lite runs on the Snapdragon 765G chipset, which was released in late 2019 and was Qualcomm’s first to boast an integrated 5G modem.

This 5G capability is a significant selling point for this phone, providing access to the highest mobile data speeds where available.

As for day-to-day performance, I had no issues using any apps (the impressive 8GB of RAM surely comes in useful for multi-tasking), and mobile games ran very well.

The Find X3 Lite is firmly mid-range when it comes to performance, but compares very well even to the OnePlus Nord, which features the same silicon, as you can see from our benchmarking tests below:

The Geekbench scores measure CPU performance, while 3DMark scores assess the GPU capability.

As for the software, this device runs Android 11 with Oppo’s ColorOS user interface. This means you’ll get quite a few apps pre-installed, which can be a little annoying.

Nevertheless, it’s very customisable and offers a lot of sneaky shortcuts, such as split-screen mode and a smart sidebar for efficient multi-tasking. I’d say it’s one of the better Android interfaces.

Oppo Find X3 Lite battery life – Strong endurance and incredibly fast charging

• Reliable battery life
• Astonishingly fast charging

The Oppo Find X3 Lite has a 4300mAh battery, and in my experience this lasted well, never dying on me before the day was out – even under heavy use. After an hour of watching YouTube, a fully charged battery was down by just 5%; for an hour of online music streaming, it took just a 1% hit.

It’s even more impressive when you come to charge the device back up again. From a completely dead battery, the Find X3 Lite was fully charged in just 40 minutes, thanks to the incredible SuperVOOC charging system – you’ll hardly believe your eyes as the percentage ticks up rapidly. It’s an incredibly useful feature if you’re running late and realise your phone needs a bit more juice.

Oppo Find X3 Lite conclusion

The Oppo Find X3 Lite is a decent phone by all means, with a good battery, mind-blowing fast-charging, strong processing performance, and an appealing design – while the camera and the screen are satisfactory without ever being stunning.

It’s a decent all-round mid-ranger, but given how important the camera and the screen are to most people, you might feel a little underwhelmed with what you get for your money.

You should buy the Oppo Find X3 Lite if…

• You’re looking for a good battery performance
  The battery not only offers strong endurance, but it can be recharged incredibly quickly thanks to Oppo’s SuperVOOC system.

• You want decent processing power and 5G
  The Snapdragon 765G on this phone performs well compared to direct rivals, and it offers 5G connectivity for faster mobile data speeds.

You shouldn’t buy the Oppo Find X3 Lite if…

• The screen or the camera are your top priorities
  Most people would probably name these as the two most important aspect of a smartphone purchase – unfortunately, the Find X3 Lite doesn’t deliver top bang for your buck in either of these regards.

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