OPPO Find X3 Pro review: Knocked out of the park

The OPPO Find X3 Pro is the first device I"ve reviewed from the firm, and after discussing the Find X2 Pro with some colleagues, including João Carrasqueira who reviewed it for us last year, I was pretty excited. And as it turns out, OPPO didn"t let me down.

Announced earlier this month, the new flagship device packs a true billion color display and a billion color camera, supporting 10-bit color depth. The screen has a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate, and OPPO used the same sensor for both the wide and ultra-wide lenses so there"s no variation in color between them.

Indeed, the firm focused a lot on color when it came to both the front and the back of the device, but it also has an all-new design that uses a single sheet of curved glass on the back. All-in-all, it"s a pretty great phone.

Specs

Chipset Snapdragon 888, Adreno 660 GPU
Body 163.4x74x8.26mm, 193g
Display 6.7 inches, 3216x1440, 525ppi, LTPO AMOLED up to 120Hz, 1,300 nits
Storage 256GB
Memory 12GB
Camera 50MP 1/1.56-inch f/1.8 IMX766 + 50MP 1/1.56-inch f/2.2 ultra-wide + 13MP f/2.4 2x zoom lens + 3MP 30x zoom microscope lens, Front: 32MP f/2.4
Video 4K - 60fps, Front: 1080p - 30fps
Battery 4,500mAh, 65W wired charging, 30W wireless charging, 10W revierse wireless charging
OS Android 11, ColorOS 11.2
Color Gloss Black (also available in Blue)
Price € 1,149.00


Day one

Design

The OPPO Find X3 Pro looks, well, different. This design leaked ahead of the reveal and the response didn"t seem to be too positive. Personally, I think that people just don"t like change. Whenever we see something different, our gut instinct is to say that it"s not visually appealing. After spending a few weeks with this phone, I love the unique design.

But more importantly, there are so few unique designs in the entire phone industry. Over the course of 2020, I can"t even count how many glass sandwiches I"ve seen with a rectangular camera with rounded corners in the top-left corner. If nothing else, OPPO is doing something different from the pack, and that should be commended.

There"s a lot that went into this design too, because it"s a single piece of glass that has one continuous curve. Just one piece of glass takes 40 hours to make, and it has over two thousand control points. OPPO said that the design is inspired by space itself.

The most notable difference is the camera bump. That"s where all of those fancy curves and the single piece of glass method comes into play. There are four camera sensors, which we"ll cover in the camera section.

On the bottom, you"ll find the usual USB Type-C port for charging, along with the nano-SIM slot. As you can probably guess, there"s no headphone jack, and frankly, the headphone jack is a rarity on any flagship smartphone these days.

On the right side, you"ll find the power button.

And on the left side, there"s the volume rocker. There are no extra buttons here, like the digital assistant button you"ll find on LG and Samsung phones, or even the notification switch that you"ll find on OnePlus phones. It"s just the power button and the volume rocker on this device.

I love this design. It"s not particularly light or particularly thin, but it"s pretty. OPPO sent me the Gloss Black model, which has this beautiful mirrored finish. However, I think the Blue model might be even better, as it probably doesn"t pick up fingerprints as easily with its matte finish.

Display

The OPPO Find X3 Pro has a 6.7-inch 3216x1440 120Hz adaptive LTPO AMOLED display, and it"s beautiful. The company billed this as a billion-color phone, and half of that story includes the display, which supports 10-bit color. OPPO pointed out that many other devices support 16.7 million colors, but this supports 64 times as many.

Let"s also talk about the adaptive refresh rate, which is between 1Hz and 120Hz. It"s something that OnePlus is also doing in the OnePlus 9 Pro, and it allows for better power management. For example, with the always-on display on, there"s no need for a refresh rate of anything more than 1Hz.

I also want to give a shout-out to the brightness, which goes up to 1,300 nits. I often call out PCs that have screens too dim for comfortable outdoor use, but phones are even more important because we take them everywhere that we go. This one gets nice and bright.

All-in-all, this is a fantastic display, and it"s easy to tell that it"s one of the best around. It has a beautiful range of colors, and the high refresh rate makes everything feel buttery smooth.

Camera

I love this camera, and one of the main reasons for that is that I"m having trouble falling in love with any Android phones at the moment. Google nerfed its Pixel 5, and the camera isn"t what it used to be. Samsung oversaturates its images making them look unfortunately unnatural. OnePlus, although made by the same parent company as OPPO, hasn"t been too impressive in the camera department. LG has terrible software on its phones. Motorola"s flagship is exclusive to Verizon. Huawei doesn"t have access to Google services anymore.

So what"s left? Here in the U.S., there"s not much else, but the OPPO Find X3 Pro was a pleasant surprise. As you"re going to see in a bit, the colors look great (seriously, maybe OPPO could send some of the software guys over to OnePlus), and low light performance is pretty great too.

The camera is the other half of the billion-color phone promise, once again offering 10-bit color and HDR. But that"s not all, because OPPO did something very smart here. It used a 50MP Sony IMX766 sensor for both the main sensor and the ultra-wide lens, so the colors from each sensor won"t be any different. Disparity between wide and ultra-wide cameras has been a big problem on smartphones, so this is a nice solution.

The third out of the four lenses (the small one when looking at it) is a 13MP 2x zoom lens. This replaces the 5x zoom lens found on the Find X2 Pro, which is a shame. I feel like some companies, like those that fall under the BBK umbrella, are focusing less and less on telephoto lenses, while other companies like Huawei and Samsung are doubling down on lossless zoom.

Finally, GFXBench tests the GPU.

Conclusion

I love this phone. Everything about it is just awesome, and if it had proper support for U.S. cellular bands, I"d use it all the time. Also, it would be nice if OPPO kept that 5x zoom lens around.

I love that it has a unique design, something that few companies are doing right now. It"s one of few phones that I"ve reviewed in recent years where someone has asked me what I was using. And on top of that pretty, unique design, it provides an overall great experience.

If you ask yourself what you want in an overall experience in a smartphone, it probably adds up to a pretty display, a great camera, and fast performance (that"s why I format my reviews in those categories). A sexy design might be on the list, but a lot of people write that off because they use a case. The Find X3 Pro nails all of those categories, and it even goes above and beyond in some places, such as adding that microscope lens that"s not even a little practical.

If you want to check it out on Amazon, you can find it here.

As an Amazon Associate, Neowin may earn commission from qualifying purchases.

 

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