Oppo Find X3 Pro review: An exceptional device

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Here in the UK, Oppo is far from a household name, probably because the firm has only been in Blighty for the best part of two years. However, it’s been gaining momentum ever since, helped along by the slow demise of the once-leading Chinese smartphone maker Huawei, who has taken a big hit since its rejection from the Android operating system (Thanks, Trump).

Nevertheless, that shouldn’t take away from the fact that Oppo has given us quite an impressive lineup of devices in its short time on UK soil. The company’s latest flagship, the Find X3 Pro, is no exception. Sporting a host of high-end features, the handset certainly has the potential to take on Android market leader Samsung.

Oppo Find X3 Pro review: Design

Unlike its rather plain predecessor, the Find X3 Pro boasts some pretty unique design elements that we just cannot get enough of. For example, take the smooth curves of its new four-lens array, which protrudes with more of a bubble-like bulge than a solid bump as seen in most of its competitors. To achieve this in a unibody construction can’t have been easy, and we applaud Oppo for this as it gives it a design edge with the added bonus that it effortlessly slides in and out of your pocket.

With an IP68 rating, the device is protected against harmful ingress of static water at up to 1.5 metres, for up to 30 minutes. Handy if you’re accident prone or inclined to dropping your phone in places where water lives.

As for colourways, the Oppo Find X3 Pro is available in condensed White, Mist Blue, Cosmic Mocha or Mirror Black (our review model). The latter is by far the most attractive, we think, but be warned: it does attract fingerprints like nobody’s business.

Oppo Find X3 Pro review: Display

Other than its super slick chassis, one of the finest features in the Find X3 Pro is the OLED screen. Measuring 6.7in, it’s been reduced in size ever so slightly from its predecessor (which measured 6.78in) but it’s definitely still a handful - and only in a good way.

The curves around the edges of the display means your fingers slide more seamlessly to all corners of the screen, with bezels hardly visible. The QHD+ 3216x1440 resolution is also down ever so slightly from its predecessor, but it does still offer up some impeccable image viewing, especially when it comes to video playback - helped along by the OLED panel’s great contrast levels.

We were quite disappointed that Oppo hasn't upgraded the selfie camera over the one found in the Find X2 Pro. We’ll talk more about this in the camera section later on, but it seems Oppo has concentrated on keeping this compact so its punch-hole design doesn’t impede on screen viewing experiences.

A welcome upgrade, however, is the end-to-end 10-bit colour capabilities. Here, the Find X3 Pro's cameras, software and screen can capture, process and display a jaw-dropping one billion colours compared to the smartphone industry standard of 16 million. It’s an impressive feat of display engineering. Sadly, it’s pretty wasted on us, as the human eye can only recognise about 10 million colours, but it does bring some benefits to real-life use. Take, for instance, colour accuracy, where it is able to provide some great colour representation, meaning no blown-out highlights or crushed shadows during the playback of HDR content.

The Oppo Find X3 Pro has four display options - ‘Vivid’, ‘Gentle’, ‘Cinematic’ and ‘Brilliant’. By default, the screen mode is set to Vivid, which in our tests gave excellent colour accuracy. However, you will find that the Gentle display colour mode will actually give you more accurate colour results, if that’s what you’re looking for.

The smartphone also scored an almost perfect calibration with a fantastic 97.2% coverage of the sRGB colour gamut and an average Delta E of 0.9. This score is pretty exceptional, which we aren’t surprised by, considering Oppo has really focused on colour representation in this handset.

As for the display refresh rate, the Find X3 Pro display supports up to an impressive 120Hz, which allows for an exceedingly smooth picture. The OLED panel also means that brightness is decent, with the screen achieving a level of to 584cd/m² when in default mode. This is a great boost for those bright and sunny days (when we’re lucky enough to have them), where it performs really well.

Oppo Find X3 Pro review: Performance and battery

Sporting Qualcomm’s latest and greatest Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 octa-core processor alongside a whopping 12GB RAM, the Find X3 Pro won’t give you anything to worry about when it comes to performance. Apps are opened instantly with zero lag and everything, generally, is super responsive.

To see how well the Find X3 Pro flexed its muscles in terms of benchmarks, we ran the standard Geekbench 5 test. The handset achieved a single-threaded score of 908, which isn't too great when compared to the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, which scored 948 and the iPhone 12, which gained a staggering score of 1,591.

It did garner a rather impressive multi-threaded result of 3326, however, which conquered the S20 Ultra (scoring 2869) but not the iPhone 12 (achieving 4,053). The Find X3 Pro boasts a 4,500mAh battery that - with average use - should give you around a day. Obviously, that’ll go down if you’re glued to graphically intensive apps all day, so it all depends on your usage.

In our in-house video rundown test, the smartphone reached a total of 15hrs 3mins before completely running out of juice, the Find X3 Pro disappointingly fell behind its predecessor, which managed 18hrs 16mins in the same test. That’s a difference of 3 hours 13 minutes.

An impressive battery feature, however, is its fast-charge capability, which sees the Find X3 Pro recharging from zero all the way up to 100% in just under 30 minutes. It’s quite extraordinary to see it rapidly juice up before your very eyes, and a revolutionary bit of engineering, if you ask us. We should also mention that unlike the Find X2 Pro, wireless charging is supported - although you won’t see the same charging speeds as with a cable.

Oppo Find X3 Pro review: Camera(s)

The Find X3 Pro features a quad camera setup that rests on a smooth, bulge-like island on the top left-hand corner of the chassis’ rear. It comprises 50MP wide and 50MP ultrawide snappers, which work together with a 13MP telephoto lens to provide a 2x optical or 5x hybrid zoom. This is in addition to a brand new 3MP microlens alongside an omnidirectional phase-detect autofocus, OIS, and LED flash.

It’s a slight shame that Oppo has switched out the periscope lens found in its predecessor for a 13MP telescopic lens, as last year’s setup allowed for 5x optical and 60x digital zoom. Still, not many use a zoom past 5x, and when in good light, the phone can shoot at 2x with plenty of detail. The hybrid 5x zoom is fine, but the digital expansion is visible when compared with competitors that have a real 5x optical zoom lens.

To make up for the lack of a periscopic zoom lens, Oppo has loaded the Find X3 Pro with a 3MP microlens dedicated to microphotography and extreme close-ups. This means you can capture subjects so small they can’t be seen with the naked eye by placing the phone right up against the surface you’re photographing. You need a very steady hand, but it is fun, if a little gimmicky.

Meanwhile, users can shoot rear video in up to 4K resolution at 60fps, or capture 1080p footage at 30fps using the front-facing camera. There are several ‘pro’ settings that can be accessed to adjust these lenses as well as additional software support for shooting including Live HDR, an ultra-steady mode and a ‘focus’ toggle to isolate subjects, all of which work very well.

On the front is a 32MP front-facing camera embedded into the top-left corner of the display, which we have to say is a little bit disappointing. It’s the same camera as found on the one-year-old Find X2 Pro and - considering the efforts by the likes of Huawei who have dual front-face camera offerings for ultrawide selfies - we were expecting an upgrade here. Still, it works just fine, and the OS has been updated to detect and capture multiple faces in a selfie shot, cleaning up any blurriness that existed previously, as found in the Find X2 Pro.

Oppo Find X3 Pro review: Verdict

With a sleek and stylish design unlike anything else on the market coupled with its powerhouse innards, the Oppo Find X3 Pro is an amazing bit of engineering. This, along with a great quad camera setup, super fast charging capabilities and responsive UI makes this smartphone one to watch this year.

Yes, this phone is let down somewhat by the selfie camera offering and an average battery life as well as being on the expensive side - costing a whole £200 more than its predecessor at launch - but it’s an exceptional phone for the money that won’t leave you disappointed.

Oppo Find X3 Pro specifications