We’ve had a few OPPOs in for review now at TechStomper. The upmarket mid-range OPPO Reno 4 Pro 5G took the capable-but-still-mid-range Snapdragon SD 765+ 5G and adorned it with an almost premium everything else. Spiritual follow-up OPPO Find X3 Neo does much the same.
With a price of around €729 SIM-free, OPPO Find X3 Neo undercuts its namesake Find X3 Pro and its premium rivals by quite a wedge. However, Neo has an undeniable premium vibe, feel and look to it.
An Aesthetic Roll
OPPO Find X3 Neo is another beautiful design from the company. While there is some OPPO design language on show across all three devices we have now reviewed, their fundamental designs differ.
It’s impressive that OPPO have produced such exquisitely crafted handsets in three distinct styles while retaining the company’s signature across the three.
Find X3 Neo offers a squarer profile than either OPPO Find X3 Pro or OPPO Reno 4 Pro 5G. The finely engineered contours and curves of the Pro are replaced with a refreshing oblong slab with ‘sharp’ corners and a curved vertical frame on the sides of the device offering some macro detail.
The rear glass cover of our Starlight Black review model is the visual centrepiece of the OPPO Find X3 Pro. It’s heavily matted like Find X3 Pro but with a rougher grain. That black rear panel distorts the light at certain angles to create a dark blue sheen that does simulate the blue-to-black fade of a night sky.
The striking design of the rear panel is complemented by a raised aluminium camera surround. This surround is frosted with three large round lenses, a smaller lens and the two LEDs of the dual-flash in a pleasing symmetry.
The corners of the surround where it meets the glass of the rear panel match those of the corners of the rear panel where it meets the aluminium frame. Additionally, the screen and glass rear meet the aluminium frame in a matching curve that unites the entire device along its vertical axis.
These kinds of delightful details just add to the excellent visual balance and aesthetic harmony of OPPO Find X3 Neo.
A Touch of Glass
OPPO Find X3 Neo has a pleasing, solid feel to it. The curved, gently frosted aluminium frame exposed along the device’s sides work with that frosted Gorilla Glass 5 rear to offer excellent grip. At just 8mm thick and with a flat side profile, it feels very svelte to hold or pocket.
The device’s display is also covered with Gorilla Glass 5 as well as a factory installed screen protector. A nice touch from OPPO is a high-quality silicone sock or ‘condom’ in the box to offer a reasonable level of protection before you decide whether or not to case up.
Last Year’s Premium Display
While OPPO Find X3 Pro has one of the best Android displays on the go right now, Neo’s screen is basically the state of the art from last year. The 1080×2400 AMOLED is capable of searing brightness and offers excellent contrast. Blacks are inky and offer a pleasant depth to the panel.
While the world’s premiums are moving onto one billion colours and OPPO Find X3 Pro leads the way with a billion colour glass-to-glass pipeline, you can’t help but feel the laws of diminishing returns are hitting higher-end displays hard. OPPO Finds X3 Neo’s display certainly looks almost as premium as flagship Pro devic that costs 50% more.
This Year’s Premium Performance, Almost
While the Snapdragon X65 5G range is technically a midrange platform, the 765 5G and 765+ were breakthroughs for midrange chipsets. The chipsets offered price-to-performance ratios far beyond their competition and far beyond their predecessors.
More importantly, they closed the gap between the price-conscious midrange and bleeding edge chipsets of the flagship premium market.
This year’s 865 5G features a significantly stronger GPU and a bump in primary CPU clock speed over the honourable 765 series.
Raw comparisons between the premium 888 seen on OPPO Find X3 Pro and the 865 5G seen on Neo put the Snapdragon 888 at 20% faster on average. That’s not much considering the €1,100 pricetag of your average 888 device of 6.55″ or more.
And definitely not much considering the everyday performance of OPPO Find X3 Neo is flawless. 12GB of RAM and that capable chipset deliver a smooth experience no matter what load I could throw at it. It just has that premium sense of infallibility in use; the lack of any lag or stutter, the max. settings on games by default, a genuine love of tab abuse.
Simplified Camera Set-up
The performance of OPPO Find X3 Neo’s quad lens system is excellent overall.
Images in practically every scenario across all modes are very good to excellent. Regular, well-lit scenes are teeming with detail. HDR gives the colours a pleasant but not over-saturated pop. OPPO Find X3 Neo captures impressive levels of detail in darker areas of high-contrast shots.
Night mode is comparable to premium handsets but not quite as good as the best. The AI does an amazing job of stablilising the image while you shakily hold it at whatever catches your eye for three seconds. It’s seems like a steady hand is more of a bonus for the shot and that’s an amazing feat at a sub-premium price.
Portraits are at a premium level from the main cam. Bokeh effects are accurate. Beautification options are many and each tweakable is well-implemented. Portrait mode is probably the best furnished of all camera modes on the device.
The main sensor is a bit of a step up over the supporting ultrawide and 2x optical zoom lens. Changes in colour, balance, contrast etc. across modes as the camera leans on a different lens are apparent but not jarring – it seems like OPPO attempted to minimise the discrepancies between the sensors. If so, bravo.
Varying Levels of Variables
The options and UI don’t quite match the hardware. While the simplified camera UI does streamline from-the-pocket photography, the options for adjusting a shot quickly are lacking. Even the deeper menu options are missing settings like aspect ratio and image size.
Video fares better in terms of user customisable options. Settings for resolutions from 720p to 4K is offered in 30 or 60 frames per second. Slow motion video is offered at 720p and 1080p.
The device does have decent Pro stills and video modes. There are plenty of variables to vary and dials to dial for those who have a better capture vocabulary. It’s a minor shame that some of the Pro options aren’t in the general capture settings or available as quick options in the camera pulldown menu.
A Day Out
A 4,500 mAh should be ample for the 6.55″ device but that cell is powering this monstrous midrange chipset and bright, sharp 90Hz display. It has has a lot of work to do, even for a moderate user like myself.
While the other well-known Chinese tech-art merchants seem to get batteries of similar size in phones of similar spec to make it to bed on day two on the reg, I could not get far into day two with OPPO Find X3 Neo.
On the odd day when I went full power-user, it barely made it home.
Of course, your mileage will vary. Some of my review friends, found they could get the whole day with their version of a heavy workload. And then some power-user review friends had the same experience as I did, scrambling for the charger at 6pm.
Charging speed is a little more objective. The 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 has only recently been bested on the market in the region but it’s still outstanding. 100% in 35 minutes or so is still a quick pitstop.
Two premium features are missing from Neo that some may miss when downsizing from a flagship device.
OPPO Find X3 Neo doesn’t support wireless charging – references to ‘reverse charing’ in promo material refer to the USB-to-USB variety.
The other missing feature a premium user may be used to is water and dust resistance rating. OPPO Find X3 Neo has a gasket on its SIM tray so maybe it will survive a splash but there are no guarantees.
Specifications
| Chipset: | Qualcomm SM8250 Snapdragon 865 5G (7 nm+) – CPU Octa-core (1×2.84 GHz Kryo 585 & 3×2.42 GHz Kryo 585 & 4×1.80 GHz Kryo 585) |
| RAM: | 12GB |
| GPU: | Adreno 650 |
| Storage: | 256GB |
| Display: | 6.55″ 1080 x 2400 pixels, 20:9 ratio AMOLED, 90Hz, HDR10+ |
| Camera: | – 50 MP, f/1.8, 24mm (wide), 1/1.56″, 1.0µm, omnidirectional PDAF, OIS – 13 MP, f/2.4, 52mm (telephoto), PDAF, 2x optical zoom – 16 MP, f/2.2, 123˚ (ultrawide) – 2 MP, f/2.4, (macro) Dual LED flash, HDR, panorama Video – 4K@30/60fps, 1080p@30/60fps; gyro-EIS, HDR |
| Selfie Cam: | 32 MP, f/2.4, 26mm (wide), 1/2.8″, 0.8µm; Panorama Video – 1080p@30fps, gyro-EIS |
| OS: | Android 11 (Color OS 11.1) |
| Connectivity: | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6, dual-band; Bluetooth 5.2, A2DP, LE, aptX HD; GPS with dual-band A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO, QZSS; NFC; USB Type-C 3.1, USB On-The-Go |
| Battery: | Li-Po 4,500 mAh, SuperVOOC 2.0 – 65W, 100% in 35 min |
| Dimensions: | 159.9 x 72.5 x 8 mm (6.30 x 2.85 x 0.31 in) |
| Weight: | 184 g |
| Colours: | Starlight Black, Galactic Silver |
OPPO Find X3 Neo is one of the most visually appealing devices of the year and, to my eye, the best-looking sub-premium since Nokia 7 Plus. And Neo’s premium touch isn’t confined to its build quality or tidy, harmonious style.
The capable midrange innards are surrounded by premium-bothering adornments. 12GB of RAM, a huge 256GB of storage, 65W charging, 90Hz eye-searing AMOLED display. There’s a lot of phone in Neo for 729-ish quid, a near-perfect smartphone for the competitive sub-premium market.
