OPPO Find X3 Pro review – The ‘Premium Plus’ Android Experience

A month ago we reviewed the upper mid-range OPPO Reno 4 Pro and were impressed by its almost overengineered features and hardware set. Reno 4 Pro was based around the paradigm-jostling Snapdragon 765G, a sub-premium chipset that closed the gap between its intended market and the top end. It also helped that Reno 4 Pro was a beautiful device adorned in subtle-yet-daring detail. Suffice to say we expected much from OPPO Find X3 Pro, a ‘premium plus’ device. We were not disappointed.

Visual Balance

Our ‘Blue’ review model stands out just enough to draw the eye without demanding attention. The rear panel features a heavily frosted blue glass. OPPO claim it’s so matte that it’s fingerprint resistant and this seems to hold up after two months.

Nestled in the corner is the four-lens camera arrangement. This lens housing is a square with rounded corners emerging from the rear in a sweeping but tight incline. This incline curves around the lenses on all sides. OPPO said they wanted to rid camera modules of their disjointed look and they have succeeded.

The glass plateau isn’t matted like the rest of the rear and this helps it stand out a little more. The solitary OPPO logo is the other unfrosted detail. The logo intermittently catches the light, flashing into existence every now and then.

The rear and front of OPPO Find X3 Pro are separated by a polished aluminium surround that matches the blue of the rear. When looking at the device from the rear, this surround frames the rear of the device just a little.

OPPO Find X3 Pro is another visually appealing device. It treads a fine line between distinct or unique and a classic, familiar style. Apparently it took great effort to morph that curved glass panel and then frost it to a point where it’s difficult to discern what material you are looking at – it all seems worth it when you witness the design.

Billion Colour Display

Find X3 Pro has a superb screen – bright, sharp and smooth. The LTPO AMOLED screen can reach a face-tanning 1,300 nits with over 8,000 steps along its brightness spectrum. The 6.7″ diagonal has 1,440 x 3,216 pixels squeezed in at an aspect ratio of 20:9.

The display features a dynamic refresh rate – the device can handle between 10 and 120Hz. This is handy for viewing legacy media and very pleasing to the eye when watching movies at their native 24fps. Gaming at 120Hz is an amazing spectacle on the display – that silky frame-rate, the 1440p resolution, the eye-popping colour, contrast and brightness all combine for something special.

The elongated form of the device allows for a little chin and forehead bezel to aid with one-handed and landscape use. In portrait mode, the sides have a small and sharp curve that hide a little bezel here, too. In a large device like Find X3 Pro, that little dead zone where your hands may touch the device accidentally is important. The forehead bezel also hides a speaker so OPPO Find X3 Pro can offer stereo from its chassis speakers.

Other than these barely noticeable bezels, a user is left looking at a gorgeous 10-bit colour display with a single punch-hole notch.

All In

12GB of RAM and a celebrated premium chipset in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 5G are beyond capable, even for a premium device. There are no areas of performance that Find X3 Pro doesn’t do well in. There’s room for tons of parallel tasks, CPU-busting apps are a doddle and gaming, even at 120Hz at 1440p, is flawless.

The five nanometre process chip and the device’s 4,500mAh battery combine to offer good stamina. It will comfortably do the full day for the majority of users. Power users will make it home from work with a few percent left. But it falls short of the stamina kings in its category and won’t reliably do two days of moderate use. As a reference, we can still comfortably hit the sack on day two with our Huawei P40 Pro after one year.

It will, however, charge from 0 to 100% in 35 minutes using the supplied SuperVOOC 2.0 charger. A charging rate of 65W is the highest we’ve reviewed so far. OPPO Find X3 Pro can be charged wirelessly at 30W – faster than some wired fast-chargers – this will fill your phone from empty in just 80 minutes.

256GB of on-board storage is par-for-the-course at this price. The lack of expandable storage won’t be an issue to most but its omission is notable nonetheless. Another omission is a 3.5mm socket. Find X3 Pro is rated at IP68 – resistant to dust and will survive under 1.5 metres of water for 30 minutes. Again, this is mostly standard in the premium sphere.

Glass-to-Glass 10-Bit Colour

One of the devices headline features is that ‘glass-to-glass’ billion-colour pipeline. That is, Find X3 Pro shoots, edits and displays at a 10-bit colour depth through a full-path Colour Management System. Currently, the standard is 8-bit colour which has 256 values it can select per RGB colour (red, green, blue) for a total of 16.8 million colours. 10-bit has 1024 values per channel for 1.07 billion colours, covering 100% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut.

OPPO have even made sure users can export their files to non-10-bit colour devices for a fuller edit and then back to their Find X3 Pro with the full ten bits per channel intact. Users can export files in HEIF or convert them to the more widely compatible JPEG format. OPPO put a lot of effort in the usability and implementation of such an innovation.

Camera Choices

OPPO Find X3 Pro a slightly different lens configuration than its peers. The symmetric ultra-wide and wide lens arrangement offers consistency in colour, contrast and detail across many of the phones capture modes – something that will please photo hobbyists and social media heavyweights alike.

While other makers are adding optical zoom, Find X3 Pro maxes out at 2x. OPPO offset this with a strong digital zoom out to around 5x by using those dual 50MP sensors and a dose of AI.

Artificial intelligence features heavily across the many modes offered by Find X3 Pro – sometimes a little too much. There are times when night mode and digital zoom shots have an artificial smoothness to them or details can be lost on fine, uneven textures. These instances only really happen at the extremes of the camera performance and aren’t dealbreakers. The aforementioned, expanded EXPERT mode is always there for the brave or the competent.

Video is versatile and benefits from the some of the same tech as the stills capture. It can shoot in 10-bit colour but its hampered by the difficulty in enabling the mode. Checking which bit-depth a video or photo was captured in is also less than intuitive.

Image stabilisation from its gyro-fed EIS is excellent with that ultra-wide lens offering a huge buffer in which to keep the frame steady. The inertial zoom function that smooths out video zoom adds a professional touch. Coupled with that capable EIS, videos have a polished appearance with minimal input.

Under the Microscope

While other brands were zooming up, OPPO were zooming down. In the craziest USP we have seen in a while, Find X3 Pro can take 60x microscopic images AND video. The process isn’t even as complicated as one would imagine – a matter of propping the device gently over your subject and letting the built-in ring-light do its thing.

As demostrated by Martin Meany of Goosed.ie, the focus sweet spot is shallow so items with a lot of depth will be out of focus in patches when captured. From DigitalTrend’s Andy Boxall‘s shots below, we can see that the flattest object, the smartphone display, is the only broadly sharp image of the bunch.

The ring-light can only do so much and opaque items might need extra environmental light to capture meaningful detail.

Of course, it could be argued that a greater optical zoom would have provided more utility, more often. The microscopic zoom takes up an entire lens – leaving the other three to perform everything else. How often will you use a microscope after the device’s honeymoon period? Only you can answer that.

EXPERTs Only

OPPO have also improved their EXPERT capture mode. Find X3 Pro offers RAW and RAW+ formats, white balance from 2,000-8,000K, ISO from 100-6400, shutter speeds from 1/8,000 of a second to a full 32 seconds, a focus ‘wheel’ and exposure value. Users can choose which of the three main lenses to shoot from.

The options and granularity are welcome and the device allows you to move values between extremes that other Pro modes would not. Tinkering with EXPERT mode when categorically not an expert will have you capture an unrecognisable cold white blob or otherwise completely ruin a picture in a fashion that all other phones I have reviewed have not allowed.

Even video gets the laissez-faire treatment. FILM mode allows users choose their lens from the three mains as well as the same values of ISO, WB and EV as EXPERT stills mode. Shutter speeds from 1/8,000 to 1/8 of the second are available to the mobile director. We even get the same manual focus dial as EXPERT mode.

OPPO deserve credit for taking their hands off the reins when allowing those in the know to do their thing.

Specifications

An Effort Rewarded

OPPO put great effort into rounding off every detail. While they succeeded in most areas, there are a couple of places where they came up short. They included a powerful phone transfer system for setting up your Find X3 Pro but it allows Google to go first – a weird oversight that wasted a little of my time as a first impression.

The sometime overcorrection of AI during capture meant it wasn’t as good as Google Pixel 5 or Samsung Galaxy S21 Plus for ‘from the pocket’, first-time shots. But to be fair, we gain a lot for the more-able smartphone snapper so this one probably evens out.

There is a phone cover in the box and a screen protector pre-installed with OPPO Find X3 Pro. The phone cover is an opaque soft plastic that is roughly matched with the colour of the device – much better than the prophylactic-style silicone sock offered by other brands. However, that screen protector is made from some advanced pro-static material – the small gap betwixt the phone cover’s blue hug and the screen protector fills with lint and dust almost instantly in your pocket or bag.

These are small details, of course, against the phone’s majesty elsewhere. The distinctive rear cover with its ultra-premium feel and inviting look. That amazing AMOLED display. Its seemingly unflappable performance, even with 1440 lines to fill and one billion colours to choose from. The care put into preserving its 10-bit colour along an external editing chain. The charm of a microscope in your pocket.

OPPO Find X3 Pro is available for around €1,149 SIM-free

Review unit provided by PR