The OPPO Find X3 Pro is its latest flagship iteration – it is a practically perfect professional person’s phone that goes head to head with Samsung’s Galaxy S21 Ultra. It has a few tricks up its sleeve that makes it a very desirable choice.
The OPPO Find X3 Pro has the world’s fastest and latest Qualcomm SD888, a massive 12GB of RAM, a fantastic quad-camera (with 60x microscope), blazingly fast charge, and a 6.7″ 1 billion colour, LPTO OLED screen with superb colour gamut and brightness.
Upfront, we will address its single shortcoming – no microSD slot. But then the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra and iPhone 12 Pro Max don’t have one either! With full USB-C 3.1 Gen 1 OTG support, it can backup data to an external SSD like our favourite little 38g, 1TB Orico iMatch (9.4/10) at a prodigious rate.
Add to that a superb build quality, OPPO’s ‘cameraphone’ focus, a slick-looking flowing glass back, OPPO’s excellent local after-sales service, and it’s a winner.
Review: OPPO Find X3 Pro Model CPH2173
- Website here
- Price: $1699 (various pre-sale bonuses may apply to 12 April)
- From: JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman, Telstra, Optus
- Warranty: 2-years and free global warranty
- Country of Manufacture: China
- Company: OPPO (Est 2001) is a privately-owned Chinese consumer electronics and mobile communications company headquartered in Dongguan, Guangdong. It is a BBK Electronics Corporation subsidiary (Est 1995) and with OnePlus, Vivo, and Realme (and other brands including VSun, XTC, and IMOO). Its executives and long-term staff own many of the shares. BBK is currently the second-largest global smartphone maker (Source CounterPoint).
- Other GadgetGuy OPPO news and reviews here
- Grey market – don’t buy any model that starts with PEE (for China and mmWave) and don’t buy from dodgy online merchants as you will not get a warranty here.
First impression – OPPO Find X3 Pro
Well, actually, my wife’s impression – small, light with an exciting glass back. The review unit is Gloss Black, but under most light it seems to have a highly polished steel grey look. Its glass back flows like liquid-like over the camera hump with 2x50MP sensors, a 13MP telephoto and a curious 3MP micro-lens (microscope) that you can have fun with.
The power button has a nice green coloured insert, and the volume keys are on the left. A tiny pinhole selfie camera is top left, and a fast, under-glass, optical fingerprint detector completes the look.
It is elegant and desirable rather than edgy. It is a real shame to slip it into the black silicon bumper case provided.
As this is a flagship, we will do a full deep-dive review covering over 70 tests and breaking it down into its logical components.
Spoiler Alert – it is a 10/10 offering everything you would expect from a $1699 phone.
Screen – QHD+ and one of the best we have seen
| Size | 6.7”, 20:9 |
| Type | LTPO OLED (low-temperature polycrystalline oxide) used exclusively for high-end phones Mostly flat with a 2.5D edge and a small camera pinhole at the top left |
| Refresh | Dynamic, intelligent refresh rate from 1-120Hz and 240Hz touch rate (2 fingers). Or select a fixed 60 or 120Hz rate. |
| Resolution | 3216 x 1440 QHD+ |
| PPI/Ratio | 525ppi, 92.7% screen to body ratio |
| Colour depth Brightness Adaptive Max Adaptive off Black Uniformity Contrast Gamut Vivid Gentle Cinematic Brilliant Delta E HDR10+ Adaptive . Colour temp Ambient light SDR upscale Certification |
1 billion colours 10-bit 1300nits (peak) 800nits (Test 860nits) 500 nits (Test 490nits) 96% (8192 grades of brightness) 0% – OLED can completely turn off a pixel Infinite (difference between pure black and pure white) 97% NTSC/100% DCI-P3 71% NTSC/100% sRGB 97% NTSC/100% DCI-P3 104% NTSC/100% DCI-P3 .8 (excellent – below 4 is good) Certified Automatically recognises sRGB and DCI-P3 images, displaying them with precise accuracy. Similar to Apple True Tone. Adjustable from cool to warm Automatic natural tone display Can upscale SDR to HDR video content DisplayMate A+ and .4 JNCD pro-grade colour accuracy |
| Daylight view Viewing angle AOD Dark mode Blue light Edge lighting HDMI out |
Excellent OLED has the widest viewing angle without colour loss Cutomisable patterns Load themes from the Theme store TuV certified Display different colours for notifications screen off Yes, Android screen to 1080p monitor |
Screen continued
| Accessibility | Full range of Android colour, font and size OPPOs Colour Vision Enhancement allows users with Colour Vision Deficiency (CVD) to see colour-corrective hues and deeper contrast levels for colour differentiation. It is perfect for colour blindness and eye protection. |
| Haptic feedback | Perfect level |
| DRM | Widevine L1, HDCP 2.3, HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG Video out via USB-C is disabled when playing copyright content. Plays HDR content on Netflix and faux upscales SDR as well. |
| Gaming | Perfect for gaming with a 2.4ms rise and fall combined and 7.5ms Gret to Grey. It also has zero latency game control that adjusts a 60Hz game from 51-72Hz to suit. |
| Protection | Corning Gorilla Glass 5 Pre-fitted screen protector |
| Fingerprint Face ID |
Optical under glass – Test: 10/10 Test: 8/10 |
What is the Samsung made LTPO OLED.
It is the next premium generation OLED producing higher brightness using less power with more even screen distribution. Similar screens appeared in the Galaxy S20 and S21 Ultra and may be in some of the coming iPhone 13-series.
This screen is part of a unique 10-bit colour path allowing the camera to capture, encode, store, decode, edit, and display all in 1 billion+ colours. It is perfect for professional use and can be Calman calibrated with a choice of gamuts and colour temperatures. Although with a factory-calibrated Delta E of .8, you won’t need this.
The adaptive refresh rate is superb. It knows what the content is and delivers it at the best rate. For example, when screen-on idle, it is 1Hz, for eBooks, it is 5Hz, for movies 24Hz (or whatever the movie metadata requires), 90-120Hz for most games and a fallback to 60Hz. OPPO says this reduces screen power consumption by 50% over a fixed refresh rate.
OPPO has opened its screen API to allow more developers to take advantage of the screen’s capabilities.
The key difference between the S21Ultra and OPPO Find X3 Pro – the S21 supports a Samsung stylus.
Screen rating – 10/10
Processor – Qualcomm SD888
| SoC | Qualcomm SD888 5G 5nm 1×2.84GHz, 3×2.42GHz, 4×1.80GHz |
| GPU | Adreno 660 840MHz Tests: Compute Open CL: 4537 Tests: Vulcan 5.3: 4455 |
| Game use | This is the world’s fastest SoC, and with the excellent screen and adaptive refresh and OPPO’s dual speakers and Game Space, it will play all current games |
| RAM | 12GB LPDDR5 – dual-channel 3200 – fastest memory |
| Storage | 256GB (215GB free) UFS 3.1 – the fastest storage OTG supports up to 2TB external drives Tests: Androbench 256GB internal sequential read/write: 1813/735MBps (SSD speeds) Orico iMatch iV300 USB-C 3.1, 1TB read/write: 365/347MBps HP USB 3.1 512GB read/write: 33/32MBps Samsung USB 3.0 64GB read/write: 32/17MBps |
| micro-SD | No, but with USB-C 3.1 Gen 1, it can write 4K video direct to an external device. This is the first device we have tested that automatically works with all USB-C storage devices without having to find OTG settings and reboot after device insertion or removal. Its File Manager seamlessly identifies the new devices |
| Geek Bench 5 |
Single: 923 Multi: 3397 There is no faster Qualcomm Snapdragon |
| Throttle 15-minute test |
Max: 240,292GIPS, Average: 223,471 – 10% loss over 15 minutes CPU temp reached 50°C External temperature on the back: 39°C It has a vapour chamber and graphite cooling system that copes with extended load with minimal throttling |
We stated that the SD888 is the world’s fastest SoC. In the Android world, it is, but the 5nm Samsung Exynos 2100 5G in the Galaxy S21 Ultra beats it in specific tests – mainly Open CL and Vulcan, so it may be a better gaming option.
This device can multi-task, run power and memory hungry apps, and the performance is still silky smooth.
Processor rating: 9/10
Comms – PASS
| Wi-Fi | Wi-Fi 6 and 6E AX 2×2 MIMO, VHT160 Tests: Signal Strength 5Ghz – distance from Netgear RAX200 AX11000 router 2m: -15dBm/2400Mbps 5m: -30dBm/2400Mbps 10m: -44dBm/1800Mbps 20m: -56dBm/1200Mbps |
| Bluetooth | BT 5.2 LE |
| GPS | Dual band Test: Accuracy to less than <10m excellent for high-speed turn-by-turn navigation. |
| NFC | Dual antenna supports eSE/HCE/NFC-SIM |
| USB-C | USB-C 3.1 Gen 1 (5Gbps/625MBps half-duplex) It has an Analog Audio Switch and DAC for headphone use |
| Sensors | Combo Accelerometer and Gyroscope LSM6DSO) Magnetometer e-Compass Gravity Pedometer TCS3408 Ultra-high sensitivity light-to-digital converter for Ambient Light Sensing (ALS), colour (RGB) sensing, and selective flicker detection. STK33502 Ambient Light sensor Goodix optical fingerprint sensor |
I dislike the trend to combo Accelerometer and Gyroscope LSM6DS0 as it makes the screen rotation sensitivity too touchy and easy. But we won’t take points off because it is now more common on all phones.
Wi-Fi performance is exceptional (10/10) with the right router. It holds the signal out to 20m with a solid signal and data throughput. If you use an AC router, you will get a maximum of 866Mbps.
BT performance was exceptional to about 35m.
LTE and 5G
Note that we cannot currently test 5G signal strength
| SIM | Dual SIM (both cards are active, only one in use at a time) eSIM disables SIM2 and is subject to carrier support |
| Ring tone | Single (many people prefer dual ringtones) |
| Support | VoLTE – carrier dependent Wi-Fi calling – carrier dependent |
| DL/UL Test |
Telstra Band 28 – 3-bar area 30/20Mbps and 43ms |
| 4G Bands | LTE FDD 1/2/3/4/5/7/8/12/13/17/18/19/20/25/26/28/32/66 LTE TD 34/38/39/40/41(194Mhz: 2496MHz—2690MHz)/42 Plus 2G and 3G bands |
| 5G | Sub-6Ghz NR: n1/3/5/7/8/20/8/n38/40/4177/n78/79 mmWave not enabled |
| 4G LTE Test | -101dBm/158.5fW in a 3-bar reception area (high fW Found next tower at -103dBm/63.1fW |
We have been impressed with OPPO’s antenna design, and the Find X3 Pro returns 158.5fW femtoWatt signal strength) – higher than the Galaxy S21 Ultra (that did not get Telstra Bluetick for rural use). The Galaxy S21/+ got Bluetick with antenna strengths of 199.5fW.
We consider this a good city/suburbs and regional city phone.
Battery – blimey, 35-minutes to charge!
| Battery | 4500mAh rated for 800 complete charge cycles – terrific |
| Charger | 65W SuperVOOC Test: 0-50% – 12 minutes 0-100% – 35 minutes Using 5V/3A standard USB charger and cable – 4 hours |
| Wireless | It supports OPPO AirCharge 30W (similar – two 5V/3A/15W streams) and standard Qi from 5-18W. Test: Using Belkin 15W Qi charger – 4 hours Sorry, we don’t have an AirVOOC to test but claimed 100% in 80 minutes |
| Reverse wireless Charge | Up to 10W |
| Tests Adaptive |
Video Loop test: 1080p/50%/aeroplane mode – 16 hrs Netflix streaming, 1080p, 50%, Wi-Fi – 13 hrs Typical use Wi-Fi Test – 13 hrs MP3 music test: 50% volume played from storage – 24+ hrs 100% load Battery drain – 7 hours GFX Bench Manhattan 3.1 – 301.2minutes (5 hrs) 3742 frames T-Rex: 555.6 minutes (9.27hr) and 3369 frames Drain, idle screen-off: 93mA (about 30 days) Drain, idle screen-on: 160mA |
OPPO SuperVOOC 2.0 is one of the safest fast charging methods. The trick is that it uses two 2250mAh series-connected batteries and two charger circuits, so it never stresses the battery. This requires an OPPO charger and cable that delivers 2 x 5V/3.25A circuits equivalent to 10V/6.5A/65W.
With such charge speed, battery life becomes almost irrelevant. It is at least twice as fast as the S21 Ultra and iPhone 13 Pro Max.
You can also use any USB-C PD, PPS or QC charger, but charge times increase.
Sound – Dolby stereo
| Speakers | Stereo earpiece and down-firing speaker. These speakers are perfectly balanced for volume and tone Dolby Atmos-certified for decoding to its stereo speaker |
| AMP | Qualcomm Aqstic speaker amp WSA8835 with some additional OPPO smarts |
| Codecs | SBC/AAC/aptX/aptX HD/aptX TWS+/LHDC/LDAC/ |
| Mic | Dual Noise cancelling. There appears to be a third mic on the camera bump for audio zoom video use |
| 3.5mm | No – OPPO supplies its standard USB-C buds |
| Tests dB Anything over 80dB is excellent |
Media – 85 Ring – 82 Alarm – 82 Notification – 65 Earpiece – 55 Handsfree – 75 |
| Sound stage | Much wider than the device with good Left/Right separation. Dolby Atmos adds a slightly wider stage, but there is no 3D spatial sound. |
The BT 5.2 drove our reference Sony WH-1000xM4 in SBC and LDAC modes and provided good clear sound and plenty of volume. We also tested with the M3 version that supports aptX and its variants. There was plenty of volume and an excellent clear feed.
USB-C converts to USB-2.0 and a DAC with USB-C earphones. These were excellent.
And you will note the SD888 natively supports Qualcomm True Wireless feeds to TWS earphones.
Sound quality
| Deep Bass: 20-40Hz | Nil |
| Middle Bass: 40-100Hz | Hints from 50Hz |
| High Bass: 100 to 200Hz | Still hints – not substantial |
| Low-mid: 200-400Hz | Flat |
| Mid: 400-1000Hz | Flat |
| High-mid: 1-2kHz | same |
| Low-treble: 2-4kHz | same |
| Treble:4-6kHz | Peak |
| High Treble: 6-10kHz | Dropping off quite steeply |
| Dog whistle: 10-20kHz | Gone after 13kHz |
This is a bright vocal signature which is fine for vocals and clear voice. It has Dolby Atmos decoding, but the pre-sets are new to me. It has environmental – indoor, on-the-go, commute and flight. And it has scenario-specific – smart, movie, gaming and music. They don’t appear to make a great difference.
The Galaxy S21 Ultra has better sounding speakers, but the BT and cable sound on OPPO is superior.
Build
| Size/Weight | 163.6×74.0x8.3mm x 193g |
| Colours | Gloss Black and Blue frost – there may be others released soon |
| Build | Gorilla Glass 5 front Aloy frame Liquid Ceramic Glass back* |
| IP | 68 |
| Warranty | 2-years ACL plus a global travellers warranty Primary support from Sydney with support facilities in most states OPPO claims one of the lowest fault rates in Australia. |
| In the box | Bumper cover 65W charger OPPP SAUper VOOC USB-A to USB-C cable USB-C earphone and mic |
* We have to quote OPPO
The back panel of the OPPO Find X3 Pro is a single piece of glass. It has more than 2000 control points to complete the shape, precisely controlling the ultimate balance between the glass’s rigidity and the curved surface’s softness. The ‘Ring Mountain’ image mirror set uses a hot forging glass process rarely seen in industrial mass production. It presents a 3D curved front and back transition and creating a rounded feel. It is a technological breakthrough in industrial design.
Android 11
| Android | Google Android 11 Security patch date: 5 March 2021 |
| UI | ColorOS 11.2 Colour OS is the grease on Android wheels. It covers up the rough bits and makes Android work even better. It also allows OPPO to develop more hardware-specific APIs to get the best from the device. |
| All standard apps, Google Lens and Assistant. Dedicated Google Assistant key. | |
| Bloatware | Mostly OPPO alternatives to Google and utilities |
| Update Policy | Two years of OS updates includes two major updates and monthly security updates. |
| Security | Fingerprint FaceID A private system function behind a security barrier mirrors the public system so that hackers can not get your data. A Private Safe guards private data. System cloner allows two profiles – one for work and one for private |
Our only comment is that Colour 0S focuses on battery saving over raw power. You can adjust this by allowing frequently used apps to run in the background.
Build quality is superb – a Rolls Royce standard.
OPPO Find X3 Pro camera – Dual 50MP combine images
The unique feature is the microscope camera – and it is fun but a lot of hard work to get results. It works up to 3mm away and is more of a scanner (and needs the soft light source) than a camera lens, and builds the image from multiple exposures.
The 50MP IMX766 specifications are currently unavailable, so we don’t know exactly how the dual 50MP lenses work.
We know the dual 50MP sensors uses Quad Bayer binning to 12.5MP and the 1um pixels become equivalent to 2um. Add that to the SD888 triple image signal processor and neural processing unit, and you have exceptional AI computational image capabilities. And this enables image fusing from two or more cameras and DOL HDR (Digital Overlap HDR), which synthesises different exposures into one frame to produce a final result.
OPPO says that they will be introducing a 50MP Mode without all that post-processing.
With that caveat, here is what we can find.
| Camera | Primary wide 50MP bins to 12.5MP |
Super-wide 50MP bins to 12.5MP |
Microscope 3MP |
Telephoto 13MP (Saves in 12MP) |
Selfie 32MP Bins to 8.1MP |
| Sensor | Sony IMX766 jointly designed for OPPO | Sony IMX766 | ? | S5K3M5 | Sony IMX615 |
| Lens | 6P | 7P | 4P | 5P | ? |
| Focus | All Pixel Omni-directional PDAF | All Pixel Omni-directional PDAF | Fixed | PDAF | Fixed |
| Aperture f-stop | 1.8 | 2.2 | 3.0 | 2.4 | 2.4 |
| Pixel size um | 1.0 | same | 1.0 | 1.12 | .8 bins to 1.6 |
| FOV° and (cropped) | (72.5°) | 110.3 | 81° (69.7°) 1:1 aspect | ||
| Stabilisation | OIS and EIS | EIS for video | Nil | EIS | Nil |
| Flash | Dual LED tone | Soft LED light | Screen fill | ||
| Zoom | No | No | 60x magnification | 5x hybrid zoom; 20x digital zoom | No |
| Video Max | 4K@60fps Live HDR video algorithm. Dual view |
Same | FHD video | 4K@30fps | 1080p@30fps |
Photos default to JPEG (option RAW/RAW+ and 1-bit HEIF) and video to H.264 (option H.265)
-
No bokek -
Bokeh without a depth lens
-
1X -
30X -
60X
Selfie – great quality 32MP binned.
Video – Superb 4K@30fps with OIS and EIS
GadgetGuy’s take
The OPPO Find X3 Pro – practically perfect professional person’s phone.
Apart from the lack of microSD and the annoying combo accelerometer/gyroscope, it is a 10/10 in every way.
It is a logical candidate for all flagship LG, Huawei buyers and iPhone fence-sitters. It is easy to swap to OPPO using the Clone Phone app – details here
My daily drive is a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, and both devices have small advantages. For example,
- S21 Ultra has 100x periscope zoom that I do use, whereas the Find X3 microscope is a little limited
- 21 Ultra has that 108MP camera that collects so much detail (in that mode). 50MP is not shabby either on the Find X3 Pro.
- Find X3 Pro photo results are visually more pleasing – not necessarily better. It shows excellent computational AI photography with warmer saturated colours. Samsung is more à la naturel.
- Find X3 Pro’s 10-bit, 1billion colour screen is amazing and is a draw with te S21 Ultra
- S21 Ultra has better sound, but it is not a biggie as you almost always use earphones. Find X3 Pro has more BT codecs including the aptX suite.
- Find X3 Pro has 65W charging – bloody fast. The S21 Ultra has 25W – it takes two to three times as long
- S21 Ultra can support a stylus and supports cable or wireless DeX desktop on a monitor
- Warranty and support wise – a draw.
And because there is so little between them, prestige flagship buyers should consider both. I suspect that when you get the lighter and svelter OPPO Find X3 Pro in your hands, you will fall in love and live happily ever after.
And we will be reviewing the Find X3 Neo and Lite. Preliminary details and specs are here, and the Neo is a very acceptable compromise at $1199.
Rating
I can’t give it 10/10 as much as I really want to. That is for absolute perfection. But given the comprehensive package and competitive price, it scores 9.8/10. I suspect it will tie with the Galaxy S21 Ultra, so you know you cannot go wrong.
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