OPPO Find X5 Lite Review: The Verdict
The OPPO Find X5 Lite isn’t a bad phone, but good performance and great battery life can’t stop it from falling short of the expectations set by the name. In a year when sub-$800 phones are as good as they are, you can probably do better.
What we love
- Fast processor
- Long battery life
What could be improved
- Screen and camera
- No wireless charging or water resistance
The essentials
- Performance: Snappy!
- Battery: Fantastic. I’d usually make it through two days on a single charge. ;
- Screen: Underwhelming, though not particularly poor in resolution or quality.
- Camera: Decent for the price, but let down by the lack of unique features
70/100
With brands like Huawei, LG and Sony abandoning the premium segment in recent years, OPPO has become something like the last brand standing in Australia when it comes to offering a decent alternative to Apple and Samsung.
While the standard Find X5 and the pricey Find X5 Pro reach higher than ever before, the more affordable and modest stylings of the Find X5 Lite are more down to earth. The cheapest phone in this year’s Find lineup doesn’t feature the MariSilicon NPU that’s promising to close the gap between OPPO and other leading brands when it comes to flagship smartphone camera tech. But at $799, maybe it doesn’t need to.
The classic OPPO formula is easy to grok here. The Find X5 Lite is big on performance and even bigger on battery life. It’s small on design, and light on cutting edge tech. Essentially, the Find X5 Lite is the OPPO flagship for those who don’t care about having the best camera and are keen to jump at the chance to save a thrifty $500 where they can.
Popular OPPO Find X5 Lite Plans
|
#1
|
Optus 
|
|
|
#2
|
Optus
|
|
|
#3
|
Optus
|
|
|
#4
|
Optus
|
“Thrill-free” thriftiness
When it comes to look and feel, the OPPO Find X5 can’t quite keep up with the rest of this year’s Find roster. There are similarities in the layout, but the more-or-less forgettable material design and the absence of premium perks like wireless charging serve to make this feel like it's cut from a different cloth. I was not terribly surprised to learn that this device was marketed as the OPPO Reno 7 in other markets. It doesn’t feel as cheap as true budget phones do, but the Find X5 Lite feels like a far cry from the rest of OPPO’s flagship lineup.
The centrepiece here is a 6.4-inch 1080p+ AMOLED screen that’s clocked at 90Hz. There’s a circular notch nestled in the corner, but little else infringes upon the high (though not quite exceptional) screen-to-body ratio found here.
In action, this display on the Find X5 lite is more adequate for the demands of everyday use. However, it pales in comparison to the glitzy screen available on the Samsung Galaxy A73 5G, which comes in at the same price, and doesn’t include any of the fancy 10-bit colour capabilities found in the rest of the Find X5 lineup.
Under the hood, the Find X5 Lite comes kitted out with a MediaTek Dimensity 500 5G processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 5000mAH processor. The handset also comes with 256GB of onboard storage as standard, but there’s a MicroSD slot for those who want or need to add to that. These specs are a step down from the other Find X5 devices (which boast Snapdragon processors), but they’re fairly competitive against most other sub-$800 smartphones.
The bottom-most edge of the OPPO Find X5 Lite features a 3.5mm headphone jack in addition to a USB Type-C port that’s used for charging, but otherwise, there’s not much to speak of here in terms of features. There’s an in-display fingerprint sensor and support for up to 65W SUPERVOOC fast-charging. However, that’s the closest thing to premium perks that you’ll find here.
Given that things like water resistance and even wireless charging are becoming increasingly common among this price segment, it’s somewhat disappointing that OPPO hasn't tried to get in on the action and be more ambitious with the Find X5 Lite. This device is as “thrill-free” as $799 phones get, and there’s not much to get excited about here aside from the performance.
The extra 2GB of RAM found here, relative to other devices in this price segment, keeps the OPPO Find X5 Lite moving along at a nice clip.
Apps loaded fast, and both modestly-demanding games like League of Legends: Wild Rift and more intensive ones like Genshin Impact ran well on the hardware here.
Even if it was never particularly striking to look at, the Find X5 Lite never felt like it compromised when it came to responsiveness involved with actually using the device. That said, the placement of stereo speakers on the device meant that they often ended up being covered by my hands during play. This is hardly an original sin, but it’s annoying to see regardless.
Big battery life meets small ambitions
It’s hardly a detail worth obsessing over, but the fact that the OPPO Find X5 Lite bucks the trend and eschews the curvy integrated lens enclosures seen in the Find X5 and Find X5 Pro in favour of a more traditional camera bump says a lot about what to expect from the hardware here.
All told, the multi-lens setup on the Find X5 Lite is a little less enthusiast and a little more every day. The back of the device boasts a 64MP main camera lens, supported by an 8MP ultra-wide lens and a 2MP macro lens. This trinity is rounded out into a neat quartet by the 32MP selfie shooter on the front of the handset.
Crucially though, the Find X5 Lite misses out when it comes to both OPPO’s new MariSilicon X chip and the collaboration with Hasselblad found across the rest of the Find X5 lineup. These omissions are hard to measure, but sprinkle salt on the areas where the device’s triple-lens array already falls flat.
I don’t want to belabour the point, but if OPPO had squeezed their NPU into this device the story would be so different. It’s easy to imagine a timeline where the MariSilicon X serves to set the Find X5 Lite 5G apart from the rest of the $799 options in a genuinely meaningful way.
Without it, the camera setup on the device can’t help but feel like mid-tier hardware that’s being marketed as flagship and ill-equipped to deliver on those expectations.
Even at its best, the results produced by the camera on the Find X5 Lite rarely elicited much of a reaction. Some might pass by the standards of social media, but blow them up on a nice monitor and the blemishes are cast into new light.
Where the other Find X5 smartphones tend to shine, the Find X5 Lite falls short. There's no optical zoom, the night mode improves low light photography but not to the same degree as seen elsewhere, and while the AI-image enhancement does produce some sharp bokeh effects, I suspect that many consumers will struggle to spot the difference it makes.
Fortunately, the Find X5 Lite feels on firmer footing when it comes to battery life. On this front alone, and even compared to some of the best mid-range devices out there, the device can do more than hold its own. I’d regularly manage around two and a half days of usage on a single charge.
The OPPO Find X5 Lite would usually clock in with between six and seven hours of screen time, and took 22 hours and 7 minutes to burn down from 100% to 0% using video content streamed via YouTube.
OPPO Find X5 Lite - Final Thoughts
The OPPO Find X5 Lite often feels like an ill fit for its namesake, but if you’re the kind of cash-savvy consumer who looks back longingly at the era of OPPO smartphones where the brand spent a little more time on fundamentals rather than flagship features, I can see this one working for you.
Those who prefer a nicer feel or form factor may find other sub-$800 options like the Galaxy A73 to be a better fit, but for those who want a simple, clean and effective solution to the smartphone problem, the Find X5 Lite has the performance and battery life necessary to deliver.
OPPO Find X5 Lite camera samples
Fergus Halliday
Digital Content Editor
Related Articles
