Today, we have something from OPPO that’s aimed toward the more entry-level segment of smartphones. The OPPO A3 Pro is priced at RM1,099, but is it actually a good phone? Let’s talk about it.
Performance
Let’s talk about the performance first. This phone has a MediaTek Dimensity 6300 chipset – and that chipset is fabricated out of the older TSMC N6 node.
Of course, the performance isn’t exactly the best. I mean, we can play some games on it, but don’t expect it’ll be smooth even at the lowest graphical settings. It stutters a lot.
Now, being a budget phone, the performance is even further affected by the LPDDR4X RAM. Yes, the RAM speed is important – and you can watch this video to know why.
Battery life
Now, with a lower-powered chipset in the OPO A3 Pro, we’re going to have a great battery life. This phone comes with a 5100mAh battery or 19.95Wh in capacity. It’s not particularly that much larger than most of the phones.
Using our standardized battery life test, this phone can last for 16 hours – that’s amazing.
Charging time
It also comes with a 45W SuperVOOC charger in the box, and it can charge this phone from 15% to completion in around 68 minutes. That is relatively decent for a 45W charger.
But that’s a proprietary charger, so if you really want fast charging – you’ll have to bring OPPO’s own charger and cable to do so.
If we just plug the OPPO A3 Pro into a USB-PD charger, we can only get 13.5W maximum and it’ll take around 80 minutes to charge from 15% to completion.
Screen
That screen though, is one reason why I say this phone is a budget phone. It has a 6.67-inch IPS LCD screen with a resolution of 1604×720 pixels, and a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz. Due to the pixel response time, it has a lot of motion blur.
However, the display itself is actually still very decent. It covers around 99% of sRGB and 85% of DCI-P3 color gamuts, while the ΔE number is very low. This seems to be the trend for IPS LCD screens, by the way.
And since it is an IPS LCD screen, I thought the maximum brightness is not going to be good but I was wrong. It can still reach around 920 nits – and I’m truly impressed. It’s a shame that this is a 720p screen, though.
Software
What I’m also impressed by – for the wrong reasons – is the software. This phone is using the latest ColorOS 14 on top of Android 14. It’s generally okay, the software is smooth enough and is good enough for day-to-day usage.
However, my god the amount of ads here is crazy. Upon just setting up the phone for the first time, they’ll ask you if you want to download this list of apps. We can skip that, okay – but then the App Market comes in. It will ask you to install more apps, and OPPO even copied one of the worst parts of Xiaomi’s HyperOS – this whatever app scanner thing is. It also gives you some ad there, of course.
The OPPO A3 Pro doesn’t have the OPPO Shelf feature as well, so just swiping down from the homescreen will reveal the search functionality – and it’s full of ads. Absolutely filled to the brim!
And of course, ads from the App Market are pushed to the notifications too. I just had everything about this App Market – but at least we can disable it.
I just don’t like how they still install all these apps even though I have selected multiple times not to install these apps.
Camera
As for the camera – yeah single camera because there’s only one that can be used to take pictures. It’s a 50MP f/1.8 camera with autofocus without any stabilization – and the quality is… questionable.
Design
And then we have this design. It looks like it came out of 2020 with this type of design and I’m not saying that it’s bad, it’s just a bit plain. I do like the matte back, but the camera bump can be shrunken down even further.
It’s kinda plasticky overall, but this is a budget phone after all.
A few more things to mention
Speaking of being a budget phone, the OPPO A3 Pro comes with a USB 2.0 port with out display output via that port, and it does have quite a lot of features not found on the more expensive devices.
Like the microSD card slot, but it is a combo slot. It even has an audio jack! But that’s about it, no IR blaster either.
Should you buy the OPPO A3 Pro?
For the price of RM899 – should you buy the OPPO A3 Pro? I think that’s actually kind of okay. But there are two configurations. The higher variant is at RM1,099 and I think that one, is too expensive.
Why I don’t recommend getting the higher-end configuration is that the RAM doesn’t actually help anything here since the chipset is already very low-powered. While having more storage capacity is indeed better, but remember – you can use a microSD card in this phone. However, we can’t use the secondary SIM card if we want to use the microSD card slot.
So, what are the alternatives to this phone? Actually, you can have a look at the new CMF Phone 1, priced at RM1,099 and there are also a lot of Redmi Note phones at around the same price too.
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