Oppo Find N3 Flip review

The competition

The Oppo Find N3 Flip is an excellent foldable smartphone with top-notch design, screens, chipset, and cameras. Oppo advertises it as the first ever Flip with a zoom camera, but we think it is also the one with the fastest charging.

Indeed, the Flip N3 gets so many things right, and we suspect few people would think twice before getting it. Still, let's explore some of its alternatives.

While the €1,000 Oppo Find N3 Flip is theoretically a global smartphone, it has quite a few markets where BBK, which Oppo is part of, isn't selling, or worse - has been banned from due to patent disputes.

This is where Samsung pretty much dominates the markets. And its popular Z Flip5 and Z Flip4 are now far cheaper than the Find N3 Flip - the most current Z Flip5 costs about €800, while the previous model can be found for about €500. Those two feature IPX8 complete water-resistance and better selfie cameras, while the Z Flip5 runs on faster hardware and comes with a larger cover screen, too. Those phones are no-brainer options if you are after a Flip phone and Oppo isn't available in your market. Note that none of these offers a telephoto camera, their charging is lower, and their battery life is inferior.

Vivo's X Flip is quite an interesting device with similar specs. It doesn't offer the splash protection or the telephoto camera, but it has better battery life and far better chipset stability. It could also be cheaper than the N3 Flip where available.

Finally, the €900 Motorola Moto Razr 40 Ultra is available worldwide, and it deserves serious consideration for its iconic design, faster display, wireless charging and clean Android OS. It has inferior splash resistance (IPX2 vs IPX4), no zoom camera and not as fast charging, though.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 • Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 • vivo X Flip • Motorola Razr 40 Ultra

Our verdict

The Oppo Find N3 Flip seems like the most all-round Flip phone on the market right now. It has a useful cover screen and a great foldable one, a sturdy design with splash proofing, great battery life with super-fast charging for this segment, and the best camera kit among the Flips to date. Plus, the rear cameras excel in everything, and their photos are among the best we've seen.

The Find N3 Flip impressed us with performance and software, too, and we are glad Oppo will be taking care of this phone for five years. It definitely deserves flagship treatment, just like any other phone.

The Find N3 Flip is not perfect; no phone is. High-refresh rate gaming is absent on the N3 Flip, much like on all other BBK phones, and the phone throttles big time as an overheating prevention measure. Another very BBK thing is the mediocre selfie camera that uses a Quad-Bayer sensor and then saves upscaled photos.

But even with these issues, the Oppo Find N3 Flip is still one of the best Flip foldables right now. It has some niceties that no competitor has - such as the speedy charging and the 2x zoom camera, while the IPX4 splash-proofing and new glass panels are welcome build quality improvements.

Overall, we liked the Oppo Find N3 Flip a lot as it managed to surprise us more than once. It's a solid smartphone with the most feature-rich Flip specs sheet, and even better - it delivers on the official promises.

There is only one thing that stands in the way of the Find N3 Flip - its limited availability and sale bans in some countries. It is not that cheap, either. But, if you want one of the best Flip foldables out there and you are set on getting the most out of this form factor and your money, the Find N3 Flip will deliver.

Pros

• Exquisite glass design, IPX4 splash proofing.
• Superb foldable OLED, HDR10, bright and can be color accurate.
• Useful cover OLED with a lot of mini-apps and playful pets.
• Dependable battery life, one of the fastest charging times in the Flip segment.
• Loud stereo speakers, good audio quality.
• Flagship-grade performance.
• Top-notch photos and videos from all rear cameras, day and night.
• The 5x zoom turned out to be surprisingly good.
• Powerful ColorOS, 5 years of updates.

Cons

• No HFR gaming.
• Throttles big time.
• The tele camera should fire more often at night.
• The inner (selfie) camera is mediocre.
• Using the cover screen as a viewfinder limits video recording to 1080p.