Oppo Find X3 Pro review

Design, build, quality

Undeniably, the first thing anyone would notice about the Oppo Find X3 Pro is its design.

While the new Oppo is built by the book - meaning a glass-sandwich with an aluminum frame - there is something enthralling about its organic curves that makes you want to pick up this phone in your hands and feel the material.

The Oppo Find X3 Pro uses a slightly curved Gorilla Glass 5 piece at the front, and with the screen off, the X3 Pro looks just like the X2 Pro, and you cannot tell those apart. But once you lay your eyes on the back, you will recognize the Find X3 Pro immediately as it is one of a kind.

The Find X3 Pro, just like its predecessor, is IP68-rated for dust and water resistance, and we are glad to see Oppo sticking to these official certifications.

Most of the front is occupied by the 6.7" QHD 120Hz AMOLED panel. The screen isn't curved; it's the glass that has been curved around the longer sides. The bezels are incredibly thin, and we've learned to live just fine with small punch-holes like the one on the Find X3 Pro.

The AMOLED is impressive on paper, not only because of its 1440p resolution and 120Hz refresh rate but because it supports 10-bit color and can display more than 1 billion colors. Only a handful of smartphones can do that, including the Find X2 Pro and this new Find X3 Pro.

Oppo Find X3 Pro next to the Find X2 Pro

There is an optical fingerprint scanner under the screen, and it is the fastest one you can get today. Its performance, both speed and accuracy, is comparable to that of conventional readers, and our experience with the sensor was completely trouble-free and very satisfying.

The selfie camera and earpiece • the fingerprint scanner

There is one thin slit of a grille above the screen, which hides one of the stereo speakers. We are not sure if the earpiece is a standalone thing behind this grille or the speaker acts like one, but we can confirm the top speaker is as powerful as the bottom one - something we don't hear every day.

We've already expressed our fondness of the back, but let's do that again. We have the Gloss Black version, which is super glossy and not that black but more like a dark gray. Oppo made it that glossy on purpose, as it wanted it to look like ceramic. And it sure does. That's the good news. The bad - this finish is prone to collecting fingerprints and smudges.

There is another version of the Find X3 Pro - simply called Blue - which features an anti-glare frosted finish. This one feels silky smooth and repels fingerprints and smudges very well. We like that Oppo gave us two different options - not everyone likes glossy.

Opposite to what you may expect, the glossy version (ours) is the one that provides more grip. The fingers somewhat stick to the glass even if the frame is mostly slippery as it is thin, curved, glossy and making it really hard to pick up the phone from a desk. Not that the Gloss Black is making for a great experience, it's just that the frosted one is a bit more slippery, so do have this in mind.

The rear camera is the real showstopper on the back, and it does look magnificent. Its right column contains the dual-LED dual-tone flash, the 3MP micro camera with a LED ring of its own, and the 13MP tele camera. The left column has the two 50MP wide-angle shooters.

The small ring LED flash around the 3MP camera is not that bright, but it is essential for microscopic photography. You are going to be shooting from as close as 1mm to your subject - meaning you will literally touch your subject with the phone, and the Find X3 Pro will cast a shadow over it unless you have artificial lights. So, the flash will come in handy.

Let's look around the sides now. The volume keys are on the left, while the lone power/lock key is on the right.

The top houses one tiny mic pinhole, while the bottom is overcrowded as usual. Here you'd find the dual-SIM tray, the USB-C port, the mouthpiece and the other stereo speaker.

The top side • the right side • the left side

The Oppo Find X3 Pro measures 163.6 x 74 x 8.3 mm and weighs 193 grams. That's about the same as the Find X2 Pro, but 24 grams lighter than the Ceramic version and 7 grams lighter than the Vegan Leather model.

Find X3 Pro and Find X2 Pro

The Find X3 Pro feels incredibly thin and lightweight - more so than most of the recent flagships of similar caliber we've handled.

Overall, we like the design of the Find X3 Pro - it has a unique back that takes a bit of a different approach to how the camera bump can look, and it has worked well for it. We also appreciate the waterproofing, and if it weren't for the unreasonably thin and curved frame, we would have labeled the design as perfect. It's a near miss, though.