The OPPO Find X5 Lite makes the right compromises at the wrong price

The OPPO Find X5 Lite is priced at $799 outright in Australia. That makes it the cheapest entry in OPPO's latest outlay of smartphones. This isn’t inherently a good or bad thing, but that context adds color to both everything that works about the device and everything that doesn’t.

If you're looking to buy the Find X5 Lite 5G on a plan, Woolworths Mobile, Vodafone and Optus are carrying the device. Check out the widget below for a round-up of popular plans.

The device is also available to buy outright through the following Australian retailers and partners:

Take a look at the table below for a full breakdown of how the pricing of the OPPO Find X5 Lite compares to the rest of the Find X5 series.

While it’s designed to sit alongside the OPPO Find X5 and Find X5 Pro, the design and build quality of the Find X5 Lite 5G feels like a different beast entirely. It’s nice to look at, but the feel of the thing can’t hold a candle to more premium products like the iPhone 13 or even the upper-end of the mid-tier market. 

Even the few aspects of the design that get a little closer to meeting the expectations set by the branding lack in personality. The bezels on the screen are thin, but they’re not particularly or impressively so. There’s a circular display cutout in the top-left corner of the screen, but it’s not all that different to those seen elsewhere. If you’ve spent much time using an OPPO (or any Android phone that wasn’t made by Samsung or Google), most of what’s here will come across as pretty familiar. Aside from the headphone jack anyway, which makes for a pleasant surprise and a welcome inclusion here.

The textured finish on the back resists fingerprints, but it can’t cover up what is on the whole a pretty generic design. For what it’s worth, the Find X5 Lite is available in two color variants: Starry Black and Startrails Blue. The latter has a nice gradient to it, but the palette here can’t help but come across as dull compared to the colorful aesthetics offered elsewhere. 

In either shade, the Find X5 Lite 5G comes armed with a 6.4-inch AMOLED display, a 90Hz refresh rate, a MediaTek Dimensity 900 processor, 65W wired charging and a side-mounted fingerprint sensor. Beyond that, those who settle for the most affordable entry in OPPO’s latest round of premium smartphones will score themselves a 4500mAh battery, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of on-board storage.

While the above internal specs leave the Find X5 Lite 5G armed to a degree that's a cut above most mid-tier devices, the outward-facing design is rarely distinguished enough to help it escape the shadow cast by the rest of the Find X5 range or hold its own against particularly compelling mid-rangers like the Samsung Galaxy A73 5G.

While the camera setup on the Find X5 and Find X5 Pro is billed as the main event, with OPPO’s MariSilicon X NPU in a leading role, the camera on the Find X5 Lite 5G feels like something of an afterthought. The multi-lens camera setup found here is a little less enthusiast and a little more everyday.

Flip the OPPO Find X5 Lite 5G over and you’ll find a 64-megapixel main camera, supported by a second one with an 8-megapixel ultra wide lens plus a third 2-megapixel macro lens. This trinity is rounded out into a quartet by the 32-megapixel selfie shooter on the front.

On paper, that hardware isn’t too far from that found on the other half of the Find X5 lineup. However, crucially, the Find X5 Lite misses out when it comes to OPPO’s new MariSilicon X chip nor does it benefit from the brand’s collaboration with Hasselblad . These omissions are hard to measure, but they feel like a missed opportunity.

If OPPO had squeezed their silicon into this device it would likely serve 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. 

When it comes to the aspects of smartphone photography where premium devices typically shine over their cheaper counterparts, this device falls short. The optical zoom caps out at 2x, the night mode delivers the same sort of muddy results you’ll find elsewhere and while there is some AI-powered image enhancement happening here, most will be hard pressed to notice the difference it makes. 

Thankfully, the other half of the performance equation works out firmly in the device’s favor. When it comes to everyday performance, the OPPO Find X5 Lite is super snappy to use. In terms of overall responsiveness, it definitely feels closer to flagship than the alternative.

Apps loaded quickly. Both modestly-demanding games like League of Legends: Wild Rift and more intensive ones like Genshin Impact ran really well on the hardware, though the stereo speakers on the Find X5 Lite often ended up being covered by my hands during play. 

What’s more, the battery life of the Find X5 Lite is genuinely exceptional. On this front alone, and even compared to some of the best mid-range devices out there, the device stands out. 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 6 and 7 hours of screen time, and took 22 hours and 7 minutes to burn down from 100% to 0% using video content streamed via YouTube. 

The Find X5 Lite talks a big game, but the quality of the screen and design hold back the goodwill that the zippy processor and and long battery battery life rack up.

OPPO has picked the right parts, but there’s nothing particularly special about the glue holding it together. It feels like the manufacturers stuffed the guts of a Find device into the skeleton of an A-series handset, but they’ve somehow forgotten to include the best bits. 

This situation is by no means impossible to salvage. If you’re looking for a modest mid-tier device that delivers on the essentials or an Android all-rounder with genuinely great battery life, the OPPO Find X5 Lite will match that mold. Nevertheless, it falls short of its promise of premium without the price. And when the rest of the mid-tier market is driving such a hard bargain, what’s on offer here begins to feel a bit uninspired. 

The OPPO Find X5 Lite is good, but if you’re spending $799 you can probably do better.

The differences between the OOPO Find X5 Lite 5G and some of the other options at the sub-$800 segment are pretty significant, so be sure to check out the table below before you decide on which device is worth your money.