Oppo Find X2 Lite review

Where to buy

If you see the word "Lite" after a smartphone name, it's usually a recipe for mediocrity, relative to the "full fat" phone that it shares the first part of its name with. We've seen plenty of "Lite" phones that radically cut down on processors, screen technologies, cameras and everything else in an effort to appeal to folks who aspire towards the premium but can't quite match it up in budgetary terms.

The Oppo Find X2 Lite treads a different path, taking much of what makes the more affordable 5G-ready Oppo Find X2 Neo appealing, slicing a good chunk off the price and delivering a phone that's surprisingly capable within its price bracket for general usage. We're still some distance from really "cheap" 5G phones, but the Oppo Find X2 Lite is a good step in that direction.

Design

Design

• 6.4-inch teardrop AMOLED display
• Headphone jack
• Single SIM only
• Moonlight Black or Pearl White finish

The Oppo Find X2 Lite's design skews very closely to what could be called a "generic" 2020 smartphone design. It features a 6.4-inch Full HD+ (2,400x1,080) AMOLED display with a teardrop notch, which immediately makes it different from the slightly larger Oppo Find X2 Neo. Buttons are minimal with power on the right and volume on the left, while a vertically oriented camera bump at the rear is your sole backwards-facing design element.

In Australia, Oppo sells the Oppo Find X2 Lite in either "Moonlight Black" or "Pearl White" finishes, and again while at one point that might have seemed unique, there are so many phones with pearlescent finishes in the market that it simply feels a little ordinary. Rather predictably the Pearl White finish also attracts plenty of fingerprints, although they won't be those seeking out the biometric sensor on this particular phone.

That's because, like the Oppo Find X2 Neo, it uses an in-display fingerprint reader with a very flashy unlocking animation. Sadly, like the Oppo Find X2 Neo, the fingerprint reader on the Oppo Find X2 Lite really isn't very good. Expect to be tapping at that flashing animation a lot as you struggle to unlock the Oppo Find X2 Lite.

One feature that the Oppo Find X2 Lite does include that's notably absent on both the Neo and Find X2 Pro is a headphone jack. No, I don't get why the cheaper phones get more features in that way, but regardless, if you're a user of good quality wired headphones it's a nice inclusion to have. Naturally, you can always pair up Bluetooth headphones as well.

The Oppo Find X2 Lite features a long SIM tray, which might make you think it's either dual-SIM or capable of taking on MicroSD expansion. However, one of those trays is entirely blocked out, which means it's single-SIM only. That's an annoying omission, especially as the length of the tray does suggest that Oppo makes a dual-SIM or storage-expansion-friendly model… but not here.

Camera

Camera

• Quad camera… but not really
• Fair camera quality, but that's all

Flip the Oppo Find X2 Lite over and you'll see four lenses staring at you, which might make you think that you'll get a choice of four different cameras to pick from when shooting.

That isn't the case, and it's in camera optics that the Oppo Find X2 Lite really earns that "Lite" suffix. There is a primary 48MP f/1.7 sensor and a secondary 8MP f/2.2 ultra-wide lens you can shoot for, but the remaining two lenses are just 2MP f/2.4 monochrome and portrait lenses that you never address directly; they're simply present to add contrast and depth to the shots that you'll largely take with the primary lens.

The use of an ultra-wide lens as secondary does open up possibilities for landscape shots, but it's at the cost of true telephoto capability, something you will find on the more expensive Oppo Find X2 Neo. Oppo's camera app does offer zoom levels of default 2x and 5x, and you can stretch that up to 10x if you wish, but it's 100% digital zoom, and often not that satisfying in a quality sense.

As an example, here's a street shot taken from my parked car with the regular 48MP lens. It's not exciting, but it's fine.

I could zoom in if I wanted specific elements in shot… but the results aren't great.

Realistically, what that leaves you with is a dual-lens camera for creative purposes, and at this price point that can't help but feel a little disappointing. It's not that the Oppo Find X2 Lite shoots terrible photos in most conditions. It's just that it's deeply average within a category where we're seeing better results out of single-lens cameras like the Google Pixel 4a and plenty of competition in 4G phones with great cameras, such as Oppo stablemate realme's X3 SuperZoom handset.

Like the Oppo Find X2 Neo you do get a few software tricks, such as "Dazzle Color" which adds an HDR-like supersaturated colour tint to your shots, and a predictable beauty mode for the front-facing 32MP f/2.0 camera. As with all beauty modes you do need to make sure you don't overdo it on the effect sliders to avoid a particularly plastic effect. The Oppo Find X2 Lite also allows for a portrait mode on the front facing camera, using AI to create a fairly artificial looking bokeh.

For a company that's been so camera-centric for so long, the Oppo Find X2 Lite feels a little disappointing. It's certainly possible to get decent photos out of it in most situations, but it doesn't stretch the definitions of what a mid-range camera can do, and that very much used to be Oppo's speciality.

Oppo Find X2 Lite Sample Photos

Performance

Performance

• Snapdragon 765G brings fast 5G
• ColorOS doesn't add much to the Find X2 Lite

The recipe for a "lite" phone typically involves stepping down in processor, RAM and storage terms to make the "full fat" variant seem more appealing, or at least to justify its asking price. Oppo can't quite do that with the Oppo Find X2 Lite, because at the time of writing the Snapdragon 765G is the cheapest 5G-capable system on a chip (SoC) available, at least until the first Snapdragon 690 phones start shipping.

That means that, relative to the Find X2 Neo, the Oppo Find X2 Lite shares the same processor, but there are slices cut away in terms of RAM and storage, with 8GB of onboard RAM and 128GB of fixed storage. That fixed storage feels slightly galling, because the SIM card tray in the Oppo Find X2 Lite has enough length to support either dual-SIM or storage expansion, but you only get a single-SIM card slot.

Still, while it's the lesser cousin of the Find X2 Neo, the Oppo Find X2 Lite does a fair job of holding its own in performance benchmark terms. Here's how it compares against a range of mid-range handsets using Geekbench 5's CPU test:

Apple's A13 Bionic continues to rule the roost, but the CPU performance between the Lite and Neo is essentially identical, which is exactly what you'd expect given it's the same CPU! Translating that into everyday app performance, and like so many other Snapdragon 765G phones, it's a nippy little unit.

It's a similar story on the graphics front, where the Adreno 620 GPU in the Lite is the same as the Neo, with broadly similar results against a selection of mid-range devices using 3DMark's Slingshot Extreme test:

The Oppo Find X2 Lite runs on Android 10 with Oppo's own ColorOS 7 UI on top. ColorOS certainly lives up to its "Color" name, offering a very bright take on an Android launcher. I'm not a huge fan and never have been, especially as many of Oppo's own bundled apps want a lot of permissions before they'll run. It's at least entirely upfront about this, and it's Android so you can always ignore them, but I do wonder what kind of performance hit ColorOS adds to the whole Oppo experience.

The inclusion of 5G at the Oppo Find X2 Lite's $749 presents a new low water mark for 5G-capable handsets, although your actual exposure to 5G is still likely to be limited depending on where you live. 5G can push data down faster than regular 4G LTE networks, although the Oppo Find X2 Lite is only a sub-6 5G handset, not a mmWave 5G one where we expect to see real next-generation 5G performance.

It's also rather hard to pick at the moment whether the performance we see out of 5G networks in Australia is a function of network speed, or the simple fact that there's still only a handful of 5G phones on the market, so actual network usage is going to be lower.

I tested the Oppo Find X2 Lite using Finder's Speedtest on Telstra's 5G network, hitting an average of 260Mbps down and 18Mpbs up, which is essentially identical to the performance I've seen out of the Find X2 Neo in the same location. That's a nice speed, but it's one that's well within the capabilities of many 4G phones right now too. At this point, buying into 5G feels much more like a future proofing step than one that will magically grant you substantially faster mobile broadband speeds.

Battery life

Battery life

• 4025mAh battery gives fair battery life
• Lacks wireless charging

The Oppo Find X2 Lite ships with the same battery capacity as its pricier Oppo Find X2 Neo sibling, but it lacks that higher refresh rate display. That should, in theory give it better scope for battery life, because upping the refresh rate of a phone comes with a definite power cost.

Phone usage is always the true measurement of a handset's battery endurance, and there isn't a smartphone on the planet that can't be run down within a day if you push it hard enough.

However most folks don't hammer phones, and to give an indicative view of how well a phone should run through a day, we run all phones through a standard video streaming test. Running a YouTube Full HD video at maximum brightness and moderate volume for an hour from fully charged gives us a measure of comparative battery rundown times. What we're typically looking for here is for a phone to retain above 90% battery life, because that typically gives you at least one day's regular usage.

Here's how the Oppo Find X2 Lite compared against a range of mid-range handsets:

While it's packing the same battery as the Find X2 Neo, the Find X2 Lite doesn't quite perform the same way, falling in line surprisingly with that phone's 90Hz rate but being outclassed by its 60Hz performance. However, it's still a fair battery life score, and one that shouldn't give you too much trouble for single-day battery usage, and possibly beyond if you're only a – pun not intended – light user.

Like the Find X2 Neo, there's no sign of wireless charging, but you do get Oppo's own Vooc Flash Charge 4 for rapid recharging if you're using the supplied charger. It will still grab current from any other USB C charger, just a tad slower than you get under Vooc.

Should you buy the Oppo Find X2 Lite?

The Oppo Find X2 Lite definitely sits at the bottom of the class when it comes to Oppo's Find X2 phones, most notably in terms of overall camera quality and flexibility. The tradeoff there is that you save a lot compared to the Find X2 Pro and a fair amount relative to the Find X2 Neo with app performance that's still pleasing and the future-proofing capability of 5G built in. This isn't a stellar phone, and you'll get a slightly better experience if you can step up to the Oppo Find X2 Neo, but it's a beachhead into even lower price points for 5G capable handsets.

Pricing and availability

Price

RRP: $749.00

Where to buy

Check price at eBay

Check availability at Amazon

The Good GuysAmazon

Compare OPPO Find X2 Lite plans

You can also purchase the OPPO Find X2 Lite on a handset repayment plan from Optus or Telechoice.

Specifications

Images: Alex Kidman