Oppo A53, a stylish and solid performer at a budget price
Oppo A53.
The Oppo A53 is a budget phone that distinguishes itself from the crowd with a 90Hz display and premium design.
As budget phones go, the A53 has a contemporary feel to it with a polished plastic back and a vertically stacked triple camera setup. The front is Gorilla Glass 3 and has a pre-installed screen protector. It also comes with a transparent soft case to help protect the phone which is always good to see right out of the box. This is just as well because the back scratches easily and is a fingerprint and dust magnet.
The rear fingerprint sensor is well placed and works fast and efficiently. Facial recognition is also present as an additional method to unlock the phone although it’s less secure.
The bottom edge has a 3.5mm headphone jack, mic, USB-C port and three holes for a bottom-firing speaker. On the left edge is the volume up and down buttons along with the tray for dual SIMs and microSD card. On the right is the power button and on the top of the display is a speaker grille for a stereo sound setup.
The 6.5-inch screen is large and although the bezels are not the smallest the overall dimensions of the A53 doesn’t make it feel massive in the hand.
The screen corners follow the rounded contour of the body nicely and as a result, the phone feels comfortable to hold. There’s a punch-hole cutout for the 8MP selfie camera on the top left of the screen and the chin on the bottom is larger than the top and edges.
It’s nice to see a 90Hz refresh rate on a budget phone, but the display is only HD (720 x 1600). In real-world use, the resolution didn’t bother me but on a macro level, text isn’t as sharp as it would be on a full HD display.
The display has good viewing angles, punchy colours and gets bright enough to be readable in bright conditions outdoors.
The 90Hz refresh does make scrolling feel smoother than a 60Hz display but as is to be expected, not as smooth as a more powerful phone.
The inclusion of a headphone jack is nice and Oppo include a set of wired headphones in the box. Surprisingly, they’re not terrible either. The stereo speaker sounds much better than I was expecting and I’d have no problem using them to watch a movie or YouTube videos.
Powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon SDM460 and Adreno 610 GPU Octa-Core chipset, 4GB of RAM and 64GB the A53 is not a performance champ. That being said, it gets the job done and I had no issues playing games and switching apps as long as I didn’t have too many open at the same time. You can increase the storage with a microSD card up to 256GB which may be necessary if you take a lot of photos and videos.
Thanks to the 5,000mAh battery, this is easily a two-day phone with moderate use. It even comes with an 18-watt charger, so you won’t have to go out and buy one.
It’s great to see NFC for contactless payments as well as Bluetooth 5.0 with support for SBC, AAC, aptX HD and LDAC sound codecs.
The camera setup on the back features a 13MP f/2.2 main lens which is capable of taking decent photos in good lighting conditions. However, don’t expect great results indoors in dim light. It doesn’t do well with moving subjects in low light and there’s no night mode either.
The other two cameras are a 1.92MP f/2.4 macro lens and depth camera which is used for portrait mode to assist the software to isolate the subject from the background. The macro lens is like all other macro lenses on every other camera I’ve used. Essentially, you’ll get better results using the main lens and cropping in.
The selfie camera is 8MP f/2.0 and like the main lens, can produce excellent results in good light. It can capture fine details in faces and portrait mode does a decent job of isolating the subject and blurring the background.
The Oppo A53 is a solid performer with a contemporary design, a two-day battery life and a large 90Hz display that most people will be happy with. As budget phones go, this is one of the better ones. Like all budget phones the cameras are average at best, so keep that in mind.
Available now from three.ie €139. Also available from eir.
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