Oppo A53 Review: A Decent But Unremarkable Budget Phone

Despite having an extensive smartphone range, Oppo fails to become a hugely well-known brand. One of its latest offers is the Oppo A53 – a decent budget handset. If you are on the market for a relatively cheap phone and are having your eyes on this one, our advice is to temper your expectations.

Oppo A53 Price

In the U.S, the phone is retailed for $299. Oppo A53 price in India starts at Rs. 12,989.

Oppo A53 Design

Oppo A53 bears a striking resemblance to the Honor 10 Lite with the back is a real looker. However, it’s a fingerprint and smudge magnet.

This is a thick phone but fortunately, the curved sides make you feel comfortable while holding it. Underneath the camera module is a fingerprint sensor for a hassle-free way to unlock the Oppo A53.

On the left are the SIM slot and the volume rocker while the power button is on the right. All the buttons are functional and reliable.

The 6.5-inch screen dominates the front of the phone with a tiny notch from which the selfie camera pokes.

At the bottom of the phone, you will find a USB Type-C port, a single speaker grille, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Oppo A53 Display

Oppo A53 display is a mixed bag.

The 90Hz refresh rate is fast and makes for smooth scrolling and gaming experience. However, the 720 x 1600 resolution is quite a bummer as it makes videos and texts look less sharp than many users expect.

The display isn’t bad but it isn’t remarkable either. If you use the phone under direct sunlight a lot, you might want to increase the brightness to maximum.

Given what you have to pay to get an Oppo A53, the display isn’t exactly a big problem.

Oppo A53 Camera

If you are on the market for a camera phone, you had better look elsewhere as Oppo A53 isn’t for you.

The camera setup consists of a 13MP main, a 2MP macro, and a 2MP depth camera. The primary snapper produces decent photos but nothing special and it takes time to shoot. The photos are ok to post on Facebook but if you look close enough, the lack of details is evident.

The same is true for the macro snapper. Its photos will look expectable to those who are not really up-to-date with what phone cameras can do nowadays. If you want noise-free images from the macro camera, you had better make sure you have enough light.

Oppo A53 has 5x zoom but you won’t want to use it as the more you zoom in, the less clear the pictures get. There is no night shot on this phone so night photography is especially disappointing.

While there is nothing special about the camera hardware, Oppo has put effort into improving the software. Some of the new features are AI improvements, Dazzle Color, portrait mode, and HDR. Dazzle Color and HDR will become handy when you want more colors in the photos.

Oppo A53 is a decent handset for selfies with a 16MP front camera. The color reproduction is average but pictures still lack details.

Oppo A53 Specs And Performance

Under the hood, Oppo A53 runs on Qualcomm Snapdragon 460 – an entry-level chipset. The 4GB of RAM means you can’t expect to use the memory to offset the shortcomings of the chip.

When we tested the phone with Call of Duty Mobile, the game was playable but we had to wait for it to load.

Oppo A53 scored 253 and 1,266 on Geekbench 5 for single-core and multi-core respectively. While the numbers are far from great, it beats some other cheap phones like the Alcatel 3L and the Redmi Note 7 (in multi-core only).

In reality, during our time with the phone, we didn’t experience any crash or lag and while the phone’s lack of power shows when we opened multi tabs, for the price, this level of performance is reasonable. Oppo A53 has 64GB of inbuilt storage which is expandable to up to 256GB.

The phone comes with Android 10 out of the box and there aren’t many pre-installed apps you need to bother yourself with.

Oppo A53 Battery Life

Oppo A53 is powered by a 5,000mAh battery which can easily sustain the phone for more than a day with one single charge even on heavy days of binge-watching or gaming. On light days, the phone can even last for a couple of days.

A budget phone like this won’t come with wireless charging but it takes roughly 2 hours to charge to 100% - not great but not too bad.

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