expensive entry-level model for the light user

The A80 is Oppo’s latest budget smartphone that should be able to withstand a blow. In this review you can read how we liked the phone.

This is the Oppo A80 review

Oppo launched the A80 in August and asked for a suggested retail price of 299 euro. The smartphone is now a lot cheaper: from € 209, -. How do you like this budget Oppo and is it worth buying? You can read that in this review.

Modern design can withstand a beating

When you take the Oppo A80 out of the box, you see a beautifully designed smartphone, which does not immediately betray the lower price range. The phone has flat sides with a glossy finish (which is very sensitive to fingerprints) and a matte-shiny back. The device also has a headphone jack, which is nice if you like to listen to music.

Oppo has put a lot of effort into the sturdiness of the A80 and even encourages you to drive over it. We dropped the device several times on a laminate floor from a height of about one and a half meters and it survived that just fine, apart from some minor damage to the edge. The Oppo also survives a short immersion in water thanks to the IP54 rating.

Old fashioned screen disappoints

Despite its modern casing, the illusion of a ‘premium’ phone quickly disappears once you turn it on. With a 720p resolution, the 6.67-inch display lacks sharpness and the bezels are quite thick, especially the ‘chin’ below the screen. At least the 1,000 nits maximum brightness holds up, which is useful in direct sunlight.

On paper, the A80 has a smooth refresh rate of 120Hz. This means that the screen refreshes up to 120 times per second. However, we were initially very disappointed, because the smartphone felt even slower than one with a 60Hz screen. Fortunately, this turned out to be due to the automatic screen setting. After we set the screen to 120Hz, it immediately felt faster.

Slow hardware for light use only

Speaking of speed, the chip under the hood is a MediaTek Dimensity 6300, making the A80 anything but a speed demon. With a phone in this price range, we would at least expect a chip that doesn’t take seconds to open apps and doesn’t stutter when multitasking. Unfortunately, the A80 often does.

Don’t get us wrong, because the device is certainly usable with light use. Think of WhatsApp or browsing the internet, but those who use the phone a bit more intensively will quickly notice the limit of the chip.

What is nice is the 8GB of working memory and standard 265GB of storage space. With that you will not quickly run out of memory. If that is the case, then you can expand the storage with an internal micro-sd card.

Remarkable camera performance

Those who want to take the most beautiful photos and videos usually do not choose a budget smartphone. Such devices often have fewer lenses with less capable sensors. This also applies to the Oppo A80. The smartphone has two lenses on the back: a 50 megapixel main camera and a 2 megapixel portrait lens.

The main camera doesn’t exactly take sharp photos. The sensor struggles to capture detail, and unless you hold the phone perfectly still, images tend to blur. Thankfully, Oppo uses AI to improve images after you shoot.

The phone manages to make the colours remarkably natural here, but sharpness and detail are lost, as is natural lighting. With the same lens you can also zoom in digitally twice, but after that very little of the photo remains.

The portrait lens is a lens that we normally don’t really count. Often it is only used to determine depth, so that a blurred background can be added in portrait mode. That is still the case, but to our surprise, portrait photos look a lot better than photos from the main camera.

Photos are nicely lit and the portrait effect is convincing. In addition, the snapshots contain more detail. That is also largely the work of artificial intelligence, but the portrait mode on the Oppo A80 has positively surprised us. The camera options are otherwise quite limited.

Software is what it is

Oppo promises – like many other manufacturers – to improve the user experience of the A80 with AI. However, the range of artificial intelligence on the A80 disappoints us. You can remove objects from images and, as mentioned, AI also helps with the exposure of photos.

Oppo doesn’t communicate an update policy specifically for the A80, but has previously provided its A devices with one major Android update and three years of security updates. That means the phone will be supported until 2027. That’s fine, but not excellent. Oppo also promises that the A80 should continue to work smoothly for 50 months, or more than four years.

Battery and charging

The Oppo A80 may excel in one aspect: the battery. At 5100 mAh, it is just a little bit bigger than most competitors. This means that it – just like most competitors in this price range – easily lasts a day on a single charge. We had about thirty percent of battery left.

Charging is very fast, namely with 45 watts. This means that the Oppo A80 is half charged in about thirty minutes. Make sure you use the right charger for this. Oppo uses its own SuperVOOC charging technology. Do you have a 45 watt Samsung charger, for example? Then it will not work on this Oppo.

Conclusion Oppo A80 review

If you are looking for a reliable smartphone and are not a heavy user, the Oppo A80 is a good choice. The device has a long battery life, can withstand a knock and is supported until 2027.

Furthermore, it is not really a striking phone. It does not have outstanding hardware and the cameras are not really impressive. Still, you can not really go wrong with the device, although we find the recommended price of 299 euro on the high side.

It seems that Oppo can’t sell the A80 for that suggested retail price either, because the phone dropped significantly in price shortly after its launch. The A80 is currently available from €209,-. That makes the device a better deal.

Buy Oppo A80

The Oppo A80 is available in two colours: black and purple. Are you planning to get the device? Then find the best deals via the price comparison below.

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In the reviews we go into depth, but in an understandable way. After all, we want everyone to understand the story and ultimately know how good (or bad) the tested device is. We use the smartphones we test as a daily driver for at least a week. This way we know exactly how the latest phones perform in practice.

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