OPPO A73 Review — Lightweight Performer?

In this OPPO A73 review, we take a look at OPPO’s latest mid-range device where it packs a Snapdragon 662 chipset, a quad camera setup and a number of other notable features. Is it worth your money? Let’s find out.

Unboxing

Inside the box, you’ll get the following items:

• The phone itself
• Charger
• Earphone
• USB-C cable
• SIM ejector
• Documentation
• TPU case

Appearance

The OPPO A73 sports an AMOLED display on the front and as you can see, they’ve opted for a water-drop notch that fits the front camera. There are small bezels on the corners of the device.

On the left side of the OPPO A73, you will find the volume rockers and SIM tray.

On the right however, you’ll only find the power button for the device.

Down below is where you’ll find the 3.5mm audio jack, microphone, USB-C port, and the phone’s speaker.

We’ve got our hands on the Navy Blue variant of the OPPO A73. You might think that it’s fitted with a case, but it’s actually not. That is actually how it looks like right out of the box. The plastic back is actually built to feel like leather. There is a quad camera setup on the top left and the branding towards the bottom right.

OPPO A73 Specifications

Performance

On Antutu v8, we find that the Snapdragon 662 has underwhelming performance compared to other chipsets within a similar price range.

When compared to the previous OPPO A91, we can see that the OPPO A71 beats the former’s single-core score by a small margin but lags behind in the multi-score test.

Over at 3DMark, the scores shows that it’s not the worst performer but it’s certainly not enough to be pleased with.

Again, we can see that the Snapdragon 662 falls behind, this time in PCMark’s Work 2.0 Performance test. It’s noticeably weaker than the Snapdragon 720G and MediaTek Helio G90T.

One area that the phone doesn’t fall behind in is the battery performance, as shown by the benchmark above. It should be said however that the devices that sit on top of the OPPO A73 comes with bigger battery capacities, which is something worth taking note of.

As for real-life usage, I would usually be left with 70% at the end of the day, which is decent enough for me. Usage would include your typical social media apps such as WhatsApp, YouTube, browsing on Instagram, and Facebook.

In case you’re wondering on how fast the 30W fast charger juices up the 4,015mAh battery of the device, it managed to go from 26% to 81% in a 30-minute charging period.

User Experience

The first thing that I’ve noticed about the OPPO A73 was how light the phone really is, and it’s pretty slim too. If you’re someone that hates heavy smartphones, you’ll probably like this device.

Though it uses an AMOLED screen, it’s not the best panel that I’ve used before. I feel like the color is a bit grainy and the blacks aren’t really dark enough for an AMOLED screen.

While the back of the device isn’t real leather, it certainly does feel similar. It’s a nice touch by the company for the OPPO A73. Combined with the slim build, it’s a pretty comfortable smartphone to hold. OPPO was even nice enough to give a soft case but I personally feel that it beats the purpose of the textured back.

The speaker is adequately loud so you’ll be able to hear your contents with no issues, in case you’re wondering. It’s not the best for sure, but it should still serve you well.

With the OPPO A73, it runs on ColorOS 7.2, which is based on Android 10. If you’re used to OPPO’s skin on Android, you can expect the same experience in terms of looks. Despite that, I can’t say that I’ve had the best experience from the interface from the A73. I can definitely feel and see the delay when I’m swiping around the phone.

As for the camera UI, it’s pretty much similar with their previous devices. If you’ve not yet tried one recently, it’s pretty straightforward. I can’t really complain much here, where everything that you need is easily accessible.

In proper lighting, shots look acceptable for your social media uploads. It faces a clear quality drop when you zoom in, even at 2x zoom. As you’d expect, pictures would turn out blurry and the colors are a bit grainy.

As for low light shots, Night Mode helps in reducing the brightness from the light source, which helps a little bit. You would need steady hands however, or else pictures will turn out quite awful.

You can check out the full-sized images here.

Conclusion

For the price of RM899, it seems like a decent offering in terms of hardware. That being said, I would’ve liked it if they used a Snapdragon 665 instead of the Snapdragon 662 here. In my opinion, that should be the standard chipset for mid-range devices in today’s market. Performance-wise, it doesn’t stand out, and it definitely needs some polishing on that end.

I would however commend OPPO for making it a very light and thin device, especially with the leather-like back, which is something I fancy. Does that warrant the price, though? We’ll let you decide if it’s worth it or not.

Thanks to OPPO Malaysia for providing the OPPO A73 (2020) that was used in this review.