The Oppo A79 offers an excellent camera in its price range. It’s a shame that Oppo continues to install so many advertising apps on all of its devices.

Oppo A79 or OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite: Discover the seven differences. Both brands belong to the same Chinese parent company: BBK Electronics (along with Vivo and Realme). The result is nearly identical hardware and a similar finish. The only slight difference is that the placement of the buttons on the side is slightly different.

Is that a bad thing? Absolutely not. The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite is an absolute top device in its price range. The only downside for Oppo is that OnePlus has dropped the price and included a fast charger in the box. Difficult when the “new” Oppo A79 (299 euros including VAT) has been on sale since mid-January.

The same and yet different

Quickly read our review of the Nord CE 3 Lite and are you ready? No, because under the hood Oppo has made slightly different decisions. For example, it doesn’t have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 695, but rather a Mediatek Dimensity 6020. Although this offers advantages in terms of battery life, it does mean sacrificing some graphics performance.

The screen is also different, 90 Hz versus 120 Hz. Luckily, you hardly notice the difference. The Oppo A79’s 90Hz screen looks excellent. You can choose to automatically switch between 60 Hz and 90 Hz to save battery, or selectively switch between either frequency. The colors are beautiful, the screen is bright enough, especially in this price range.

Solid performance

As we briefly mentioned above, there is a Mediatek chip in the Oppo A79. We are increasingly seeing manufacturers prefer not to pay the Qualcomm tax on their phones. At the same time, Mediatek is increasingly consistently delivering excellent chips that come very close to this.

There is certainly no lack of CPU performance. We can use the phone very smoothly and without any problems. Multitasking is usually not a problem. When you are fast, we sometimes notice a brief hiccup. The limited 4 GB of RAM could be responsible for this.

However, we notice a slight difference in GPU performance. Is that noticeable? Not really on this scale. If you play graphics-intensive 3D games and want to display them smoothly at 60 fps, you’ll have to look a bit higher.

Too much clutter

Even though the Oppo A79 has only just become available, the device still comes with Android 13. That’s a shame, especially when you know that Android 14 has been available since September 2023 and the Samsung Galaxy A25 will have Android 14 when it launches at the end of 2023 becomes.

The Oppo A79 update policy guarantees two major operating system updates and three years of security updates. Due to the (hopefully quick) update to Android 14 in the coming period, this phone is already past Android 15. A missed opportunity by Oppo for not launching this device with the latest operating system available.

Now that we’re angry: why are there so many advertising apps on Oppo? A summary: Amazon Shopping, Booking.com, Candy Crush, Dice Dreams, Facebook, Joom, Lords Mobile, Temu, TikTok, WPS Office. Granted, you can delete them all, but if brother OnePlus doesn’t have this problem, then why does Oppo?

Beautiful snapshots in daylight

From deep valleys to high peaks, the Oppo A79’s camera is outstanding. In its price range, only the Nokia G42 performs better in some situations, but there is no comprehensive discussion. Oppo doesn’t fall into the same trap as OnePlus, which boasts of a 108-megapixel sensor but has nothing to do with it.

The Oppo A79 has a faithful 50-megapixel version that sometimes looks a bit boring, but is always realistic. The results are not very good at night, but that is the case with every device in this price range. In daylight, this smartphone takes very good photos without an exaggerated HDR effect.

By the way, ignore the additional macro camera. It takes worse photos than the main camera and is only there as a psychological factor to seemingly give people more value for their money.

Decent battery, no charger in the box

The Oppo A79 performs best in its price range when it comes to battery life. Admittedly, the difference is small, but it shows that Mediatek is a worthy competitor to Qualcomm in this area. The difference is noticeable, especially when you put more strain on the phone. For Oppo there are only bonus points here.

And these bonus points are a little lost when we look at the device’s charging time. OnePlus sets the bar particularly high and puts the charger right in the box. Samsung and Oppo don’t do that. Do you still have a USB-C charger at home that supports 40 watts (or more)? Then you can charge the Oppo A79 relatively quickly.

Diploma

As you can read, we need to beat and anoint something. The top camera is an important advantage, as is battery life, but launching Android 13 now is a shame. Not to mention the bloatware that Oppo includes by default in this device. Combined with slower charging time and the lack of a charger in the box, it’s difficult to recommend this device over the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite.

If you don’t want the best photos in this price range, the Oppo A79 is your best choice.

This short test report is part of our comparative mass test of mid-range cell phones between 200 and 350 euros. Click Here for the other reviews.

The Oppo A79 has been available since January 15, 2024 in two colors: green and gray. There is only one variant of the device with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, which is available at the time of writing for 299 euros including VAT.

Android update policy: Oppo promises at least two operating system updates (up to Android 15) and three years of security updates, starting with the launch on January 15, 2024.