Oppo A60 5G Review

Introduction

Priding itself on durability without compromising on looks, the budget-friendly Oppo A60 5G is an attractive proposition on paper.

Settling in at around £160 at launch, it’s an affordable entry point into 5G connectivity. But how does it attempt to stand out in an increasingly competitive market where merely being great isn’t always good enough?

Design

• Black and red (or pink) at the same time
• Tall and thin design
• Very minimal camera bump

In the design department, the Oppo A60 5G does very little to draw attention to itself. And maybe that’s by design. The black version we recieved is just that: black. The sides are black. The rear chassis is black. The camera module is black. Even the logo is black.

There’s nothing here to catch the light on an angle, and thus nothing much to talk about. Hold this by yourself in the dead of night and it’ll be practically invisible.

But there’s a little more to the story. Tilted toward the light, the “black red” phrasing of the Oppo A60 5G’s one available SKU makes more sense, shifting to a slight pinkish hue with a light shimmer. It’s sleek and professional in one setting and very subtly playful in another.

Around the edges are your usual budget-friendly ports, holes, and plugs: a three-piece speaker, USB-C, a headphone jack on the bottom, volume rocker and power button on the right side, and a SIM/MicroSD card tray on the left.

Though it maintains surviving rigorous military-grade durability testing, the exposed headphone jack means the Oppo A60 5G technically only resists spills and splashes, putting it at odds with its main allure. Such is life with an antiquated port.

Screen

• 720p LCD panel
• 120Hz support
• 1000nits peak brightness

Housing a 6.67-inch display, this a tall but thin device that’s easy to wrap your paws around. Reaching for the top may be a struggle, but the extra height makes it suited to cinematic widescreen content: though only at 720p resolution.

Being an LCD panel, colours are satisfactorily bright and saturated, but off-angle viewing sees performance rapidly decline.

Thankfully, it’s a 120Hz display. At this resolution, driving enough frames to maintain smooth motion isn’t too difficult in everyday use. Paired with its high peak brightness of around 1000nits under sunlight, outdoor reading is clear and comfortable.

With its tiny hole-punch camera, and rather tight bezels, you’re looking at a 89.9% screen-to-body ratio. It’s nothing groundbreaking, even at this price, but it’s a modern look.

Still, there’s evident blurring and even a little ghosting when swiping between apps on the switcher screen. It’s unlikely to be a major issue, but it’s worth noting that the limits of the tech are on full display here.

While watching video content, you’re at the mercy of the single main speaker located by the charging port. Usually far from the best, Oppo’s offering here is surprisingly solid. Capable of breaking 80 decibels at its peak 300% “ultra volume” while maintaining acceptable vocals, there’s a case for the Oppo A60 5G to pair well with those hard of hearing.

At a more modest 60 decibels, audio quality remains strong. Just note there’s no stereo separation given it refused to use the earpiece speaker as a second, making cinematic experiences on the wide display something we can’t recommend. Casual videos and podcasts are easy on the ears, but that’s about it.

Camera

• 50MP main sensor
• 5MP selfie snapper
• Dual-view video on 6GB model

Packing a 50MP rear sensor as its main camera, the Oppo A60 5G matches most others at the price point from a numbers perspective. And, like the rest, it relies on AI to handle real-time filters and other gimmicks.

In practice, it’s not a bad little snapper. Objects in focus are suitably sharp, with colours looking largely natural in general indoor conditions. Darker subjects were prone to getting lost in a normal point-and-shoot situation, but it’s nothing some single-tap adjustments can’t fix.

Out in the snow, which made white balance a battle, the brown patches of our adorable test subject began to look a little orange. Again, nothing that some light tweaks won’t rectify.

In terms of responsiveness, avoiding motion blur is difficult. Budget handsets struggle with fast-moving subjects, but keep things steady and the results are very useable for viewing on-device and posting online. If you’re certain your subject can keep as steady as a tree (or is a tree), the hi-res mode can capture some great detail.

The 5MP front lens is much the same story of simply needing a little post-snap tuning. Skintones come out a tad cool, and textures are sharp. Turn on the AI filters and you can dial in your preferred look pretty quickly.

As for video, footage captures on the front lens is 720p at 30fps with automatic retouching, with the option to enable 1080p at 30fps if desired. 

The rear sensor can hit 1080p/60fps, but that’s its peak. So long as you’re not looking for that ultra-smooth playback in video calls or Tiktoks, the results are largely fine on either lens.

Performance

• Sluggish real-world performance
• Better gaming performance
• Slow memory holds things back

Powered by an 8-core MediaTek Dimensity 6300 chip, scores in our usual benchmarks suggests a phone that may start to struggle with modern tasks over time, but can get the job done for now.

A Geekbench score of 783 single and 1728 multi falls far behind the Moto G55 and HMD Fusion; two handsets either side of its price bracket. And this can be felt in day-to-day use. Our model was paired with just 4GB of memory and sluggish eMMC storage used to boost it to a theoretical 8GB, which rarely helps.

Apps were slow to open, and navigating back to (and through) the home screen was a test of patience. Frequent hitches and slowdowns welcomed premature or ignored taps, creating a domino effect that made using the device a chore. 

Websites and other simple tasks are responsive enough once their respective apps had settled in, but anyone trying to make use of multiple apps at the same time will struggle.

Interestingly, graphical performance went against the benchmarks. The Mali-G57 GPU managed higher scores across the 3DMark test suite, suggesting higher real-world performance in some games.

It’s nothing astounding, and it certainly isn’t going to come close to the ASUS ROG Phone 9, but it outperforms a chunk of the competition in light gaming.

If you’re partial to 2D games, simple 3D offerings, emulation, or competitive titles, the Oppo A60 5G shows its strengths here, with 2D action title Dead Cells somehow closing in on 60fps more reliably with the hi-res setting enabled.

Software

• Serious app bloat
• Digital wellbeing features
• Easily-viewed performance metrics for gamers

Software is another weak point of the Oppo A60 5G.

Likely in an aggressive move to keep costs down, it’s filled to the brim with unwanted apps. Around 30, in fact. Often advertised casual games like June’s Journey or reclaimed classics can be found in every inch of the home screen.

Video apps like TikTok are there, with general lifestyle, booking, and shopping apps stuffed in for good measure. When they’re not taking up rows of the home screen, they’re nestled into folders just waiting to be drudged up.

Given this isn’t a low-storage device, they’re not eating up a large portion of your available space, but they can take an annoyingly long time to remove.

Ignoring those, running Android 14 with Oppo’s ColorOS 14 fork means you have a fairly robust and modern feature set. Fire up a game and you’re able to view performance metrics and flick between high or low screen refresh rates or power profiles for a little extra oomph.

There’s even options to run multiple instances of the same app, plenty of digital wellbeing features and parental controls, and audio profiles you can tweak but seemingly can’t turn off altogether.

Battery

• 5100 mAh battery
• No included charger
• 45W fast-charging support

Speaking of the battery, this 5,100mAh cell powering the experience performs on-par with other handsets of this calibre: all of which feature near-identical capacity.

The difference here is support for 45W “SUPERVOOC” charging. While not particularly uncommon, it’s still a welcome addition you can’t take for granted with these budget handsets. You’ll need to buy a compatible charger to make use of it, but it’s nice to know you can juice it up at speed.

In real-world use, cramming in a longer Netflix show on a break will only cost you 6% of the battery. Turn your attention to an intense 30-minute 2D game and you’ll see it drain by around 8% instead.

Should you buy it?