At a glance
Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Durable design
- Very long battery life
- Speedy charging
- Micro-SD support and headphone socket
Cons
- Very sluggish
- 720p LCD screen
- Mediocre cameras
- No charger included
Our Verdict
The Oppo A60 5G has plenty going for it. There’s a large bright display, very long battery life, speedy charging and a design that’s more durable than most. However, all of this is overshadowed by sluggish performance, which makes it a pain to live with.
Price When Reviewed
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Best Pricing Today
Best Prices Today: Oppo A60 5G
The A60 5G (also known as the A3 5G, in some parts of the world) is Oppo’s budget 5G-enabled handset that launched in the UK in October 2024. It’s aimed squarely at those who want speedy internet access without spending a fortune on a flagship phone .
It costs just £159, about the same as a weekly family shop in this economy, and for that price, this phone offers a 50Mp main camera, a large 6.67-inch display, a sizable 5100 mAh battery and speedy 45W charging. What’s more, it’s designed to handle everything life can throw at it. It has a Military-Grade shock resistance rating, IP54 dust and water resistance and dual-tempered glass covering the screen.
Sound too good to be true? Well, it might be. You don’t have to look far to find where corners have been cut. The screen is only a 720p LCD panel, for a start. Is this one worth considering? I stuffed it in my pocket for a week to find out.
Design & Build
- Plastic frame and rear
- MIL-STD-810H compliant
- 187g, IP54 rated
The Oppo A60 5G is a large phone with a mostly plastic construction. It’s dense, and it certainly doesn’t feel fragile, but there’s nothing premium about the build. It looks and feels a bit toy-like.
Luke Baker
On the plus side, plastic phones tend to have good impact resistance, and indeed, the Oppo A60 benefits from a Military-Grade MIL-STD 810H shock resistance certification. It also has an IP54 rating for dust and water resistance. This means it can withstand limited dust ingress and sprays of water from all directions. It’s not fully water-tight but a bit of rain will do no harm.
The screen is covered with double-tempered glass, so you should be well-protected around the front, too. Oppo’s marketing materials go as far as saying the phone can survive being run over by a car or used to hammer in a nail – but I wasn’t quite confident enough to test those for myself.
I have the Ocean Blue colourway in for testing. It has a glossy light blue rear panel with an etched wave pattern across the back. To be completely honest, I’m not a fan, it just looks a bit childish. However, if you’re buying this phone for a kid, that could be a plus point.
Luke Baker
The Nebula Red option looks a lot more grown up, and it’s less of a statement than the pale blue number. It definitely looks more purply brown than red, to my eyes, but in a case, it’s very tasteful.
On the right side of the phone, there’s a volume rocker and a power button that pulls double duty as a fingerprint scanner. It’s pretty quick and reliable, I’d pick this over an entry-level in-display unit any day of the week.
There’s also a 3.5mm headphone socket, and the SIM tray has room for a Micro-SD card to expand your storage. Both are pretty common on budget handsets, but I must say, I miss them when I switch back to flagship.
Luke Baker
The haptic motors aren’t too impressive here, but they’re not the worst that I’ve come across. They’ll easily get your attention when your phone is on silent, though there’s plenty of room for improvement when it comes to typing. The lack of precision means it just ends up being a faint background rumble rather than individually discernable key presses.
Screen & Speakers
- 120Hz 6.67-inch IPS display
- 1000 nits, 720 x 1604 resolution
- Mono speaker, 3.5mm headphones
At first glance, I thought this screen had a similar quad micro-curve design to the Reno 12 Pro , but on closer inspection, it’s a fully flat display. The tiny curves are actually black plastic bezels that give off a similar appearance but don’t offer the same smooth feeling to the tips of your thumbs.
Luke Baker
Speaking of bezels, they’re rather sizable on this device. Especially the chin, which extends over half a centimetre from the base of the phone. It’s not something that matters much in use, they’re easy to forget about, but there’s no denying that it gives the phone a dated look – especially when compared to something like the CMF Phone 1 , which has comparatively tiny bezels at a similar price point.
The display specs aren’t likely to wow you either. The Oppo A60 has an IPS panel with a modest 720 x 1604 resolution and a peak brightness of 1000 nits. It is, at least, faster than a lot of its direct competition, offering a 120Hz refresh rate for smooth scrolling.
Luke Baker
The panel is decent, it’s bright enough to be easily legible in the sunlight and the colours are vibrant. The screen supports a wide range of viewing angles and still looks good when held off-axis. This isn’t always the case with budget-oriented IPS devices.
It’s the 720p resolution lets it down. This is a big screen, and it’s very easy to notice the low pixel density, especially when reading information-dense websites and watching videos. Despite having a high refresh rate, the motion doesn’t look too impressive, either. There’s some very noticeable ghosting when scrolling quickly.
Of course, this is a budget handset, and we have to keep our expectations in check, but it’s not hard to find phones at this price with a Full HD panel. OLED screens are more of a rarity, but not unheard of in this price range. Oppo’s solution here is acceptable, but certainly nothing special.
Luke Baker
The Oppo A60 5G has a single speaker positioned on the base next to the USB-C port. It can get pretty loud, especially if you keep holding the volume-up key to enter “ultra-volume mode”, but it’s not too good at producing bass frequencies. On the plus side, it’s detailed and clear, so you’ll never miss a word when listening to a podcast or audiobook.
Specs & Performance
- MediaTek Dimensity 6300 chipset
- 4GB RAM
- 128GB eMMC storage
The Oppo A60 5G feels extremely slow, no matter what you’re doing with it. You’ll need to be a very patient person if you want to use this as a daily driver. What I found most jarring was using the search bar in the app drawer. It’s not a difficult task, for most phones, but it takes so long to pop up the keyboard that I often thought the phone had frozen completely.
I don’t think it’s a lack of processing power causing this. Sure, the Dimensity 6300 is no flagship chip, but it’s not THIS slow. Instead, I think it’s likely due to the use of eMMC storage .
Luke Baker
To test my theory I ran some storage benchmarks on this device and compared them to the next cheapest model I had to hand, the CMF Phone 1. The A60 was significantly slower in all storage tests, but particularly with random reads and writes, where the speeds were around 10 times slower than the CMF Phone 1.
The result is a phone that feels decent when an app is open and fully loaded, but grinds to a halt every time you open a new app or search the file system. It feels like an ageing handset that needs an upgrade from day one.
This problem is compounded by the fact that there’s not a lot of RAM available, by modern standards. With just 4GB at your disposal, playing a large game like Genshin Impact will pull data from the ROM more often, resulting in more painful slowdowns.
Luke Baker
Needless to say, this phone is never going to be the top choice for keen gamers. However, it can run some titles surprisingly well. I already mentioned Genshin, which remained playable at the lowest preset, but slowed down to a snail’s pace every time I opened the map or teleported. Less demanding titles like Candy Crush or Subway Surfers offer a much more consistent experience.
Oppo A60 5G benchmarks
Cameras
- 50Mp main sensor / 2MP depth sensor
- 8Mp selfie camera
- Up to 1080p 30fps video recording
The Oppo A60 5G may look like it has dual cameras on its rear, but there’s only one usable lens, a 50Mp unit with a 76-degree field of view and an f/1.8 aperture. The other camera is a 2Mp depth sensor that should help with the accuracy of portrait-mode cutouts. Around the front, there’s a 5Mp punch-hole selfie camera.
The rear camera produces good results in the daylight, and I was impressed with the dynamic range, highlights are well-controlled and detail is retained in the shadows. The camera app gives you a 2x button that digitally zooms in to give you a closer shot, but the quality drops off quite badly, so I’d advise moving closer to your subject if you can. Zooming beyond 2x is a bad idea, too.
At night, it’s not great. Images come out looking very grainy, and with no OIS, it’s a constant struggle to avoid motion blur. There’s a dedicated night mode which can help improve things, but you’ll need a very steady hand, or a tripod, for the best results.
The selfie camera is ok, but it’s not going to impress anyone too much. The 8Mp resolution is very low, by today’s standards, and you’ll see some pixelation if you view your selfies on a larger high-res display. It also struggles at night, producing extremely grainy shots.
The rear camera can shoot video at up to 1080p 60fps, while the front maxes out at 1080p 30fps. In either case, you get no stabilisation, so any walking will look like a minor earthquake is taking place. The microphone also sounds very muffled.
Luke Baker
Battery Life & Charging
- 5100 mAh battery
- 45W wired charging
- No charger included
The Oppo A60 5G has a 5100 mAh battery pack, a slightly higher capacity than you’ll find in most 2024 handsets. This cell, used in combination with a very efficient chipset and a relatively low-resolution IPS display, results in phenomenal battery life.
I managed to go two full days on a single charge without even trying. As always, it depends on what you’re doing with your phone, but you’re very unlikely to drain this in a day, most people will be able to get two days from it, and a third day isn’t out of the question.
There’s no charger included in the box, which is becoming common practice with flagship handsets, but is still fairly unusual in the budget market. All you get is a USB-A to USB-C cable and a SIM tool, so you may need to account for the cost of a suitable charger if you don’t have one spare.
Luke Baker
On the plus side, the phone can charge quite rapidly when paired with the right adapter. It supports up to 45W speeds, and my Ugreen desktop changing station was able to take the phone from completely dead to over 50% charged in less than half an hour.
Software & Apps
- ColorOS 14, based on Android 14
- Load of bloatware
- Adjustable torch and NFC
The Oppo A60 5G runs ColorOS 14, Oppo’s custom flavor of Android 14. It’s a highly customisable interface with a slick default look, and if you’re coming from another Android phone, you’ll find it very easy to adapt to.
Unfortunately, it comes loaded with loads of bloatware, so you can expect to spend a while cleaning up all the junk. At least ColorOS lets you select multiple apps at once to speed up the process. As standard, there are almost two full pages of apps pre-installed. Including 15 random games, Booking.com, Spotify, TikTok and more. Some bloat is forgivable at this price, but this is a lot.
Luke Baker
I did come across some pleasant surprises, too. The torch has four levels of brightness adjustment, which is something that most Android flagships still lack, and this comes in very handy. There’s also NFC support , so you can use this phone for contactless payments, or quickly pair it with NFC-enabled Bluetooth speakers.
Oppo is promising two major Android upgrades and three years of security patches for the Oppo A60 5G. Not the best support, but an acceptable term for such a low-cost handset.
Price & Availability
In the UK, the Oppo A60 5G is only available with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. It’ll cost you £159 to buy outright with no data plan and it’s available directly from Oppo’s UK store .
The Oppo A60 is also available on contract via networks such as EE and O2 – see more options below.
Internationally, the Oppo A60 5G is sold with different RAM configurations depending on the region. It’s also sold as the Oppo A3 5G in some markets, which makes things a little confusing. As usual, it’s not available in the US.
Should you buy the Oppo A60 5G?
Starting with the positives, the Oppo A60 5G is a durable handset with a large display, 5G connectivity, long battery life and a decent main camera for a very affordable price. It has all the makings of a great budget handset, and yet, it’s not one I can recommend.
The simple reason is that it’s just too sluggish. The slow loading of apps and search makes this phone a chore to live with, and while you can’t expect flagship-level performance at this price, you should be able to get more than this.
Phones like the CMF Phone 1 and Poco X6 carry a higher starting, but they can often be discounted to just £20 more than the A60 5G – and they’re in a completely different league. Not only do they feel snappy and responsive, but they both have high-resolution OLED displays that blow this 720p IPS panel out of the water.
If you absolutely can’t spend more, maybe consider the Moto G54 5G . It’s currently selling for around £20 less, has a full HD OLED display and also performs much more smoothly. The Oppo A60 5G is a decent attempt, but you can get a much better phone for the same price if you shop around a bit.
Specs
- ColorOS 14, based on Android 14
- 6.67-inch, 720 x 1604, IPS, 120Hz
- Side-mounted fingerprint sensor
- MediaTek Dimensity 6300
- 4GB RAM
- 128GB storage
- Camera:
- 50Mp main sensor
- 8Mp selfie camera
- Up to 1080p 30fps rear video
- Mono speaker
- 3.5 headphone socket
- Dual-SIM
- MicroSD card slot
- Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax
- Bluetooth 5.3
- 5100mAh battery
- 45W charging
- 165.71 x 76.02 x 7.68 mm
- IP54 certified
- 187g
- Colours: Nebula Red, Ocean Blue
Best Prices Today: Oppo A60 5G
Author: Luke Baker, Contributor, Tech Advisor
Luke is a freelance journalist who has been working in consumer electronics for over a decade. Previously Features Editor at Pocket-lint, Luke can now be found contributing reviews and features to a variety of publications, as well as running a YouTube channel called Neon Airship in his spare time. Luke loves anything that takes pictures, whether it’s a smartphone, camera or drone, and he also gets very excited about the latest VR and AR tech.
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- CMF Phone 2 Pro review: The best budget phone (again)
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