OPPO K13x 5G review: well-designed and reliable

The OPPO K13x 5G launched in India as a successor to last year’s budget-friendly OPPO K12x. With certifications like military-grade 810-H shock resistance, SGS Gold drop resistance, and IP65 ingress protection, strength and durability seem to be among the key highlights of the new smartphone. For the starting price of Rs 11,999, the phone also boasts Gorilla Glass 7i protection on the screen, a 50MP main camera, a big 6,000mAh battery with 45W charging, and MediaTek’s Dimensity 6300 SoC.

While the specs check most boxes and seem impressive on paper, I was curious to know how tough the OPPO K13x is in everyday use, across design, display, performance, software, battery, and cameras, and how it stacks up against similarly priced POCO M7 Pro (review) and Infinix Note 50x (review).

You can read about my findings in this 91mobiles’ OPPO K13x review:

Verdict

The OPPO K13x offers a clean design with an IP65 rating, a good mix of features and performance that is fine for daily use. The handset’s HD+ display and 50MP camera are serviceable, with some trade-offs in detail and dynamic range. The ColorOS platform is feature-rich but cluttered. Despite some compromises, it’s a decent pick for those seeking a sleek budget 5G phone that offers balanced everyday performance.

Design 

You can pick the OPPO K13x in Sunset Peach and Midnight Violet colours. Ours is the latter, and it looks minimal and ‘stealthy’. The matte dark finish on the back and the side frame, the subtle branding lines, and the camera lenses that don’t protrude much are the reasons for this clean look. Compared to the POCO M7 Pro and Infinix Note 50x, the OPPO phone wobbles less on the desk. So, you can easily type on the screen while it’s lying flat.

The phone feels light in the hand, but not flimsy, and has a solid, well-built feel. The handset boasts an IP65 rating, which means better splash resistance than the IP64 offered by its two competitors, and strength-assuring military-grade certifications.

While the ever-so-slight curves on the back edges provide a comfortable hold, like with most other phones, you’ll have to do a little palm gymnastics to reach the buttons on the right. The recessed power button doubles up as a fingerprint scanner and works quickly.

On the other side, there is a dual SIM card slot. The handset features a hybrid tray that supports a microSD card, too.

This device features a single microphone, located between the 3.5mm headphone jack and a USB Type-C port at the bottom. The remaining resident on the bottom is a speaker grille. The single speaker is quite loud, but the bass sounds crushed and lacks depth.

Still, I’ll give it brownie points for its clean design and loud sound output.

Display 

Coming to the front, the phone features a centred punch hole sitting on a 6.67-inch LCD. Worth mentioning that the lower bezel is noticeably wide.

This is only an HD+ panel with 100 percent sRGB colour coverage. The visuals have close to natural colours, but softer details and lesser contrast compared to the POCO M7 Pro panel. Compared to the Infinix Note 50x, the handset still has softer details but is brighter and shows more realistic colours.

I watched YouTube videos (with up to 1440p res) and Netflix (up to FHD bitrate with Widevine L1) indoors. The 120Hz refresh rate felt smooth to use, and outdoor legibility wasn’t an issue.

Overall, you can have a decent viewing experience from this panel. I wish it had a Full HD resolution, though.  

Cameras 

Within its punch hole resides an 8MP selfie camera. On the back, the OPPO K13x sports a 50MP main camera with PDAF (autofocus) and AutoHDR support, and a 2MP sensor. From both front and back cameras, you can shoot up to 1080p videos. The camera app lets you easily choose the video and photo settings, switch between different modes (like Pro, Portrait, Hi-Res, Panorama, Slo-mo, Time-lapse, Dual-view video, and Text Scanner), and control other settings. 

As for photos, you can expect close-to-natural colours in daylight shots, but the dynamic range is weak. Edge detection in portraits can falter, and details are generally soft across all modes. OPPO has also packed some AI photo-editing features, namely, Enhance Clarity, AI Erase, Unblur, and Remove Reflections in the Photos app. The clarity enhancer shows a slight improvement. The unblur tool works well if the blurred subject is prominent. The reflection remover gives mixed results. The eraser may leave visible marks, but it can still be surprisingly useful in some cases.

The OPPO K13x’s 1080p videos from both front and back cameras fall short in dynamic range and colour reproduction. In contrast, the Infinix Note 50x offers sharper 1440p front and 4K rear videos, with visibly better output quality.

Let’s now expand on the camera performance under various settings and compare the results with the same shots taken on the Infinix Note 50x, which is among the best-performing camera smartphones in the segment.

Daylight

The OPPO K13x photo offers sharper details in some areas, like the outlines of the text elements and reflections on the glass panes in the above photo. But the foliage on the left side has softer details compared to the Infinix Note 50x. What’s good, however, is that the OPPO phone doesn’t have artefacts like the Infinix counterpart.

The colours look more natural on the OPPO phone, but some aspects, like the red coloured building walls, appear subdued. The overall tonal separation and colour contrast are also low. 

Both highlights and shadows are flat here. The sky lacks tone, and there are no visible shadows under the circular pergola (the central structure).

Portrait

The portrait from the OPPO phone has punchier colours, and so your eyes may be drawn to it. But when you zoom in, you’d notice the portrait from the Infinix phone retains clearer details. This is evident in the texture of the subject’s shirt and facial hair. The Infinix Note 50x also kept a few strands of hair intact on the right side of the subject’s head, while they are blurred by the OPPO K13x.

While the skin tone looks neutral on the OPPO phone, the Infinix portrait feels more lifelike. The tonal difference around the under-eye area is clearer in the Infinix shot.

The OPPO K13x also falters in edge detection in some areas, where the Infinix Note 50x performs better.

Selfie

The selfie from the OPPO phone has a more realistic skin tone. The grass, shrubs, and flowers in the background also have more natural colours in the OPPO image. The details are also clearer on the OPPO phone. Zoom in on the subjects’ hair and shirt to spot this.

One area where the Infinix phone’s selfie stands out is in retaining shadow details. In contrast, the OPPO selfie renders those areas almost pitch black.

Low light (night mode)

In both regular and night mode shots, the Infinix camera captures darker images but handles light better and retains more detail, especially when you zoom in and pixel peep. However, night mode on the OPPO K13x improves exposure and sharpness noticeably.

Also, when viewed without zoom, the OPPO K13x image more accurately represents the actual scene.

Performance 

OPPO has equipped the K13x with a MediaTek Dimensity 6300 SoC. The SoC is fabricated on TSMC’s 4nm process node and consists of two Cortex A76 performance cores clocked at 2.4GHz. For graphics processing, the chip has a Mali G57 MP2 GPU (at 1.0GHz frequency).

Further, the performance is complemented by 4/6/8GB of LPDDR4x RAM and 128GB of UFS 2.2 storage. You can expand both RAM and ROM using the RAM Expansion (up to 8GB) and a microSD card, respectively.

The performance is fine in everyday usage like browsing, scrolling, opening and closing apps and games, switching between recent apps, and general animations across the UI. 

As for benchmarks, here’s how it performed against the POCO M7 Pro and Infinix Note 50x 5G:

In AnTuTu and Geekbench, the OPPO K13x is slower, but we noted it was better than other Dimensity 6300-powered phones. The handset also notably retains its performance for a longer duration without slowing down under load, as shown in the Burnout score.

On the other hand, in popular graphics benchmark tests like GFXBench Manhattan and T-Rex, the OPPO K13x performs better than the POCO M7 Pro and the Infinix Note 50x. The handset even edges out other Dimensity 6300 phones, except the Tecno Pova 6 Neo (review). And in popular FPS titles like Call of Duty Mobile and BGMI, the OPPO smartphone performs on par with its competitors.

The OPPO K13x also offers game-focused features like Game Mode and Game Toolkit, which improve the overall experience. The former optimises memory and overall device performance. The Toolkit includes options like screen recording, network optimisation, touch optimisation, voice changer, and more.

Software 

The OPPO K13x boots Android 15-based ColorOS 15. This is a feature-rich OS with goodies like Conversation Bubbles, Suggested replies and actions in notifications, real-time network speeds, Smart Charging, Charging Limit, Split View, Smart Sidebar, floating windows, one-handed mode, extract text from images, Game Toolkit, and a lot more. 

OPPO has also included AI photo-editing features, as mentioned in the camera section. In addition, Gemini AI helps with content creation, coding, summarising, translation, transcription, and information understanding.

While many of these features are useful, some can feel like clutter. For instance, I don’t like that the Lockscreen Magazine is enabled by default. For those unfamiliar, it shows rotating full-screen images, articles, and tips on the lockscreen. Similarly, there are several pre-installed apps; some can be uninstalled, others only disabled.

OPPO promises two years of OS updates and three years of security patches. That’s a total of five years of support, which is reasonable for the segment. Over the course, the company could further improve the software experience.

Another area which seems promising is the battery endurance. 

Battery and charging 

The OPPO K13x draws power from a large 6,000mAh battery, which is bigger than the other two smartphones. The handset can easily last a day or more.

While the PCMark battery test crashed a few times, the battery log showed it took around 9 hours and 30 minutes to drop from 100 percent to 20 percent during those runs. That’s lower than what we got with the POCO M7 Pro and Infinix Note 50x.

Further, in our 30-minute YouTube playback test, the K13x’s battery dropped by 2 percent, which is better than the 3 percent drop on the other two phones. In case of 30 minutes of BGMI gaming, the OPPO phone’s battery dropped by 5 percent only, while the other two’s battery dropped by 6 percent.  

When it comes to charging, the OPPO phone takes the longest among the three: 1 hour 11 minutes to charge from 20 to 100 percent, owing to its bigger battery size than its competitors.

Within the Settings app, you can enable a charging limit of 80 percent or defer charging to 100 percent until just before you need the device. These features are said to help protect battery health, and we appreciate having them.

And, with all of that in mind, here’s how the OPPO K13x stacks up overall.

Final verdict

The OPPO K13x can draw attention with its clean design, comfortable in-hand feel, and durability certifications, including a rare IP65 rating in this segment. The handset offers a reliable everyday experience with a 120Hz display, loud speakers, Dimensity 6300 chip, and a large 6,000mAh battery.

The performance and battery life suit typical usage well, though power users may find them lacking compared to rivals like the POCO M7 Pro and Infinix Note 50x, which performed better in certain stress tests. The K13x, however, showed it can maintain performance during long sessions and graphics-heavy tests.

While that LCD screen is only HD+ in resolution, it is fairly bright and produces close-to-natural colours. The 50MP rear camera gives decent photos with natural tones, though detail retention, dynamic range, and edge detection in portraits need improvement. The Infinix Note 50x offers better results in these areas.

You can expect a similar give-and-take in the case of software, too. The ColorOS 15 has many nice-to-have features, including some AI-powered photo editing tools. But you will have to deal with some clutter. 

So, overall, the OPPO K13x has a few small trade-offs, but remains a decent package for those looking for a durable 5G phone with clean looks and a well-rounded daily experience at an affordable price.

Editor’s rating: 7.9 / 10

Reasons to buy:

• Clean, sturdy design with IP65 rating and MIL-STD 810H certification
• Loud sound and smooth 120Hz display
• Long battery life with 45W fast charging
• Feature-rich software with useful AI tools

Reasons not to buy:

• Software experience can feel cluttered due to pre-installed apps
• Modest cameras with average portrait and low-light performance