OPPO A54 Review | Premium on a budget

OPPO recently released a new mid-range smartphone in the form of the OPPO A54. From the get-go, it looks chic and offers a large 6.51-inch display, together with triple rear cameras, a Helio P35 chipset, up to 6GB of RAM, and a large 5,000mAh battery. It looks like a solid daily driver for under PHP 10K, but is it the one for you? Find out in our review.

Design and Construction

The OPPO A54 looks similar to other recent OPPO A-series smartphones like A94 and A74. Although mostly made of polycarbonate material, it still looks and feels premium. At the back are the triple cameras, LED flash, and OPPO branding. The back is also plastic but with a glossy texture, which shows light streaks depending on the lighting angle.

Like other phones with glossy coatings, this is also prone to fingerprint smudges, so better use the free jelly case included in the box. The size is not too overwhelming for people with small hands, making it comfortable to hold even when used for long periods. It is slightly hefty at 192g, attributed to which we’re assuming is due to its large 5,000mAh battery capacity. The unit we have is in the Crystal Black colorway, but it is also available in Starry Blue if you’re interested.

Flipping to its front, it’s got a hole punch on the upper left for the selfie camera, while on the top part is the earpiece. The bezels are thin but have a slightly thicker part at the bottom.

We have the volume rockers, along with its dual nano-sized SIM card tray with a dedicated microSD card slot, on the left side.

While on the right is the power/lock button, which also doubles as your fingerprint scanner.

There’s nothing up top, but at the bottom are its loudspeaker, USB Type-C port, call microphone, and the 3.5mm audio jack.

Display and Multimedia

The OPPO A54 boasts a 6.51-inch IPS LCD panel with a resolution of 1600 x 720px resolution or equal to 270ppi. Moreover, it has a total of 82.6% screen-to-body ratio making it an ideal smartphone for watching content on Netflix, YouTube, or anything alike.

Even though it only has an LCD panel, surprisingly, it produces punchy colors and decent viewing angles. However, since we get a 720p display, don’t expect it too much to have sharp picture quality—especially when reading texts. But overall, the display is decent and will suffice your daily needs.

When it comes to audio, its downward-firing speaker can fill up the room at maximum volume, but just like any other smartphone in this tier, it gets tinny, so I wouldn’t really set the volume to max a lot. But thankfully, there’s a 3.5mm audio port to give you a more immersive listening experience.

Camera

For the cameras, the OPPO A54 comes equipped with a 13MP F2.2 main, a 2MP F2.4 macro, and a 2MP F2.4 depth sensor. On the front, we have a high 16MP F2.0 selfie shooter.

Quality-wise, photos look decent with enough details. Colors are often accurate, HDR is also present, and dynamic range is also decent. There’s also a macro camera, but as expected, it produces low-quality images. We do have Portrait mode. However, the subject-background separation is not as good as we wanted it to be, but it is enough for casual use. Photos taken under low-light conditions can be muddy even with the night mode turned on. Details are crushed and are not quite usable in any case.

On the other hand, selfies are good. The colors and skin tones are somewhat accurate. Still, we don’t recommend taking selfies under bad lighting conditions because it tends to produce noisy images and somewhat requires a steady hand to get a decent photo or else it gets blurry.

When it comes to videos, the OPPO A54 can take up to 1080p at 30fps, and just like most smartphones in this tier, it produces shaky videos since there is no image stabilization present. But overall, it is usable for casual social media postings.

OS, UI, and Apps

Running on the OPPO A54 is ColorOS 7.2 based on Android 10. It’s not the latest Android version, but we expect it to have the Android 11 version pretty soon. Overall, the UI looks clean and straightforward to use. There’s noticeably a lot of bloatware on the UI that you might find helpful or annoying.

What’s good about it is that there are tons of customization options available if you want to get fancy. Like most Androids, you can change the icon’s shape to choosing a theme to change the overall look of your home screen. Aside from the usual Google services, third-party apps like Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Messenger, Lazada, and Agoda are also preset

Storage-wise, there’s 128GB that we have out of the box, but if that isn’t enough, you can opt to expand it with a microSD card up to 256GB.

Performance and Benchmarks

Powering the OPPO A54 is a Helio P35 chipset octa-core CPU paired with a PowerVR GE8320 GPU, up to 6GB of RAM, and 128GB of internal storage. Our unit is the 6GB + 128GB variant, and so far, we’re getting smooth performance in casual tasks.

Playing graphics-intensive games is also doable, but you’ll most likely use the lowest available settings to lessen sluggish gameplay. There are some slight stutters at times when leaving numerous apps running in the background. It also does feel a little hot to the touch when used for long periods of time, but it isn’t to an alarming level. Overall, the OPPO A54 works well for running light apps, but you’d be pushing it as a gaming device. If you are interested in numbers, here are the benchmark scores that we got:

• AnTuTu v8 – 100,452
• PC Mark – 4,682 (Work 3.0)
• Geekbench 5 – 169 (Single-Core), 973 (Multi-Core),
• 3D Mark – 379 (SSE – OpenGL ES 3.1),
• AndroBench – 281.62 MB/s (Seq. Read), 176.66 MB/s (Seq. Write)

When it comes to biometrics and security, you can choose between facial recognition or the side-mounted fingerprint scanner. Both works as intended, but we highly recommend you using the fingerprint scanner instead for a higher level of security.

Connectivity and Battery

The OPPO A54 comes with the usual connectivity features such as Dual-SIM, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 5.0, SatNavs, USB Type-C, and a 3.5mm audio jack.

Juicing up the OPPO A54 is a 5,000mAh battery with support for 18W fast charging, which is ample enough to last you a full day of usage. In the PCMark’s Work 3.0 Battery Test we got a result of 12 hours and 38 minutes. Meanwhile, it yielded 15 hours of playback in our standard video loop test. Both results are respectable given the capacity. If you are a light user, it can even last you up to a day and a half. When it comes to charging, the OPPO A54 sports an 18W fast charging which takes more than an hour to reach 100%.

Conclusion

The OPPO A54 with 4GB + 128GB costs PHP 9,499USD 162INR 13,722EUR 154CNY 1,179, for PHP 500USD 9INR 722EUR 8CNY 62 more at PHP 9,999USD 170INR 14,445EUR 162CNY 1,241, you can get the 6GB + 128GB variant, which has more RAM. OPPO made several compromises to keep the price low as possible, like the absence of a 1080p display, a slightly low camera resolution, and not having 5G connectivity. Some of its competitors even have more powerful chipsets with 5G connectivity and updated OS at a lower price. If you’re a casual user looking for a solid daily driver, the OPPO A54 is a good one. But given the price and competition, it’s a tough sell in terms of value.

OPPO A54 specs:
6.51-inch HD+ (1600 x 720) IPS display
MediaTek Helio P35 MT6765 2.35GHz octa-core CPU
PowerVR GE8320 GPU
4GB, 6GB LPDDR4X RAM
128GB storage
up to 256GB via MicroSD
Triple-rear cameras
• 13MP F2.2 (main)
• 2MP F2.4 (macro)
• 2MP F2.4 (bokeh)
16MP front camera
Dual-SIM (nano)
4G LTE
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 5.0
GPS, BeiDou, GLONASS, GALILEO, and QZSS
Fingerprint scanner (side)
USB Type-C
3.5mm headphone jack
ColorOS 7.2 (Android 10)
5,000mAh battery w/ 18W fast charge
163.6 x 75.7 x 8.4mm
192g
Starry Blue, Crystal Black