Oppo K14x 5G was recently launched in India as the first phone in the K14 lineup. Here’s our review.
Here's Our Review of the Oppo K14x 5G
Oppo is a well-known brand in India, with its budget A-series being the most popular. Similarly, the smartphone maker could also attribute much of its success to its mid-range offering, the F lineup. Then comes the tech brand's K-series handsets, which are also positioned as mid-range devices, falling somewhere between the A and F lineups. Known for decent performance on a budget, the Oppo K series has seen various iterative upgrades over the years, offering greater value to customers.
However, this year was different, as the new Oppo K14x 5G recently arrived with almost the same hardware as last year's Oppo K13x 5G, with unfortunately certain downgrades, too. The Oppo K14x 5G currently retails in India at a starting price of Rs. 12,999 for the base 4GB+64GB configuration. Launched at a higher price than its predecessor, does it still offer decent value?
This year, Oppo decided to give the K series a major design overhaul. From looking like an average budget smartphone, this year's Oppo K14x 5G sports a unique crystal-like design pattern that resembles the inside of a kaleidoscope, making it look more premium than it is.
Oppo K14x 5G comes with a major design improvement.
However, this design pattern only appears when the light falls on it at a specific angle, keeping it subtle most of the time. Moreover, Oppo repositioned the LED flash, taking it from a fake third camera lens to outside the pill-shaped camera island on the Oppo K14x 5G, further enhancing the look of the handset.
The power button and volume rockers on the right side of the Oppo K14x 5G are perfectly positioned. You do not need to do hand gymnastics to increase the volume; your thumb naturally sits on the side-mounted fingerprint scanner, which doubles as a power button. Its flat plastic rear panel does not feel cheap to touch. I often found myself placing the phone on the table with the back panel facing me.
Other elements, such as the USB Type-C port, the speaker grille, and the 3.5mm headphone jack, remain where they were on the Oppo K14x 5 G, at the bottom. This is a fine example of “do not fix it, it is not broken”. The phone is offered in two colour options, dubbed Icy Blue and Prism Violet. I got the Prism Violet shade to review, and I believe it is the better of the two options, as the former appears a bit flashy for my liking.
However, there are a few off-putting aspects as well. While the Oppo K14x 5G continues to feature a hole-punch display cutout, it also retains the thick bezels surrounding its display, carrying them from its predecessor. Few efforts in this aspect would have been appreciated.
Oppo K14x 5G has a crystal like pattern on the rear panel
Another decision from Oppo that does not make sense is the lower ingress protection rating that the Oppo K14x 5G carries. This is certainly a downgrade on paper, since the phone ships with an IP64 rating, instead of the Oppo K13x 5G's IP65 rating. This means that while the predecessor could withstand higher water pressure, the Oppo K14x 5G can only withstand splashes of water or light rain.
To sum it up, the Oppo K14x 5G is pleasing to look at and really stands out in a crowded price segment. However, the lower protection rating is disappointing.
Coming to the part that you will be looking at the most, Oppo K14x 5G's 6.75-inch display. The phone's LCD screen offers impressive performance in both indoor and outdoor lighting conditions. Even under direct sunlight, its display, which offers 1,125 nits of peak brightness in high brightness mode (HBM), remains legible throughout.
The display is vibrant and presents sharp images, with a great overall media consumption experience, owing to its 16.7 million colour support and 83 percent DCI-P3 colour gamut coverage. I watched an entire season of Modern Family on Jio Hotstar, later switching to binge-watching The Big Bang Theory on Netflix. Across OTT platforms, the images were well-defined, with crisp borders, silhouettes, and shadows.
Oppo K14x 5G features a bright-enough display
While it sports an LCD panel, the shallower blacks the display offers will often go unnoticed if not nitpicked. Another impressive aspect is how fluid the touchscreen operation feels, leveraging a 120Hz refresh rate and a 240Hz touch sampling rate. The phone rarely feels out of its comfort zone.
The company is also marketing the fluidity of the Oppo K14x 5G, promising “up to 48 months of fluency protection”. While the “48 months” claim can only be confirmed in a long-term review, for now, scrolling Reels and websites feels breezy, swiping on apps like Instagram, Tinder, and Hinge is stutter-free, and browsing websites is smooth.
Oppo's ColorOS is a well-designed user interface that leverages Android's capabilities. The Oppo K14x 5G ships with ColorOS 15, which is built on top of Android 15. While the tech firm has not revealed the software support duration for the phone, it is expected to receive at least two OS upgrades. The unit I tested had already got the latest Android 16-based ColorOS 16 version. However, for the purposes of this review, I'll restrict my thoughts to how the phone ships.
The ColorOS 15, as we have seen on earlier Oppo flagships, has a slick and intuitive UI. However, with Oppo's new rendering engine and enhanced RAM management capabilities, the software experience remains smooth for the most part. Moving between apps is fluid. It also ships with many features, like floating window view and multi-window view for certain apps, making multitasking a breeze.
Oppo K14x 5G's OS is ridden with bloatware
However, the experience is heavily weighed down by the bloatware and unnecessary ads, which keep populating your notification window. From pre-loaded apps like Agoda, Fitbit, LinkedIn, and FinShell Pay, to pre-loaded games like Bubble Pop! and Wormfamily, these apps offer little to no value, while ruining your experience of using the handset. The good thing is that Oppo at least lets you uninstall these apps.
This problem is neither new nor exclusive to Oppo. Most OEMs ship their budget and lower mid-range phones with pre-loaded apps.
Coming to its performance, the Oppo K14x 5G is surprisingly powered by the same octa-core MediaTek Dimensity 6300 SoC as its predecessor. The chipset is paired with up to 6GB of LPDDR4x RAM and up to UFS 2.2 onboard storage, which is shockingly lower than the 8GB LPDDR4x RAM found on the Oppo K13x 5G.
But this year's Oppo K14x 5G still stays true to what the K series is known for: performance. The handset is slick to use and snappy to navigate through. You rarely feel performance hiccups or jerks during day-to-day tasks. While it gets the same chipset and lower RAM than the Oppo K13x 5G (review), the Oppo K14x 5G outperforms its predecessor on most benchmark tests.
Oppo K14x 5G offers decent performance for its price
It is also capable of punching above its weight, taking on fights with phones costing more. I put the Oppo K14x 5G through multiple benchmark tests and compared its performance with the Redmi 15C 5G (review), and the Oppo phone beat Redmi's offering on most tests, while retailing at a slightly lower price.
| Benchmark | Oppo K14x 5G | Redmi 15C 5G |
|---|---|---|
| AnTuTu v11.0.9 | 5,67,854 | 5,65,757 |
| Geekbench 6 CPU Single Core | 761 | 732 |
| Geekbench 6 CPU Multi Core | 1,761 | 1,933 |
| Geekbench 6 GPU | 1,351 | 1,363 |
| Geekbench AI Single Precision | 535 | 473 |
| Geekbench AI Half Precision | 923 | 488 |
| Geekbench AI Quantized | 1,050 | 923 |
| PCMark Work Performance 3.0 | 7,991 | 9,816 |
| 3DM Wildlife Extreme | 359 | 362 |
| 3DM Steel Nomad | Not supported | Not supported |
In terms of gaming performance, the Oppo K14x 5G remains unbothered throughout. I played Temple Run 2 and Subway Surfers 2 at the beginning, and it was able to handle the two with ease. Later, I ran more resource-intensive games, like Asphalt Legends and Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI). While the experience was smooth at medium settings, it started throttling after 30 mins of BGMI on a higher preset. While the handset did get warm, it never became unusable.
Another department, Oppo, did not offer any upgrades with the Oppo K14x 5G, except for photography. The new phone is equipped with the same sensors as its predecessors, featuring the same aperture. While the rear cameras remain the same, it gets a new selfie shooter. But instead of an 8-megapixel front-facing camera, as on the K13x 5G, the company decided to bring a 5-megapixel shooter to the Oppo K14x 5G.
Oppo K14x 5G daytime camera performance
The Oppo K14x 5G is still capable of capturing sharp and vivid images. The phone rarely feels out of its depth under natural lighting conditions. Oppo's post-capturing image processing does not make the images appear artificial. The borders of subjects are mostly well-defined. However, sometimes the focus goes completely off, taking about 30 seconds or more to understand where the subject is placed and what the photographer's intentions are.
But, it is still good enough for most people who are not looking to click DSLR-level photos with their sub-Rs. 15,000 smartphones. Up close, the images do not lose clarity, and the pixels do not tear even when you zoom in. The front-facing camera also clicks decent images. It manages skin tones well and looks well-tuned for Indian complexions.
Oppo K14x 5G selfie camera performance
Shooting videos from the Oppo K14x 5G is also a decent experience. It can record 1080p resolution videos at up to 60 fps. Additionally, the video stabilisation is very impressive. While it can get jittery when you run while recording videos, the smartphone can handle most fast-paced camera movements with ease.
The Oppo K14x 5G really shines in battery life. Looking at how the competition has moved past 6,000mAh batteries, Oppo really had to up its game in one aspect to justify the higher pricing. The 6,500mAh battery on the Oppo K14x 5G, while not the biggest in the segment, can easily last more than a day, offering over 20 hours of screen time.
On PCMark's Work 3.0 Battery Life test, the phone went from 100 percent to 20 percent in a whopping 20 hours 44 minutes and four seconds. I was able to start my day with 50 percent battery without any worries, knowing the handset would last till I reached back home from work.
Oppo K14x 5G is overall a good deal
Similarly, the 45W SuperVOOC charging adapter included in the box is quick enough to meet your needs. The Oppo K14x 5G charged from 0 to 37 percent in 30 minutes, from 0 to 65 percent in 60 minutes, and to 100 percent in about 1 hour and 40 minutes.
To conclude, the Oppo K14x 5G is still the same phone, just with a better-designed body. At its retail price of Rs. 12,999, the K14x 5G is a decent choice, given that handset prices have increased across segments. But does it justify the higher price tag compared to the Oppo K13x 5G? The answer depends on what you're looking at. If your preference is a decent-looking handset at under Rs. 15,000, then the answer is yes.
While upgrading might not make sense at all, buying the Oppo K14x 5G at a premium of about Rs. 2,000 over its predecessor for the new design, longer software support, and longer battery life might be a better deal for people. But if you want better performance, longer battery life, and a higher refresh rate, there are also superior offerings, like the Realme P4x 5G, which are a better choice at marginally higher prices.
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