Oppo isn’t the first brand name that comes to mind when thinking of the low-cost smartphone segment in India. This company prefers to promote its mid-range to high-end offerings, with the emphasis usually on camera features and innovations. Oppo has also been pushing the boundaries of design lately, and was right on the ball when multi-coloured gradient finishes and ever-smaller notches started to catch on.

Still, Oppo does have its A-series phones for budget-conscious fans, and the new Oppo A1k is one of the company’s most affordable models in recent times. It slots in below the Oppo A5s (Review), which we found a little disappointing considering its price of Rs. 9,990 in India. The new Oppo A1k is priced even lower at Rs. 8,490, but that pits it against some serious contenders. Can this new budget model strike the right balance of features, performance and price? We’re about to find out.

The Oppo A1k is based on the MediaTek Helio P22 SoC and has a 4000mAh battery

Oppo A1k design

Despite Realme now being a separate company, there’s no denying how similar the Oppo A1k is to the Realme C2 (Review). Both phones have nearly identical shapes, and their dimensions are just fractions of a millimetre different. All the buttons, slots, ports, and holes on these two phones are in exactly the same positions.

The Oppo A1k has a plain rear panel rather than the textured and patterned one on the Realme C2, but even little things like the lines of the plastic moulding are the same. You’ll notice that the two models share a lot of their specifications as well.

Oppo has introduced the A1k in two colours, a simple black and the extremely bright red version that we have for review. If you like eye-catching phones, this finish will definitely fit the bill. This phone is made entirely out of plastic but the material didn’t feel cheap at all, and construction quality is quite good.

Thankfully, the rear is non-slippery and not at all susceptible to smudges and fingerprints. The edges are slightly curved and this phone is quite reasonably sized by today’s standards. We had no trouble using it with one hand.

Our review unit had a plastic screen protector pre-applied, but it started coming loose at the corners and got scratched quite badly within a day of normal use, which was distracting. There’s a waterdrop-style notch at the top of the screen with a thin slit for the earpiece above it. Sadly this phone lacks a fingerprint sensor, which we think it should have had considering the price.

The power button is on the right and the volume buttons are on the left. The tray on the upper left has cutouts for two Nano-SIMs as well as a microSD card. On the bottom, we have a speaker grille, Micro-USB port, and 3.5mm headset socket.

The camera bump on the rear protrudes quite a bit and has a slightly scratchy metal ring around it. It might look like a dual-camera module, and is the same size as the one on the Realme C2, but this phone has only a single rear camera with the flash next to it.

We think people who are looking for a simple phone will like the design of the Oppo A1k. It isn’t too heavy at 170g and it’s easy to carry around and live with. In the retail box, you get a rather oversized 10W charger, a Micro-USB cable, and a clear plastic case.

The Oppo A1k has a Micro-USB port and 3.5mm headphones socket on the bottom

Oppo A1k specifications and software

Once again we see a lot of similarities between the Oppo A1k and Realme C2, but curiously, the lower priced C2 comes out ahead when the few differences are accounted for. Both phones have 6.1-inch 720×1560-pixel 19.5:9 screens, but the Oppo A1k doesn’t have Corning Gorilla Glass for protection like its near-sibling does.

Both phones are built around the MediaTek Helio P22 SoC which has eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores clocked at up to 2GHz, and a PowerVR GE8329 GPU. We’ve seen this processor used in several phones at around the same price. You also get the same 4000mAh battery capacity.

Oppo has launched the A1k in only one configuration, with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. You also get single-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, FM radio, and the usual sensors including an e-compass.

Interestingly, the Oppo A1k has only a single 8-megapixel rear camera with an f/2.2 aperture, while the Realme C2 has a 13-megapixel f/2.2 camera with a 2-megapixel depth sensor as well. Both phones have 5-megapixel front cameras.

The story continues on the software side, where we see the same Android skin, Oppo’s ColorOS 6, running on top of Android 9. This is a fairly well designed and customisable UI. The notifications shade and quick settings panel look quite different from stock Android, but things are usually where you’d expect them to be. One exception to that is the Settings app which has a slightly convoluted structure.

The Lock Screen Magazine feature shows different photos with links to related articles on your lock screen, but this can be disabled. Thankfully these are not blatant ads, but there are ads within the linked articles. There is an app drawer but you can turn it off if you like.

You can customise the layout of the on-screen Android navigation buttons or choose from four different swipe-based control schemes if you prefer.

One of the features we like the most is Personal Information Protection. The Oppo A1k can spoof an empty call log, message history, contact list, and calendar when apps try reading these things. You have to opt in, but this feature isn’t compatible with all apps and there’s a disclaimer stating that it isn’t guaranteed to work all the time. Still, it’s a neat idea. ColorOS also says it will warn you if apps are trying to use the phone’s mics or cameras when they’re running in the background.

Game Space claims to improve gaming performance by clearing the phone’s RAM when a game is launched. It can also suppress banner notifications and restrict background apps from using network bandwidth. Smart Assistant is a page to the left of the first home screen that contains useful panels showing a step tracker, shortcuts to frequently used contacts, and a calendar, but also tries to offer “popular apps” for you to download.

We were a little disappointed by the amount of bloatware this phone ships with. There’s Oppo’s own app store and games store, plus a fake ‘Hot Apps’ folder on the home screen that’s actually a link to download more junk. ColorOS also has several redundant Oppo and third-party apps including Tips, Theme Store, Music Party, Facebook, UC Browser, Paytm, Helo, Dailyhunt, Webnovel, Newspoint, and Amazon Shopping. You can’t disable or uninstall all of them.

There is only one configuration option for the Oppo A1k, with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage

Oppo A1k performance, battery life, and cameras

The Oppo A1k has a decent screen, but it isn’t very vibrant and colours don’t look rich. Videos and games were okay, but we found that the rounded corners cut off some UI elements in full-screen apps and games unless we manually set them to run with the space around the notch blacked out. The phone’s speaker was also just about okay.

Everyday performance was good, though we noticed some very slight stuttering in UI animations, such as when flipping through thumbnails in the app switcher. 2GB of RAM will probably be a limiting factor if you like having a lot of background apps open and switching between them quickly.