Oppo unveiled the Oppo K13 Turbo and Oppo K13 Turbo Pro in China in July, which were later introduced in India. Both smartphones have similar designs and specs, with the most significant difference being the chipset. We’ve received the Oppo K13 Turbo Pro, so let’s take a closer look at this mid-range smartphone.
Oppo K13 Turbo 5G
The Oppo K13 Turbo Pro comes in an attractive purple-colored retail box, which includes a SIM ejector tool, some documents, a protective case, a charging cable, and an 80W power adapter.
The Oppo K13 Turbo Pro has a 6.8″ 120Hz 2,800×1,280-pixel resolution LTPS AMOLED display on the front, which is protected by AGC DT-Star D+ glass. The panel has 10-bit color depth, a 240Hz touch sampling rate, and a peak brightness of 1,600 nits.
The K13 Turbo Pro’s screen supports 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz refresh rates, and you’ll find three refresh rate modes in the phone’s display settings: Auto-select, Standard, and High. Auto-select automatically chooses the refresh rate to strike a balance between battery efficiency and a smooth experience. Standard mode refreshes the screen at 60Hz, while High mode goes up to 120Hz. There’s also an “App-specific refresh rate” option that lets you choose the desired refresh rate on a per-app (and game) basis.
Additionally, the Oppo K13 Turbo Pro’s display has support for wet touch and Glove Mode. The former lets you use the phone when there’s water on your fingers or the phone’s screen, whereas the latter allows you to operate the phone’s screen while wearing gloves that are not thicker than 5mm and are made of materials such as cotton, wool, and sheepskin. You can head over to the Settings > Accessibility & convenience menu to enable Glove Mode.
Talking about multimedia, the Oppo K13 Turbo’s screen supports Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG codecs, and it also has Widevine L1 certification, which allows 1080p video streaming in supported apps. It’s also worth noting that while the Oppo K13 Turbo Pro comes with an Always-On Display feature, it’s not always on since the screen only lights up and shows information when the phone moves. We’ve noticed this on some other Oppo smartphones as well, and it’s about time Oppo fixed it.
Moving on, the Oppo K13 Turbo Pro’s display has a punch hole in the center for the 16MP selfie camera. It uses a Sony IMX480 sensor and has an f/2.45 aperture and an 85° FOV. The front camera can record videos in up to 1080p resolution at 30 fps.
Underneath the screen is an optical fingerprint reader. It was easy to set up, and we found it to be fast and accurate during our time with the phone. However, we’d have liked it to be placed higher for a more convenient phone-unlocking experience.
Flip the Oppo K13 Turbo Pro around, and you see a squircle-shaped camera island aligned vertically in the top-left corner of the phone. At first glance, it might look like the K13 Turbo Pro has three cameras on the rear, accompanied by an LED flash, but that’s not the case since the smartphone features two rear cameras.
The first circle inside the camera island is for the primary camera, while the second circle is for the built-in cooling fan, which is surrounded by dual Mist Shadow breathing LEDs (more on that later). The second camera is located on the right side of the island, below which is the flash.
The Oppo K13 Turbo Pro’s primary camera, having OIS and the capability to record videos in up to 4K resolution at 60 fps, uses an OmniVision OV50D40 sensor and has an f/1.8 aperture. The second camera is a monochrome unit with an f/2.4 aperture and uses OmniVision’s OV02B1B sensor.
Oppo K13 Turbo Pro with cooling fan and dual Mist Shadow breathing LEDs on its back
The Oppo K13 Turbo Pro also comes with some AI-powered camera features, including AI Clarity Enhancer, AI Unblur, AI Reflection Remover, and AI Eraser 2.0.
The K13 Turbo Pro comes in Silver Knight, Purple Phantom, and Midnight Maverick colors. The Midnight Maverick model features a rear cover with a clean look devoid of any patterns, while the other two versions have identical designs on their back covers.
The subject of this hands-on is the Silver Knight model, which, Oppo says, is “inspired by the rugged metal of high-speed motorcycles and their gleaming silver exhausts.” Its back cover has a matte finish and does a good job at resisting smudges. It also has “Active Cooling” and “Master The Wind” written on it.
The Oppo K13 Turbo Pro’s Silver Knight version looks cool, and while it doesn’t give you a premium in-hand feel like expensive flagships, it doesn’t feel cheap either. We like the overall build. However, with a 6.8″ screen, the smartphone could be unwieldy for some for one-handed usage. Besides, the author of this article would’ve also preferred the phone’s back panel with some curvature for a more comfortable in-hand experience. Some curves around the edges would’ve been nice.
That said, the Oppo K13 Turbo Pro has a USB-C port at the bottom, flanked by a speaker grille, a microphone, and a SIM card slot. At the top is the IR blaster joined by another mic. On the right side is the power button and volume rocker, above which is a duct for releasing the hot air.
Ports and controls
This brings us to the biggest highlight of the Oppo K13 Turbo Pro: the built-in active cooling fan, which, like the smartphone, is IPX6, IPX8, and IPX9-rated. The in-built cooling fan is meant for two things: 1) to improve the K13 Turbo Pro’s fall resistance with its stacking design; 2) to help keep the phone cool.
The Oppo K13 Turbo Pro’s built-in fan has 0.1mm blades, capable of reaching a rotation speed of up to 18,000 RPM, which increases air volume by 20%, while the Arc-shaped vortex tongue design boosts air intake by about 10%. Furthermore, Oppo claims that the smartphone’s 13 ultra-thin 0.1mm fins with uneven spacing improve heat dissipation efficiency by 3 times compared to traditional solutions, while the L-shaped duct with 3mm design minimizes airflow resistance and boosts cooling efficiency for peak performance. This active cooling system is advertised to help the K13 Turbo Pro run 2-4℃ cooler under high-load conditions.
Oppo K13 Turbo has a cooling fan on the rear and a duct on the right frame
However, the Oppo K13 Turbo Pro doesn’t rely on the built-in fan alone to stay cool, as it also comes with a 7,000mm2 vapour chamber for heat dissipation. With all that cooling tech put to work, Oppo said the K13 Turbo Pro “consistently achieved the lowest overall temperature among competitors during a 3-hour gaming session at 25°C and 120 FPS” in its internal lab tests.
Well, we ran some benchmark tests on the Oppo K13 Turbo Pro and did some gaming with and without the built-in cooling fan turned on to see if it actually makes any difference in real-world usage, but before we delve into that, let’s quickly check what customization options you get for the cooling fan and the dual Mist Shadow breathing LEDs on the rear.
The Oppo K13 Turbo Pro’s cooling fan automatically turns on when you open a game or AnTuTu, even if it’s disabled, and when the smartphone is running hot, the system alerts you to turn it on. You can either do that from the notification itself or by navigating to the K13 Turbo Pro’s Settings > Cooling fan menu.
Under this menu, you’ll find that the cooling fan supports two cooling modes – Smart shifting and Full speed. You can also choose to have the fan automatically turned on for games, outdoor mode, and when the phone is fast charging.
The cooling fan supports four startup sound effects – Charge, Storm, Battle, and Howl. You can also choose to have no sound at all, or pick a custom ringtone if that’s more your style.
Additionally, you can choose to enable or disable the RGB lights on the back. By default, they are enabled, and they support eight color effects. The lights turn on when the fan is spinning.
It’s also worth mentioning that the cooling fan only spins when the phone’s screen is on. Once the screen is off, the fan stops spinning. We’d like Oppo to change that and allow users to keep the fan spinning even when the screen is off so that the phone can cool down faster. This would make the built-in fan more useful.
With those cooling fan customizations out of the way, let’s talk about the phone and the fan’s performance now.
The Oppo K13 Turbo Pro is powered by the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 SoC and comes with up to 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB of UFS 4.0 storage. Our unit has 12GB RAM and 256GB storage onboard. It boots ColorOS 15 based on Android 15 and comes with the promise of two years of OS upgrades and three years of security updates.
The K13 Turbo Pro comes pre-loaded with more than 15 third-party apps and games. Fortunately, all of these can be uninstalled, but the number is on the higher side, and it’s time Oppo sold smartphones with fewer pre-loaded apps and games.
We ran AnTuTu 10, Geekbench 6, and 3DMark on the Oppo K13 Turbo Pro, and the results were similar to what we saw on a couple of other Snapdragon 8s Gen 4-powered smartphones that we tested, except for 3DMark’s Solar Bay scores, which were unusually low. This could be due to a software glitch.
These benchmarks were run with and without the built-in cooling fan turned on, and there were no significant differences in the test numbers or the phone temperature reported by the system. In fact, the scores were always lower when the fan was turned on. You can check the charts below for more details.
The story’s no different with the 1-hour CPU Throttling Test since the phone’s CPU always throttled to 60-64% regardless of the cooling fan being on or off.
With cooling fan turned off • With cooling fan turned on
Where it shined, though, was in 3DMark’s 20-minute Wild Life Extreme Stress Test. With the cooling fan turned off, the benchmark reported a stability of around 50%. But with the fan turned on, it was always above 75%, with the best score being 83.3%. For what it’s worth, there was also a difference of 1°C in temperature with the fan spinning, even though the phone itself was very hot to the touch.
With cooling fan turned off • With cooling fan turned on
Talking about real-world usage, we ran some popular gaming titles continuously for an hour at the highest graphics setting supported, with and without the cooling fan turned on. The performance remained smooth in both scenarios, with the frame rate being steady throughout the gameplay. The area around the camera module did get warm with the fan turned off, but not to the point where it would be uncomfortable to hold the phone. With the fan spinning, the phone always remained about 2°C cooler after an hour-long gaming session.
Note that we set the cooling mode of the fan to Full speed instead of Smart shifting when playing games and running benchmarks for the sake of consistency.
Keeping the Oppo K13 Turbo Pro up and running is a 7,000 mAh battery with 80W charging support. It also supports bypass charging. Oppo claims the battery can go from 1% to 68% in 30 minutes and 100% in 54 minutes with the bundled 80W power adapter.
In our testing, the battery charged from 1% to 13% in 5 minutes, 33% in 15 minutes, 50% in 25 minutes, 58% in 30 minutes, and 100% in 58 minutes. Your mileage will likely vary depending on your usage and ambient temperature when charging the phone.
We couldn’t run our battery life test on the Oppo K13 Turbo Pro since it cannot be run outside our HQ, but with a capacity of 7,000 mAh, it should get you through the day with ease.
The Oppo K13 Turbo Pro is available in India in Midnight Maverick, Purple Phantom, and Silver Knight colorways with two memory options – 8GB/256GB and 12GB/256GB, priced at INR37,999 ($430/€370) and INR39,999 ($455/€390), respectively.
In China, its base model has 12GB RAM and 256GB storage, and it’s priced at CNY1,999 ($280/€240/INR24,665).