Oanda is becoming concerning for many reasons because the platform for live trading on beta gets down when the volatility is in the worse times. 

When compared to the other micro-lot brokers there is nothing superior with OANDA when compared to them.  The platform kills and you might want to blast them for going down all the time.

However with OANDA you can trade even pennies and you can learn Forex.  They allow sub-accounts to your primary account and you can literally hedge with your sub-accounts.  They are a good broker otherwise.  The low leverage is cool for those that are marginal brokers the leverage is as low as 50:1.  The customer service is pretty simple and the replies are quick. 

The charts are pretty basic and it is easy to understand even if you are not a forex pro. There are no trailing stops and the spread increases tremendously when news reporting.

OANDA needs to include trailing stops and weekly charts that are even better. Other kinds of slippage, pips and stuff are something that is common with all brokers and none are perfect.  Apart from the platform which goes down often, this is cool for micro-lot investors. 

Their tight spread is 0.9 pips but there are going to be many times when they will be executing your trade for 2.9 pips off! It is there everywhere and not only with OANDA and you need to agree that such does not happen always.  Getting over the slips and pips is based on how smart the investor is. 

Rather than cursing the broker you need to be smart than they and if you repeatedly find bad luck better quit.

The chart is not highly configurable but they are okay and understandable and they offer real time currency rates and refresh the window if you were on it for too long.

OANDA is a true retail forex broker with their own set of drawback that you can accommodate with time.  They allow you to precisely adjust your position size down to a single unit to 1 EUR/USD. The Trade execution is fast and reliable except for then the platform is down. Their API is also robust and flexible. If you want to be consistently profitable in forex you can check out OANDA, but do your share of homework.  As always it is not a 100% perfect broker but not bad for trade.