Oppo Find X8 Pro Review: Designed To Kill The Competition

Oppo has always been known for making great camera phones and the Find X series is the best they make. Yet, for some reason Oppo has been reluctant to launch the X series phones in India. The last Oppo flirted with the flagship phone market in India was in 2020. Four years later, it has launched the Find X8 Pro — the first phone to pack MediaTek's Dimensity 9400 SoC in the country, along with Hasselblad-tuned cameras and everything else you expect on a top-tier device. The timing couldn't have been any better too. Indian users are open to more options in the premium category. And, only last week an IDC report showed that Oppo is now the 2nd largest phone brand in India for Q3 2024, surpassing Samsung. The launch of Find X8 Pro will only add more trouble for Samsung as the Oppo phone can be a great alternative to Samsung's Galaxy S24 Ultra. Even though the latter is also due an upgrade soon.

I have been using the Find X8 Pro for more than a week now and even though Delhi's hazardous air quality made it really difficult to click pictures, I can assure that this phone is designed to take the fight to the competition. Why do I think so? Here are some thoughts. CamerasThe single greatest thing about the Oppo Find X8 Pro are its cameras. Gone are the days when Samsung and Google were the only two brands fighting for the best Android camera phone spot. Vivo has taken some leaps in last few years and with the Find X8 Pro, things are looking even better. The phone features a 50-megapixel quad rear camera setup, including two telephoto cameras. It has a 50-megapixel wide Camera, a 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera, a 50-megapixel telephoto camera with 6x zoom support, and another 50-megapixel telephoto camera with 3x zoom support. For video calls and selfies, there’s also a 32-megapixel front camera.

The camera system is capable in real life as it looks on paper. It takes the smartphone photography to a whole new level. The primary camera captures very detailed images with excellent colour reproduction and dynamic range no matter the lighting condition. The device managed to capture detailed and sharp pictures in both photo and portrait modes.

The colours in the images we took in daylight conditions were good, they were few cases of excessive white tone in the photos but mostly it captured accurate colours. Plus, the camera app provides powerful AI-powered editing tools, giving you more control over how you want to enhance your photos. The image processing is also impressive and the low-light shots came out really well too.

The 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera performed well and I honestly feel the phone is great for portrait shots. The 3X and 6X telephoto cameras do a fantastic job with great detail and no over-sharpening. The autofocus also works well in low light. Both telephoto cameras can take good close-up shots.

In Portrait mode, the edge detection is flawless and I was really happy with the results. The 32-megapixel selfie camera is decent but not great in low light. Selfies look good in bright light and the edge detection in Portrait mode is good. For video, you can shoot 4K 60fps HDR footage with all four cameras, which is impressive.

With AI features and editing tools, I feel that the Find X8 Pro is one of the best phones you can get in 2024. The Wow FactorWhile the cameras are great, the design deserves your attention too. The Oppo Find X8 Pro has a sleek and premium design that stands out. It has a smooth, curved back with a matte finish that feels great in hand and hardly attracts fingerprint smudges. I have the black colour variant and it looks beautiful. At the rear side, the phone has big a round camera module in the center which is well-designed with the Hasselblad logo in the middle.

The front and back are made of quad-curved glass and come in an aluminum frame. The curves and smooth edges make the phone feel slimmer and easier to use, even with its big screen. At just 8.24mm thick and 215 grams, the Find X8 Pro is surprisingly thin and light for a flagship with a huge 5910mAh battery.Oppo has clearly made some smart changes to keep the size and weight in check. Despite being over 200 grams, the phone still feels solid and sturdy in the hand. The matte finish on the back is another thing I love. It gives you that premium touch when you hold the device in your hand.

It’s also IP69-rated for water and dust resistance, which is always a plus. There’s an alert slider, and of course, the Quick Button, which acts as a camera control button. It’s similar to the one on the iPhone 16 Pro I’m using, but I’m not sure how I feel about it yet.The Quick Button works like a touch-sensitive camera control. You can double press to open the camera, tap to take a photo, swipe to zoom or hold for burst mode. It looks cool, but it didn’t work well for me. One good thing is that the button automatically disables itself during games, so you don’t accidentally press it during gaming sessions.

Overall, the design of the Find X8 Pro is sleek, comfortable and premium. It seems like Oppo has paid a lot of attention to both looks and build quality. Super Smooth DisplayThe Oppo Find X8 Ultra has a 6.78-inch AMOLED display with Gorilla Glass Victus 2 for protection. It has a 1.5K resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate and uses LTPO tech to adjust the refresh rate based on what you're doing on the screen. Oppo claims the display can hit a peak brightness of 4,500 nits in HDR. During my testing in my experience, found it super easy to use outdoors, even in bright sunlight.

The colours on the display look accurate and the dynamic 120Hz refresh rate makes everything feel smooth whether you are scrolling or switching between apps. With a local brightness of 1,600 nits, watching content outside wasn’t an issue at all. I really liked using the Find X8 Pro display. From watching videos on YouTube to playing games, the colours, touch response and brightness level, were really good.

The device also features Splash Touch, which means you can use the phone even if there are water drops on it or if your hands are wet.

If I had to point out a con, it would be the placement of the fingerprint scanner, it’s too low for a phone this size.

That said, the in-display fingerprint reader worked perfectly without any issues. Designed To KillThe Oppo Find X8 Pro is powered by the 3nm-based MediaTek Dimensity 9400 chipset, It has 16GB of fast LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB of storage, so you’ll have plenty of space and speed. It runs on the latest Android 15 based ColorOS 15.On the Antutu test, the Find X8 Pro scored slightly over 23 lakhs, higher than all flagship phones we have seen in 2024 so far, including the iPhone 16 Pro Max, iPhone 16 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, Galaxy Z Fold 6 or even the Vivo X100 Pro. However, it lags behind the competing Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset which score more than 27 lakhs on our Realme GT7 Pro review unit.

Even on the Geekbench 6 test, the Find X8 Pro got 2748 on the single core test and 8388 on the multi core test. These are very good numbers. During the CPU throttling test, the phone scored a very impressive top score and even though there was a drop in performance after a while, the average score was still solid. For this, we ran 30 threads on the phone for 40 minutes.

These numbers are reflected in the daily performance. In my usage, the phone behaved like a flagship with no noticeable complaints. It is powerful enough to run most games consistently. Gaming sessions and watching videos on YouTube and Netflix for a decent amount of time felt smooth and the X8 Pro didn’t heat up much at all.

The only time I faced heating issues was while using the camera in the outdoor conditions and while running the benchmark tests. Trust me, you can do all your basic tasks like texting, calling, switching between multiple apps or jumping from one social media app to another, pretty smoothly.As mentioned above the phone comes with Android 15-based ColorOS 15. Now, there's also a lot of focus on AI with ColorOS 15. Like the Oppo Reno 12 Pro, the device hosts lots of AI features and dedicated app like Oppo's AI Studio. You can also summarise your voice notes with the help of generative AI on this phone.

The good part is you get language options to summarise your voice notes, which include both Hindi and English. I loved this feature. Even the Oppo AI Studio is also interesting. In ColorOS 15, the redesigned icons and widgets give the phone a fresh but familiar look. With the new Flux Theme, you can customise layouts, Overall, the interface is very smooth and responsiveTalking about the battery, the smartphone is packed with a large 5910mAh battery that supports 80W SuperVOOC wired charging, 50W wireless charging and 10W reverse wireless charging. You can charge it to about 70 per cent in just half an hour and reach a full charge in 50 minutes. The device lasted more than a day with normal usage. Overall, the battery performance is decent. Should You Buy?Priced at 69,999 in India, the Oppo Find X8 Pro is designed to kill the competition. With its powerful performance, super-smooth display and amazing cameras, this flagship from Oppo makes it a great option compared to OnePlus devices, which fall short in the camera department.As for downsides, the device experiences minor heating issues while using the camera and it might feel heavy for those who prefer compact phones. However, overall, the experience was excellent and I like the way it shapes the camera phone segment in the country. There is no clear winner anymore - Samsung, Vivo, Google and Oppo are fighting for the top spot, along with of course, Apple. So, all I can say is - interesting times ahead.