After a two-year absence from the global flagship scene, OPPO has finally brought its Find X series back to international markets. Launched in November of last year, the new Find X8 series stands out as one of the few high-end devices to feature a MediaTek Dimensity chipset, instead of the more popular Snapdragon 8 Elite.
Of course, it also comes with a host of other upgrades to fill the gap left by its two China-only predecessors. These include improved imaging, battery life, software features, and -naturally – AI capabilities.
The OPPO Find X8 is offered in two variants: a base version and a high-end Pro model. As suggested in the title, I’ll be focusing on the latter for this review.
What Is It?
A step up over the base variant, the OPPO Find X8 Pro comes with a larger 6.78-inch OLED display, a bigger 5,910mAh battery, and an additional 50MP telephoto lens that supports up to 6x optical zoom. Another exclusive is the all-new Quick Capture button, which allows you to quickly launch the camera app, snap photos, and control zooming via touch.
Design-wise, the Pro keeps it simple yet elegant. Premium materials are used for its surrounding frame and rear panel, while a large glass-covered circular island houses the quad-camera setup on the back. Flipping the phone over, a curved layer of Corning Gorilla Glass 7i protects the display, and the phone itself is rated at IP68/69 for water and dust resistance.
Since the two previous iterations skipped a local release, the Find X8 series is the first from OPPO’s flagship line-up to globally feature a mute switch on the left-hand side. Keeping the switch all the way up keeps the phone muted, the middle setting puts it on vibrate, and sliding it to the bottom unmutes audio.
Is It Any Good?
The Find X8 Pro’s design isn’t groundbreaking, but it does a solid job of reminding users that it’s a premium device. The button layout is ergonomic, and I really appreciate how the Quick Capture button blends seamlessly into the phone’s frame. Despite its solid feel in hand, I still recommend using the included case (or a third-party one) for added protection.
The 6.78-inch display is above average, offering bright, crisp, and vivid visuals when viewing photos, browsing the internet, and gaming. Compared to its competitors, the Find X8 Pro’s 4,500 nits peak brightness may seem lacking, but this wasn’t an issue for me. Even under bright sunlight, I had no trouble viewing the screen, whether I was glancing at messages or snapping photos.
Interface-wise, OPPO’s ColorOS has improved significantly, offering smooth animations and intuitive navigation. While there are plenty of AI-powered features—such as the image clarity enhancer, note assistant, and translation tools—they’re mostly things we’ve seen before on other platforms. They’re nice to have, but not essential.
In terms of performance, say what you want about MediaTek’s chipsets, but the Dimensity 9400 is definitely no slouch. It might fall behind the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite in benchmarks, but you won’t notice any performance drops when using day-to-day apps or gaming. For example, in Genshin Impact, the Find X8 Pro ran smoothly on the highest settings, maintaining frame rates above 60fps with minimal heat generation.
Battery life is another strong suit. The Find X8 Pro lasted over 19 hours in our non-stop video streaming test, with power saver disabled. As a daily driver, it can easily last over two days before needing a charge. A full charge takes just under an hour thanks to its 80W fast charging support. Additionally, wireless charging is supported at 50W, with reverse wireless charging at 10W.
How’s The Cameras?
I can safely say you can expect excellent photos to come out from the phone’s quad 50MP setup. A particular favourite of mine is the Pro’s exclusive supplementary telephoto lens, which retains the high quality output to images shot at 6x optical and above. Photos taken through digital zoom also appear decent thanks to some AI tinkering, provided that you don’t exceed 30x. Anymore than that, expect the usual yet messy noise reduction to kick in, which makes the images look less presentable.
Personally, I am very satisfied with the photos produced by the Find X8 Pro’s cameras. Images are richly detailed, with the right amount of balance to colours, brightness and shadows – so much so that I barely found the need for any edits afterwards. And I should also mention that all of my shots are taken with the camera app’s default colour profile.
Videos captured with the Pro are of high quality, but they’re not always perfect. In well-lit conditions, footage is exceptional, but in low light, results can vary. Regarding the latter, quality compensation (especially noise removal) can be apparent in some cases, while scenes with bright backgrounds will exhibit darker foregrounds.
As far as format is concerned, the phone can only record up to 4K resolution at 60fps, even with Ultra Steady mode activated. Speaking of which, the OIS system is actually very decent, and I was quite impressed by how stable the panning and walking videos shot by the Find X8 Pro. It’s not going to eliminate the need for a gimbal, but the built-in stabilisation is appreciated for casual video capture.
So what about the Quick Capture button? Like its obvious rival, the feature on the OPPO Find X8 Pro is designed solely to be used for photography and videography. You can use it to quickly launch the camera app, capture images or record footage, as well as utilise its touch controls to zoom in and out. However, unlike the iPhone’s Camera Control, the feature does not provide the ability to select between different settings (ie: aperture, focus, or depth of field). Still, the Quick Capture button is a welcome addition for shutterbugs.
What’s The Catch?
While ColorOS has improved in various aspects, it is still plagued by familiar drawbacks that many aren’t fond of. Most apparent is the amount of bloatware that is pre-installed on the Find X8 Pro. The good news is that you can remove them later, but we can all agree that having none of them by default would’ve been much better. Then there’s the constant notifications for non-urgent things such as the ColorOS theme store and so on which, thankfully, can also be deactivated via Settings.
As for the phone itself, flaws are mostly minor and can be easily shrugged off. If I were to nitpick, one feature I did find to be underwhelming is the camera app’s Portrait Mode. Oftentimes, its subject tracking tends to be inaccurate, resulting in out of focus shots. But when it works, it can deliver stunning photos and portraits.
Conclusion
If you’re not particular about chipsets and don’t mind doing some house cleaning after the first bootup, the OPPO Find X8 Pro is a flagship smartphone worth recommending. Its starting price at RM4,999 isn’t the most attractive, but if you can look past that, you’re getting a capable device with excellent battery life, solid gaming performance, and a versatile camera setup. It also makes for a great travel companion, thanks to its impressive image quality and the handy Quick Capture button.
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