Oppo Find X8 Pro review: a comeback with great camera

High-end smartphones come in different types and from different brands. With Oppo, this is the Oppo Find X8 Pro. In recent weeks, we have put the smartphone through its paces extensively. How do you like this phone in practice? You can read it in the Oppo Find X8 Pro review.

Oppo Find X8 Pro review

Oppo is back in the Netherlands. For years, Oppo's high-end devices could not be found in Dutch shops. The 2022 Find X5 series was the last high-end series. There was no real reason; but there were reports of licensing. That has all been straightened out and Oppo felt it was time to release the new high-end in Europe. That's the Oppo Find X8 Pro. We discuss that phone in the Oppo Find X8 Pro review.

Design and interface

The Oppo Find X8 Pro is not a small device; like few high-end models. It features a 6.78-inch AMOLED display. Whereas the OnePlus 13, for example, offers a maximum resolution of QHD+, with the Oppo it is Full-HD+. This though with a variable refresh rate of 1-120Hz. The screen is easy to read on sunny days and can also be dimmed enough to be pleasant to use during lower-light environments, which is nice. You can use either the fingerprint scanner or facial recognition for unlocking. Optionally, you can choose to activate the screen by double tapping it, for instance.

In terms of design, the phone cannot be called very exciting. We also see many similarities with OnePlus. For instance, there is an Alert slider on the Find X8 Pro too, which allows you to set the device to silent, vibrate or sound. Furthermore, Oppo has placed the volume key and power button on the right side. The speakers are on the bottom along with the SIM card slot and speakers. At the back is a large circular camera module, showing off Hasselblad's logo. We discuss the camera later in the Oppo Find X8 Pro review. The smartphone feels great in the hand.

We also see Apple's influence, as the Oppo Find X8 Pro has a camera button. Years ago, this was impossible to imagine a phone without, but for a long time we had to do without it (Sony excepted). Still, it all works a bit differently. It is not a physical button and we still have a bit of doubts about it. After all, your hand also rests there during a phone call, so it happens too often that you feel vibrations because the button thinks it is being touched. Irritating. Besides, you have to 'press' it twice to start the camera. While shooting, I barely used the button. You can use it to quickly take pictures in burst one after another, or zoom in. For zooming, it does work efficiently, but I'm otherwise not hugely impressed.

Interface

The Oppo Find X8 Pro's interface is also similar to OnePlus. The smartphone runs on Android 15, along with ColorOS 15, Oppo's new skin. Several improvements have been made here, including the use of new animations. The phone feels smooth and slick. We do see a clear Apple influence. Among them, the Dynamic Island with Aqua Dynamics is an outright copy. Better copied than ill-conceived. Also, since the new version of ColorOS, you can separate the notification screen from that of notifications, should you want to.

For example, in the aforementioned Aqua Dynamics, you will find the media player and football modes of a supporting app. However, it is to be hoped that developers also see the benefits of it, as in terms of support it is still only moderate at the moment. For instance, it also doesn't work with Google Maps, where it does on the iPhone.

Other options at your disposal include the smart sidebar, which allows you to open apps or functions from the sidebar. A flexible window lets you open apps in a floating window. You can also work with gestures.

Communication and multimedia

Making calls with the Oppo Find X8 Pro goes without a hitch. For calling, you can find the Google Phone app on the device, for sending 'old school'. Call quality is good and the other person sounds clear at the other end of the line. There is room for two nano SIM cards, but you can also use eSIM, of course.

For listening to music, you can of course use your favourite app. The sound quality of the Oppo Find X8 Pro is okay. The treble is close to shrill. Thereby, we miss a bit of the real punch that several other high-end phones have in them and it also sounds a bit flat. We really expected more of this for a smartphone in this segment.

We also take a quick look at the AI features in the Multimedia section of the Oppo Find X8 Pro review. Because artificial intelligence is also amply present on this phone. In some phones it works better than in others. What about this high-end from Oppo? At least Circle to Search is present; you can circle something on the screen and look something up about it with Google. Furthermore, you will find several AI options for enhancing and summarising texts. Like Samsung, voice recordings can also be summarised. Oppo also promises several tools for enhancing your photos.

Another option on the Find X8 Pro is 'AI Studio'. This application lets you layer an AI filter over photos, adding new dimensions to an image. It is more of a standalone app than really something specific to the Find X8 Pro. If you want to get something done with the app, you need to log in with an Oppo account and put in stars. You have to earn these in various ways. We have no doubt that at a later date these can be bought.

Camera

The Oppo Find X8 Pro's camera consists of four lenses. This is four times a 50-megapixel camera. One for normal, wide-angle, telephoto and ultra-telephoto lens. One of the telephoto lenses is a periscope lens, which allows you to zoom six times optically. In total, you can zoom 120x, which involves hybrid zoom and digital zoom. Especially in the case of digital zoom, the photo with that much zoom is actually not usable, because everything is so grainy. But, this is where Oppo's quality comes in. Through AI, these drawbacks disappear and a surprisingly handsome photo still comes rolling out.The photo of the windmill was taken with 120x zoom. We do see some details, which may be drawn in a bit weird by AI, but the result is still impressive.

The same goes for the photos with 6x zoom, such as the photo of the forest path, which we added to the digital photo album. There are still plenty of details and the colours are pretty much intact.

The Oppo's camera app is user-friendly and the other photos we took with the phone also manage to get a high score. It's not a disaster if you left your professional camera at home, as the Oppo can be a great replacement. Colours are true to reality and there are plenty of details. Also, the camera manages to achieve a good balance between the dark and light areas in a photo.

You can see all the photos we took with the Oppo Find X8 Pro over the past few weeks in our digital photo album.

Video camera

Shooting videos with the Oppo is also a possibility, of course. And there again, we see the power of the camera. The Oppo Find X8 Pro manages to capture very nice video footage. We shot the video below with the device.

Performance and battery life

While the OnePlus 13 was equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, the Oppo is equipped with a different chipset. There, we see the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 processor. In recent weeks, it has certainly proven itself and tasks are completed quickly. This along with the 16GB of working memory. Riant is also on the storage space; 512GB as standard.

The battery is one with a capacity of 5910 mAh, equipped with the new silicon-carbon technology. That's a hefty battery, but capacity doesn't say everything about endurance. With the Oppo Find X8 Pro, however, you don't have to worry about battery life. The smartphone's endurance is very good. With normal use, the phone does last about two days. Incidentally, it is noteworthy that there are some pretty hefty restrictions in terms of battery consumption, and this can result in you sometimes missing notifications, because they are blocked by the system due to an app lacking certain permissions, or it gets shut down hard. You'll have to check this on an app-by-app basis; we saw this with the OnePlus 13 as well. A screen time of 5-7 hours is certainly not unthinkable.

Charging is quick via 55W PD (power-delivery) technology, or 80W via the company's own SuperVooc charging technology. You can also charge the smartphone wirelessly, and this goes at 50W.

Bloatware

In recent years, we saw smartphones with just less bloatware than before. At Oppo, they don't seem to have got that at all. The Oppo Find X8 Pro comes with a ridiculous amount of bloatware, we might even call it 'junk'. One example; we see the Temu app on the device right out of the box. This app is notoriously privacy-conscious. Just sits on the phone by default. But there is much more. its own app shop, TikTok, Netflix, TikTok, Amazon Music, Autodoc, several folders with shortcuts to apps, its own browser and many others. You're not buying a device from a few tenner with the Find X8 Pro. Oppo, this is going nowhere.

Update policy

The Oppo Find X8 Pro runs on Android 15 and at the time of writing, features the January security update. You are guaranteed five years of Android updates and six years of security updates with the device. This is less than Samsung and Google; but certainly not a bad policy. Also, with Oppo, you get one more Android version than with the OnePlus 13. By the way, you can read all about the OnePlus 13 in OnePlus 13 review.

Review

High-end devices come in different shapes and sizes, and especially from different brands. Many phones in this segment are close to each other with their options and features. Looking at just the Oppo Find X8 Pro, we can conclude that you get a very good phone from this device. You have a great camera, a very nice battery life, fine alert slider, neat update policy and a device that is nice and fast.

Oppo launched the phone with a price of 1149 euros. Two hundred euros has since been taken off that, making this phone even more interesting. Are you excited? You can order the smartphone from Odido, Bol.com, KPN, Vodafone, Belsimpel and Mobiel.