After two years of absence in this segment, Oppo is finally returning to the high-end. The brand's latest representative in the premium lands is called Oppo Find X5 Pro, so we go straight to the Oppo Find X8 Pro. Here is our opinion on the product after several weeks of testing.
Summary
Oppo's situation in France
In the meantime, the Chinese brand has raised its game in photography by marketing the first smartphone equipped with two periscopes. Oppo also took the opportunity to get even closer to OnePlus internally, its sister brand. And this on many points such as the integration of the alert slider on this Oppo Find X8 Pro or their interfaces which are very similar. The company has also continued to market its smartphones in various European countries (Spain and Italy in particular), which has allowed it to continue to develop its ColorOS interface.
Despite these good points, this abrupt interruption in July 2023 has consequences. It is forcing the brand to regain a lot of lost ground. The Chinese giant was about to conquer 4th place in the ranking of smartphone sellers, everything has to be redone, with much smaller teams and resources. We went from a French team of several dozen people internally to less than ten.
Design and originalities of the Oppo Find X8 Pro
2024 has given pride of place to smartphone designs with flat edges and flat screens, iPhone style to put it quickly. Faced with this tidal wave, the Oppo Find X8 Pro is refreshing with a slightly curved screen (although the edges have been largely flattened since the Oppo Find X5 Pro).
The smartphone benefits from very neat finishes, with a white and satin coating on the back for the model we are testing. Exit the photo block molded in the ceramic back of the Find X5 Pro, hello the rounded photo block quite common for a Chinese brand. Too bad, Oppo loses a little of its character here. That being said, the arrangement of the glass and metal used is rather neat once again.
A trigger button and an alert slider
The Oppo Find X8 Pro integrates two new buttons: the first is well known to OnePlus fans since it is neither more nor less than the famous alert slider, the brand's trademark. Located on the left edge, it is simply a sliding button with three positions (silent, vibrate and ring).
More original, the Oppo Find X8 Pro also includes a shutter button for the camera. It does not mark any relief, so it is not at all annoying in the handling.
After a double press, it launches the camera application. A new press in it serves as a shutter button, but that's not all. You can also swipe left or right to zoom out or zoom in. A nice addition, even if the sensations are a little limited outside of haptic feedback, compared to a physical button that you press.
Our opinion on the ColorOS interface
Oppo's return to France also marks the return of ColorOS. We had left the interface in the middle of absorbing OxygenOS, the OnePlus interface. The work seems to be complete today, it is simply impossible to distinguish the two without being an expert on the subject.
And that's for the best. ColorOS is an interface of amazing fluidity. No fuss, the whole thing is very ergonomic and easy to use. Oppo also offers 5 years of major updates, which is not as good as the 7 years promised by Google and Samsung, but it allows it to remain competitive.
While the manufacturer includes a few Oppo-branded applications, these remain very optional. Most of the system applications turn to the Google suite, which is very effective.
This is also the case for most of the new AI features, which remind us of the suite offered by Google and Samsung throughout the year. We find all the classics: Google's Surround to Search is there, but also classics like AI Eraser, a kind of magic eraser, a summary of notes by AI, writing assistance, transcription in the audio recorder, etc.
A little originality in the field all the same, Oppo has added the possibility to remove reflections in a shot. Useful for saving a photo, but it can also make it look flatter in some cases.
Let's finish with two software features that we will modestly call inspirations from Apple. In the same way as Dynamic Island on iOS, several system features can continue to be displayed around the punch at the top of the screen in a bubble. This is the case for a timer or the lamp for example. The addition, without being vital, brings a little extra to the interface.
Touch to share: a little complicated, but does the job
More surprising, the Touch to share feature allows "wireless file sharing with a single gesture between iOS/iPadOS and ColorOS 15 devices using NFC technology."
We tried it and honestly, it's far from the ease of use promised at first glance. Indeed, your contact on iPhone must install a dedicated application and give a myriad of authorizations. Not very practical to use in professional life. On the other hand, for a couple for example, one of whom would be on iPhone and the other on an Oppo, once everything is installed, it must be recognized a certain practicality.
Performances: the first under Dimensity 9400
Under the hood, we have the new MediaTek chip, the Dimensity 9400. It is simply the first smartphone on the French market to embed the high-end chip of the Taiwanese. It is helped by 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage.
On a daily basis, high-end chip obliges, you will have in your hands a smartphone capable of responding to almost all uses. It is very fluid and heats up little or not at all.
In detail, on our various benchmarks, the Oppo Find X8 Pro is well above the chips of the previous year. However, it marks time compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite that equips the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro. This is not particularly surprising: Asus tends to win the competition for the most powerful smartphone on the market every year with its gaming phone.
On graphics power, GFX Bench shows us that the Oppo Find X8 Pro is far from being the best of the best. It is even behind a Galaxy S24 Ultra from early 2024.
In practice, Oppo seems to have found the right balance. In fact, on the very demanding Genshin Impact game, we got a very satisfactory result. Even after 20 to 30 minutes of play, the title runs at a constant 60 FPS, with a few drops around 57 FPS. Impeccable.
Photo quality: a formidable Swiss army knife
The Oppo Find X8 Pro integrates a muscular photo configuration: four modules, all equipped with a 50 Mpx sensor, with a wide-angle, an ultra-wide-angle, an X3 telephoto lens and an X6 telephoto lens. Enough to compete with a Galaxy S24 Ultra on paper.
To put it in two words: the result is a formidable Swiss army knife. It represents exactly what you would expect from a high-end smartphone in photography: great versatility with a magnification that can go from X0.6 to X120, shots that are taken quickly, little difference between the preview on the screen before pressing the shutter and the result.
Other points may, depending on your tastes, give rise to debate. The colorimetry already, which is relatively warm and therefore not always realistic. The Oppo tends to sublimate reality, sometimes also to smooth it with a very processed effect in the image, which will please or not. Indeed, like a Google Pixel, the Oppo will push the microcontrasts in the image, which gives an impression of very important detail if you look from afar, but which will somewhat erase the details if you zoom in on the image.
Another small complaint, this time less subject to debate: the night mode did not completely convince us. While it allows you to obtain shots with fairly shimmering colorimetry, we also had many blurry photos even though we were not moving. Let's add that the processing tends to transform certain details into acrylic paint, which is not necessarily the expected result.
Nevertheless, the Oppo Find X8 Pro remains an excellent camera phone that we had a lot of fun with.
Before moving on to the next part, let's mention that the Oppo also includes some AI-based toys that allow, for example, to freeze a moving object like a bicycle wheel or even a system capable of removing reflections from a photo. If the first works very well, the second struggles to convince.
Screen: very well calibrated and strong maximum brightness
On the screen side, we are going for a large 6.78-inch panel with a definition of 2780 x 1264 pixels in Oled of course, which guarantees you infinite contrast and vibrant colors.
Speaking of colors, one of the assets of this screen is undoubtedly its high calibration precision. Indeed, in sRGB mode, we measured an average delta E of 1.89. The closer the number obtained is to 0, the better the calibration. In DCI-P3, it goes up to 2.97, which remains a very good value.
On the other hand, the screen is less impressive on the maximum brightness in boost, which peaks at 1228 cd/m². However, it makes up for it very well on an average brightness around 821 cd/m². For reference, a Galaxy S24 Ultra displays 485 cd/m² on the same measurement.
The HDR light peak, which can be very useful for watching content in Dolby Vision for example, also rises to the impressive number of 1712 cd/m² (compared to 1462 cd/m² for the Samsung).
So you have a screen that can compete with the Galaxy S24 Ultra without flinching. That's not nothing.
Autonomy test: a camel
The Oppo Find X8 Pro has a large 5910 mAh battery. On paper, it has a much higher capacity than most high-end smartphones released earlier this year.
To achieve this, Oppo has relied on new Silicon-Carbon battery technology, which replaces graphite with silicon to increase energy density.
It's hard to say if this is due to this change, but the Oppo Find X8 Pro's battery life seemed excellent to us in use. Starting at 100% in the morning, and after a day of taking notes and photos with it, we came back in the evening with a smartphone around 50%.
During our automated mixed battery life protocol, we obtained a duration of 18 hours and 37 minutes to go from 100 to 10% battery life. The smartphone took a total of 21 hours and 27 minutes before turning off. We should point out that during this test, due to a bug in the manufacturer's interface, HDR videos only started in SDR. This certainly slightly improved the time obtained.
For charging, as usual, Oppo no longer includes a charger in the box of its smartphone. So we plugged it into a 65W Anker charger and got a pretty average charge, with 24% of battery life recovered after 10 minutes.
If you want to enjoy a more powerful charge, turn to the 80W charger marketed by Oppo or its 50W wireless charger.
Price and availability of the Oppo Find X8 Pro
The Oppo Find X8 Pro is sold for 1199 euros. There is only one configuration that is quite well endowed, with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. Sales start on December 3rd for pre-orders.
In case of pre-orders, until December 12th, you can receive up to 150 euros of Cashback, an accessory pack with a protective case, an 80W charger from the manufacturer, a 50W wireless charger.
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