Oppo Find X8 Pro smartphone review - Attack on the iPhone with innovative battery technology

The Oppo Find X8 Pro looks stylish, is slim and high-quality and doesn't have to hide from other high-end smartphones. However, our test device doesn't want to do this at all; instead, it confidently attacks the big players with its bright and very color-accurate AMOLED screen, generous memory, haptic camera button and a good 6-year update promise.

It has hardly any real weaknesses and can even overtake some of the more established manufacturers with its fast charging technology, both wired and wireless. The quality of the cameras is also very impressive with two zoom lenses and a dedicated portrait lens.

If you compare the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 in the Oppo smartphone to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite which is likely to power many top phones of the next generation, it becomes clear that our test is significantly slower. Also compared to Apple's A18 Pro the SoC of the Oppo Find X8 Pro loses out. Nevertheless, the performance is more than sufficient for everyday use and you won't notice any difference in the vast majority of apps.

The silicone-carbon battery is a great innovation that can deliver a lot of energy with a low weight and thus enables very good runtimes.

Overall, the Oppo Find X8 Pro, with its flexible camera system, strong endurance and high performance, is definitely a competitor to Apple, Samsung and co.

The Oppo Find X8 Pro is already available in some European countries. The price for the phone with 16 GB RAM and 512 GB mass storage is officially 1,199 Euros (~$1263).

The phone will not be available in Germany until 2025, but you can currently have it shipped to Germany via the Dutch Oppo store, for example and currently even get a 50 Euro (~$53) discount.

Oppo has been a little quiet in Europe in recent years, as there have been many challenges for the manufacturer: a clear separation of the brands and the dissolution of the parent company were on the agenda, and the company also had to deal with a patent lawsuit in Germany.

Now, however, the manufacturer is back in full force and wants to prove it with the Oppo Find X8 Pro: A high-end smartphone with the best that the shelves of camera sensor manufacturers, SoC producers and chip suppliers have to offer. The model is already available in China, where it costs around 890 Euros (~$938). It will be more expensive in the West, but the price of the phone is in line with other flagship phones.

Another challenger is certainly good for the cell phone market in Europe and so we are looking forward to the test results of the Oppo smartphone. Are you too? Well, let's get started right away.

The chassis of the Oppo Find X8 Pro is made of glass and aluminum, with a matte dark grey surface or a pearlescent white surface on the back. The blue version from China did not make it to Europe. The aluminum frame matches the color and is also matte. At the top center, the circular camera module stands out from the rest of the housing and is surrounded by a ribbed metal frame.

The look and feel are very high-quality and the classic color scheme allows the smartphone to blend in well with any environment. The glass on the front is rounded towards the corners, although this is much more discreet than on previous models, making accidental touches on the side unlikely. Narrow and symmetrical edges around the display on all sides give the smartphone a modern look.

The workmanship of the Oppo Find X8 Pro is of a very high standard, the device looks robust and feels good in the hand. Only slightly noticeable edges at the transition between the glass and frame as well as a slight creaking when twisted diminish the impression of quality somewhat.

The device has IP68/69 protection class certification, which means it can be taken on a (not too deep) dive in fresh water, it can also be used in dusty environments and is even protected against high-pressure water jets.

At 215 grams (~7.6 oz), the Oppo Find X8 Pro is a fairly lightweight high-end smartphone. In terms of dimensions, it is quite slim at 8.2 millimetres (~0.32 in) thick, but also offers a slightly smaller screen than many other top phones.

In terms of sustainability, Oppo offers its customers the opportunity to use the phone for quite a long time thanks to a decent support period for the software.

The smartphone's packaging is plastic-free and is printed with inks based on soybean oil. According to Oppo's sustainability report, 45% of the fibers used for the packaging are already made from recycled materials. However, there is also a dazzling special print on the packaging, although it is not clear whether it was produced using environmentally friendly methods.

For the device itself, there are so far only declarations of intent and no proven use of recycled materials. There is also no focus on reparability by the user and it is almost impossible to check. At ifixit.com there are very few repair guides for only selected models.

Overall, Oppo still has some catching up to do in this area compared to Apple or providers specializing in sustainability such as Fairphone.

The SoC's Wi-Fi modem also supports the latest Wi-Fi standard, Wi-Fi 7, which we unfortunately cannot test yet because the corresponding routers (especially with a 10 Gbit LAN port) are not yet integrated into our test procedure. In the 6 GHz band, i.e. with WiFi 6E, the Oppo Find X8 Pro is quite fast in terms of reception: We measured an average of 1,610 MBit/s with our reference router Asus ROG Rapture AXE11000.

When sending data, however, the Oppo smartphone falls behind other high-end devices; even when repeating the test several times, we were unable to get more than around 650 Mbps. The Find X8 Pro can still make good use of a gigabit internal line. When it comes to even faster internal networks, there are even faster smartphones on the market.

To access the mobile network, numerous frequencies are supported in both the 4G and 5G networks. This means that the Find X8 Pro can also be taken to foreign countries and should provide access to the mobile internet. Some frequency bands are missing compared to the iPhone 16 Pro Max but this should hardly play a role in everyday life.

The reception is at a high level, as we know from random tests during our test period. Our test device also performs well compared to other high-end phones and does not completely lose the network even in difficult situations, such as between tall buildings.

ColorOS uses Google's phone app by default, but phone apps from other providers can also be easily installed and set as the default.

The voice quality via the internal earpiece is decent, although the person we are talking to sounds a little muffled from time to time. The microphone records our voice clearly, but tends to distort with loud voices.

The speaker and hands-free microphone pick up the other person's voice with significantly less bass, making it sound a little thinner. However, the other person's voice is still clear and easy to understand. What we say is recorded well, even if we don't speak very loudly.

The main camera has to show what it can do in the lab. There are slight problems with the contrast, but overall the display looks very sharp. At only 1 lux, our test chart looks rough, but the content is still clearly recognizable.

The color display is also quite realistic, as the phone proves in the comparison photos of the color chart.

The Oppo Find X8 Pro does not come with a charger, only a charging cable and a SIM tool. A suitable charger costs around 40 Euros (~$42) in the company's online store and is available for less at amazon.de from 27 Euros (~$28).

The manufacturer offers a warranty of 24 months for smartphones purchased in Europe.

The MediaTek Dimensity 9400 is a fairly new SoC with which MediaTek wants to secure its place in the high-end segment. The Oppo Find X8 Pro comes with the chip, which enables processor clock rates of up to 3.62 GHz.

Our benchmarks show that it is not quite enough for a top position: although a superiority over this year's top smartphones is definitely visible, the Oppo flagship does not come close to the iPhone 16 Pro Max in terms of processor performance. In addition, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite casts its shadow ahead, with which many of next year's flagships will probably be equipped. We have already been able to test the reference design and, thanks to specially designed CPU units, it is even more powerful.

However, it is questionable whether the performance difference will be noticeable in everyday use, as the power of the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 in the Oppo Find X8 Pro is enough to run the vast majority of apps smoothly and with short loading times. You will only notice a difference with very complex tasks such as video editing with many clips.

The ARM Immortalis-G925 with 12 cores is used as the graphics chip in the SoC. It offers a lot of performance and can also partly replace the Apple A18 Pro GPU in graphics calculations. Devices with the Snapdragon 8 Elite will offer significantly more graphics power, as our tests of the reference device show.

Nevertheless, according to the benchmarks, even complex games in 4K resolution should run at around 40 fps on the Oppo smartphone, so there is hardly any reason to demand even more graphics power.

When surfing the Internet, the Oppo Find X8 Pro is only moderately fast for a high-end phone in the benchmarks. Hardly anyone can compete with the surfing speed of the iPhone anyway, but other Android devices are also significantly faster in some benchmarks.

In everyday use, even very complex websites load quickly and images are usually available while scrolling, so the performance of the Oppo phone is completely sufficient here too.

Thanks to UFS 4.0 storage, the Oppo smartphone does not have to hide in this discipline either, on the contrary: it is significantly faster than Google's Pixel 9 Pro XL and on a par with other high-quality Android phones.

Under prolonged load, the smartphone heats up to 47.1 °C (116.78 °F), which is clearly noticeable but not yet critical. However, we measure at room temperature, so the casing temperatures could be significantly higher on hot summer days.

The SoC's performance is also affected by the high temperatures: In our long-term benchmarks from 3DMark, there are sometimes performance drops of up to 45%.

The speaker on the bottom edge is supported by the earpiece as a second speaker. This also enables slight stereo effects. The Oppo Find X8 Pro's sound system can get quite loud overall and offers a good reproduction of medium frequencies. High tones do not sound too unpleasant overall, even at very high volumes, but still seem somewhat overemphasized. This is probably mainly due to the fact that bass is virtually inaudible.

For a high-end smartphone, the speaker system is well done and can reproduce music and movie sound appropriately. However, you can of course get even better sound via high-quality speakers or speakers that can be connected via Bluetooth or USB-C. Both work without any problems. The most important wireless audio codecs are available, but you will search in vain for more exotic codecs such as Opus or LC3.

The SoC's production process uses the modern 3 nm process, which should enable high efficiency. And indeed, the Oppo Find X8 Pro is very economical in terms of energy consumption, both under low and high load.

The phone can be charged with up to 80 watts via Oppo's own Supervooc, after which it takes less than an hour for the device to be fully charged again. Power Delivery is also supported, so the Find X8 Pro can be charged without any problems using any of the chargers in our test lab, it just takes a little longer. Up to 50 watts of power is available for wireless charging. Reverse charging with up to 10 watts is also possible.

Oppo has opted for innovation with the battery and is not using a classic lithium-ion battery, but a battery with a silicone-carbon-based anode. This is already familiar from the Honor Magic6 Pro where great runtimes were achieved with this technology.

The silicone anode enables a significantly higher energy density, so you can store significantly more energy with the same size. Or you can make the battery much smaller and still store the same amount of energy as in a larger conventional lithium-ion battery with a graphite anode. In addition, the temperature sensitivity of the battery is significantly lower and silicone is a raw material that is available in large quantities. However, production is currently still quite complicated and expensive.

In any case, the technology works quite well in the Oppo Find X8 Pro, at least in what it is primarily intended to do, namely enable long runtimes: Thanks to the high energy density, there is 5,910 mAh of capacity in the battery, which enables runtimes of 23:31 hours in our WLAN test, significantly more than many other high-end devices. The Oppo Find X8 Pro is also very enduring under low load.