Tech
OPPO Find X8 Pro phone review: The return of the Find X king
OPPO Find X8 Pro review: The return of the Find X king
What makes a good smartphone? To solve the problem, Find X
Before the OPPO Find X8 Pro, the last premium flagship handset OPPO brought to Singapore was the Find X5 Pro in 2022.
The Find X series mysteriously disappeared for two years, and its follow-up flagship phones (the Find X6 series in 2023 and the Find X7 series in 2024) were officially sold only in China.
OPPO is now back with a refreshed international phone strategy. The company changed its phone cadence, with Find N series foldable launches in H1 each year, followed by an H2 launch of conventional bar-type premium phones, the Find X series. To restart its reinstated confidence on the world’s stage is the OPPO Find X8 Pro, where the company wants to show that the sea of smartphones is much more than just Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, and maybe Honor.
The OPPO Find X8 Pro is also their 2025 premium representative for conventional bar types since it contains a MediaTek Dimensity 9400 chipset. Its appeal is enhanced by OPPO’s imaging colour science and smarts, its Hasselblad partnership for photography, and its dogged pursuit of durability (IP69 rating), aesthetics (a thinner Cosmos Ring design), and display quality (LTPO AMOLED, 1-120Hz refresh rate, 4,500-nits peak brightness).
TL;DR version: Putting aside its exciting return to the Singapore market, the OPPO Find X8 Pro is also a strong contender for incoming 2025 flagship-tier Android phones. It does have minor software niggles, but that should be patched out by the time you get the phone.
Find it at t iShopChangi, KrisShop, Lazada, Shopee, TikTok Shop, and Zalora.
We’re focusing on the Find X8 Pro because it resembles the base Find X8. They share the same display quality, processor, camera quality (main, ultrawide, and a 3x optical zoom), durability, software, and fast charging speeds (80W wired SuperVOOC, 50W wireless AirVOOC).
The extras delivered on a Find X8 Pro are an additional periscope telephoto zoom camera (135mm equivalent, 6x optical), a bigger panel (6.78-inch LTPO OLED, versus 6.59-inch), and its larger battery (5,910mAh on the Pro, against the 5,630mAh Find X8). That should mean your Pro can shoot further than the standard Find X8, with minimal difference in day-to-day performance. The Find X8 Pro also has an extra Quick Button camera shortcut, which we’ll touch on below.
Has OPPO’s two years of absence from the international stage given it enough time to return stronger and better? Is the Find X8 Pro truly the king of smartphone photography? Should all upcoming 2025 flagship Android smartphones get ready to hit the ground running? Let’s find out.
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Design and Handling
The core of the Find X experience are features inspired by Apple’s iPhones. OPPO’s Find X8 Pro continues that tradition, even if it uses a unique design.
Those familiar with OPPO’s flagship phones would already know about its physical Alert Slider, which has three modes (ring, vibrate, and silent). The new addition, however, is the Quick Button, just below the power button.
Like the latest Apple iPhone 16 series’ Camera Control button, OPPO’s Quick Button is a tactile interface allowing users to start up the default Camera app (double-tap) and control its zoom strength (slide gesture). It also lets you take photos with a double-tap and continuous burst shots if you hold a finger down.
We found the Quick Button helpful. Rarely did we accidentally trigger the Camera app, and the tactile mini-vibrations when adjusting the zoom range make our zooming more precise. For a copied feature, it’s very well implemented.
It makes sense that OPPO would implement a dedicated camera shortcut since the Find X series has always been marketed as a photography-centric smartphone. Our minor gripe is accidentally adjusting zoom via Quick Button when framing shots, but we chalk that up to a “skill issue” (a.k.a. “user problem”).
It’s also worth noting that the shortcut is not on the regular OPPO Find X8. If the Quick Button is not crucial to you, the base Find X8 is a more affordable alternative with minimal feature sacrifices.
The phone’s thickness is average (8.24mm), but it excels at keeping its rear camera housing extremely thin (3.58mm). The housing is neat and compact, like stacking two extra coins on top of the phone. It also keeps the Find X8 Pro stable on a flat surface, since it covers the upper quadrant on the rear.
For reference, the OPPO Find X8 is slimmer (7.85mm body, 3.01mm camera housing). OPPO said the reduction in housing bulk is up to 40% compared to its China-only predecessor. The same thoughtful design on both models emphasises how OPPO wants users to treat these two phones as a matter of size preference and not because they get fewer perks for paying less.
The Find X8 Pro’s footprint is almost the same as that of an Apple Pro Max variant of the iPhone, so users comfortable with larger mobiles will quickly adapt to OPPO’s size.
Beyond the Find X8 Pro’s Alert Slider, Quick Button, and slimmer camera housing, the phone otherwise looks like your typical high-end Chinese Android handset without the dramatic side curves you’d typically get on the display (yay).
Display and Audio
The Find X8 Pro’s 6.8-inch AMOLED panel (120Hz refresh rate, 2,780 x 1,440 pixels resolution) is a dream to use. Colours look life-like yet vibrant on a sharp panel, and its ProXDR tuning for Ultra HDR images makes your images even more eye-catching.
In particular, we enjoyed the way 60 FPS YouTube videos looked on the Find X8 Pro. It’s more than sufficient for any other browsing or navigation tasks, so we have no complaints.
The phone’s dual stereo sound (call speaker at the top, paired with a speaker along its bottom) adopts a hollow sound signature with a heavy emphasis on trebles, leaving much of its vocal handling to be desired. However, given the speaker’s placement, the audio is otherwise well balanced, sufficiently loud at max volume, and functional for video consumption and online meetings.
We wish the volume range had been more balanced (anything less than 50% felt too soft, even in quiet places). That said, you should already have a trusty pair of true wireless earbuds for this flagship handset.
User interface and experience
The OPPO Find X8 Pro (and the regular Find X8) comes with ColorOS 15 right out of the box. This is OPPO’s own reskin of the Android 15 operating system, replete with security features, personalisation, and a few other additions to make it stand out.
Read this in-depth article for a detailed look at what ColorOS 15 offers alongside its new features.
We’ll share our opinion on ColorOS 15’s user experience since the linked article above coveys most of the OS technicalities and features.
We think that the AI features offered on ColorOS 15 are on par with established smartphone AI features found on Samsung’s Galaxy AI (with further reporting here) and Google’s Pixel AI. It’s unsurprising, given OPPO’s deep collaboration with Google. That still doesn’t diminish its milestone of being one of the first Chinese Android phone brand in Singapore to offer a functioning suite of AI features that is not locked behind a China-only AI ecosystem. If you want to explore AI more deeply, you can also install optional AI apps like ChatGPT and Gemini from the Google Play Store.
In particular, we found ColorOS 15’s built-in AI transcription and summarisation, as well as its integrated photo-editing tools, quite impressive. Again, you can see these examples in our ColorOS 15 explainer. These tools are OPPO-made, which means you can still grab the Google alternative if you prefer that instead.
OPPO also created a functional and helpful AI-aware side menu, Smart Sidebar (featuring AI Toolbox). If you recall, another reputable Chinese phone brand said it had something similar, but that one was just marketing fluff instead. OPPO’s sidebar isn’t because it does read what apps are active before throwing up the most relevant AI tools at you.
In a way, OPPO’s return to a global stage with strong, self-made AI features is a sure way to assuage its fanbase and convert new users to its camp.
Our favourite non-AI, OPPO-made feature was Touch To Share, which lets us transfer our OPPO-shot photos to our work iPhones without a hitch. The next section will explain why we bothered with that hassle, especially since iPhones already take nice enough photos.
Imaging Performance
OPPO Find X8 Pro has a quad-rear camera system that’s further optimised with Hasselblad features:
- Main: 50MP, 23mm, 1/1.4-inch LYT-808 sensor, f/1.6 aperture, Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS)
- Ultrawide: 50MP, 15mm, 1/2.75-inch ISOCELL JN5 sensor f/2.0 aperture, AutoFocus
- Telephoto #1 (periscope): 50MP, 73mm, 1/1.95-inch LYT-600 sensor, f/2.6 aperture, OIS
- Telephoto #2 (periscope): 50MP, 135mm, 1/2.51-inch IMX858 sensor, f/4.3 aperture, OIS
Note that the focal range (in mm) is pegged against the industry’s understanding of the equivalent of 35 mm. Getting the 35mm look is two taps away from the main camera’s default 23mm (automatically increasing to 28mm and 35mm).
As always, specs don’t tell the full story. What Find X8 Pro offers is four 50MP cameras that have optical zoom ranges at 0.6x, 1x, 3x, and 6x (15mm, 23mm, 73mm, and 135mm). Coupled with its algorithms (like AI Telephoto Zoom and Stage Mode), it can offer high-quality imaging at 20x and 30x zoom.
Other niceties include 4K Dolby Vision Video recording on all cameras, its new Zero Shutter Lag processing pipeline, and burst capabilities thanks to Off-Peak Computing Architecture.
For Hasselblad Portrait Mode, it covers the above-mentioned focal lengths plus 35mm and 48mm, deploying its artificial bokeh to generate amazing portrait shots.
This is in addition to support for Livephoto, which is compatible with Apple’s iPhone Live Photos. If you’re not a professional photographer or videographer, the OPPO Find X8 Pro’s camera features are more than sufficient.
The OPPO Find X8 Pro offers excellent cameras overall if you’re concerned with colourisation, accuracy, noise reduction, and sharpness. Our only complaint is that OPPO needs to work harder at optimising its algorithms to reduce digital artefacts.
We generally found it less reliable for taking portrait shots with artificial bokeh. The tuning also struggles with challenging (but common) photography pitfalls, like moiré on a patterned top or inaccurate distance reading that results in the wrong parts of the head or hair being caught in its fake bokeh.
We think all these can be chalked up to software since the OPPO Find X8 Pro already has laser-focusing and spectral sensors built into the phone. Beyond our AI tuning gripes, OPPO has once again put out a set of highly competent cameras worthy of the Find X legacy.
Benchmark Performance
OPPO Find X8 Pro uses the same MediaTek Dimensity 9400 processor found on its base Find X8 handset. The mobile chipset is also available in rivals like the Vivo X200 Pro. Since Vivo hasn’t yet made its flagship phone available in Singapore, the Find X8 Pro is the first 2025 Android smartphone to hit our shores.
While we wait for the rest of 2025 phones to filter in during H1 2025, we’ll be comparing the OPPO Find X8 Pro to some of the most powerful alternatives you can find here.
Putting it to the test
To find out how the competitors line up specs and price-wise, check them out in this link.
To find out more about the tests we conduct and what they relate to, we’ve jotted them down here.
Benchmark Performance remarks
The Storage 2.0 score for PCMark was an outlier, so we had to double-check against other benchmarks recorded in UL Solution’s gamut of tests. As it turns out, our OPPO Find X8 Pro scores are consistent with the other phones carrying Dimensity 9400 and show that the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite rival is relatively on par. This means the new generation of processors grants even faster access to files stored on a phone’s internal storage.
About five months before the Find X8 Pro, MediaTek and Samsung jointly announced that the Dimensity 9400’s RAM could perform 20% faster than the industry’s gold standard for LPDDR5X. So, the phone’s synthetic performance on Geekbench checks out.
The Find X8 Pro certainly looks to be a viable opening act for 2025’s premium flagship Android smartphones. We can’t wait to see what the rest of the year brings.
Battery Life
Our new battery benchmark uses PCMark for Android’s Work 3.0 Battery Life test to determine a modern Android-based smartphone’s battery uptime in minutes. This controlled benchmark simulates real-world usage with a combination of both web and social media browsing, video and photo editing, parsing data with various file formats, writing (on documents), and more.
With a 5,910mAh silicon-carbon battery powering the OPPO Find X8 Pro, we weren’t expecting such remarkable results.
With almost 21 hours of uptime, the OPPO Find X8 Pro eclipses the competition. We chalk it up to the various CPU/GPU efficiency improvements that MediaTek has worked on for several years. While its main rival (Snapdragon 8 Elite) also has promising numbers, it does look like Qualcomm will have to worry about MediaTek premium processors offering a real challenge to its leadership position. Given the significant generational differences we’ve come to expect, this has only made us more excited about other 2025 Android flagship phones.
We also verified the OPPO Find X8 Pro’s uptime through a few weeks of regular use between games, videos, surfing, TikToking, and other mobile shenanigans. Most impressive to us is how little battery the Find X8 Pro drains when idling, barely moving the needle with plenty in the tank for moderate bursts of use.
If you pair the phone with the 80W SuperVOOC charging adapter provided in the box, the Find X8 Pro can fill up to a full tank within an hour, give or take five minutes. It also has 50W AirVOOC wireless charging, but we didn’t get a wireless charger to test it. However, thanks to OPPO’s Mag Charge feature, it works with Apple’s MagSafe charger for iPhones.
Conclusion
The OPPO Find X8 Pro is an excellent flagship handset in its own right, but it also strongly signals the quality of 2025 Android flagship mobiles that will come.
Fans of OPPO’s best products would be more than happy to celebrate the return of their Find X king. Bringing back the Find X8 Pro was well-timed since OPPO hasn’t been away long enough for consumers to forget about its astounding photography and build quality (and with how voraciously we consume premium goods, we’d forget really fast).
Not only that, but it’s also back stronger than before. The OPPO Find X8 Pro now has heightened waterproofing (rated IP69), a more sensible design, and many OPPO-made and Google-borrowed AI features that simply work.
This is in addition to the other components and features that made Find X series phones so well-regarded: top-tier photography, a stunning display, and excellent battery life that doesn’t sacrifice performance. If you thought the switch to MediaTek processors was a bad move, you’re likely outdated on what these chip designers have been up to in recent years.
It’s not yet perfect, given our gripes about the Quick Button placement and the aggressive digital artefacts in some photo-taking scenarios. However, both can be easily rectified with time. Getting used to the button takes practice, while the algorithms can be patched with a later firmware update (Find X8 Pro offers four years of firmware updates and six years of security updates).
The real kicker is the soft volume, which has a low range at half-bar, but even that isn’t a deal-breaker. In fact, we’re gracing it with Editor’s Choice simply because it made the cut in every other way.
Overall, the OPPO Find X8 Pro reminds brands like Samsung, Xiaomi, Honor, and even Apple not to take their popularity in Singapore for granted. For Singaporeans, the return of a highly valued premium smartphone bodes well since we can never be too spoilt for choice. It’s now up to the rest to show us what 2025 has in store.
The OPPO Find X8 Pro (16GB RAM, 512GB storage) retails for S$1,649 in Pearl White and Space Black. It is available at iShopChangi, KrisShop, Lazada, Shopee, TikTok Shop, Zalora, and major consumer electronics stores.