Oppo Find X8 Pro Review: A Dual-Periscope Flagship, Minus the Ultra Tax

Oppo makes a phone with a five-lens Hasselblad camera system and a dedicated colour-accuracy sensor. You cannot buy it in the UK. What you can buy is the Oppo Find X8 Pro — the phone the Find X8 Ultra's reputation tends to overshadow, despite being a genuinely excellent flagship in its own right, with two periscope telephotos and Hasselblad tuning that most rivals simply don't offer at any price.

About the 'Ultra' You Can't Buy

Worth addressing up front: Oppo confirmed to press ahead of its April 2025 launch that the Find X8 Ultra is "planned for release only in mainland China." Unlike the Find X8 and Find X8 Pro, which both launched globally including the UK, the Ultra never got an official UK, US, EU, or India release. You can import one, but you'll be paying grey-market pricing, dealing with a Chinese-market build of ColorOS, and giving up any UK warranty support. The Find X8 Pro reviewed here is the real flagship Oppo actually sells outside China, and it's the one most people weighing up this generation should actually be comparing against rivals.

It's worth knowing what you'd actually be trading up to. The Ultra pairs a genuinely different, five-lens Hasselblad system built around a 1-inch main sensor with a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, and import pricing runs from roughly £730 — which sounds like a discount against the Pro's official £849, until you factor in the lack of any warranty, official support, or guaranteed software updates that come with a grey-market import. GSMArena's own testing found the Ultra actually measures a lower peak display brightness than the Pro reviewed here, so the step up isn't universal even on paper. For most buyers outside China, the Find X8 Pro is the more sensible flagship, not a consolation prize.

Design and Build

At 215g and 8.2mm thick, the Find X8 Pro is notably slimmer and lighter than most phones carrying this much camera hardware — Oppo has done real engineering work to keep the dual-periscope module from making the phone feel front-heavy. The frame is aluminium alloy with glass front and back panels, and build quality is solid throughout: Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the front, and an IP68/IP69 rating that covers both submersion and high-pressure jets, up to 80°C water, which is a genuinely unusual spec to see confirmed rather than just implied.

A dedicated camera key sits on the frame: double-press to launch the camera instantly from a locked screen, press again to shoot, or swipe while holding the phone horizontally to zoom. It's a genuinely useful physical control, not a marketing gimmick, and one Oppo shipped before Apple's own Camera Control button arrived on the iPhone 16 line. None of that slimness comes from shrinking the battery, either — Oppo built the 5,910mAh cell around a silicon-carbon anode, a real materials change rather than just a bigger can, which is how the phone fits nearly 6,000mAh into a chassis this thin. It ships in Space Black or Pearl White, and it's worth flagging for anyone ordering from an EU retailer specifically: European units come in a reduced, half-height box that drops both the charger and a protective case, a genuine cost-cutting change from earlier Find generations.

Display

The 6.78-inch LTPO AMOLED panel runs at WQHD+ resolution with adaptive refresh across the full 1-120Hz range, dialling all the way down to 1Hz for idle screens to save power. Micro-curved glass at the edges keeps the bezels thin without the aggressive waterfall curve that causes accidental touches on some rivals.

Brightness deserves a specific, honest caveat, since Oppo's marketing and the independently tested numbers tell different stories. Oppo advertises up to 1,600 nits in high-brightness mode and a 4,500-nit HDR peak, but GSMArena's standardised lab testing measured a considerably more modest 1,333 nits with auto brightness active in bright ambient light — a full 1,000 nits behind the Realme GT 7 Pro, tested around the same time on the same methodology. That's not a bad screen by any normal standard, and the roughly 900 nits available manually is still a genuinely strong result, but treat the 4,500-nit figure as a marketing ceiling rather than something you'll actually see reflected in daily outdoor use.

Camera

Four 50MP sensors, and every one of them earns its place. The main camera is a 50MP f/1.6 unit with laser autofocus and OIS; the ultrawide is a 50MP f/2.0 module with a 120-degree field of view; and the two periscope telephotos give genuine reach most rivals can't match — a 3x module at 73mm with OIS, and a 6x module at 135mm, also stabilised. GSMArena's testing rated the overall system as competent with great zoom action and nice close-ups, plus called out low-light video quality specifically as a pleasant surprise.

Hasselblad's colour tuning remains a real differentiator: skin tones and warm light are rendered more naturally than the sometimes oversaturated processing you get from some competitors. There is one honest weak spot worth knowing about, though — the 6x telephoto's dimmer f/4.3 aperture and smaller sensor mean that in low light specifically, shots at that magnification can quietly fall back on a digital crop from the 3x camera rather than a genuine optical 6x capture, and GSMArena's own pros-and-cons summary flags the 6x module as somewhat unreliable after dark. It's not the five-lens, 1-inch-sensor spectacle of the Ultra, but very few phones anywhere — Ultra or otherwise — can match this range in daylight and typical indoor conditions.

Video is well covered too: the main sensor shoots up to 4K at 60fps with electronic and optical stabilisation working together, and the periscope telephotos support up to 6x optical zoom while recording, not just for stills. The 32MP front camera is fixed-focus rather than autofocus, which is a minor compromise on close-up selfies, but it still shoots up to 4K video for anyone using it for vlogging or video calls. Slow-motion options on the rear cameras go up to 1080p at 240fps, comprehensive enough to cover most casual creative use without reaching for a dedicated camera app.

Performance

MediaTek's Dimensity 9400 is a genuine flagship chip and it shows in everyday use — apps launch instantly, and ColorOS 15 stays smooth even under heavy multitasking. GSMArena's own benchmarking found it at least as fast as the equivalent Snapdragon chip, and slightly ahead in some prolonged GPU workloads — a genuine reversal of MediaTek's old reputation for trailing Qualcomm's best.

Sustained performance is more nuanced than a simple pass, and worth being straightforward about: GSMArena's CPU Throttling Test recorded a real decline under an hour of continuous load, bottoming out around 60% of peak performance — broadly similar to, not meaningfully better than, rivals using the same chipset. Android Central's independent testing found a comparable pattern, with a 3DMark Steel Nomad Light stability score of just 52%, and described Oppo's thermal management as aggressive, throttling early to keep temperatures in check. In day-to-day use and typical gaming sessions this is invisible — reviewers consistently reported smooth, stable framerates with no lag — but push the phone hard for an extended stretch and it does back off, same as most phones this thin. One further caveat for gamers specifically: ColorOS currently caps supported titles at 60fps/60Hz regardless of the display's 120Hz panel, so the flagship silicon doesn't translate into higher-framerate gaming even where a title supports it.

Software support is a genuine strength: Oppo commits to five major OS upgrades and six years of security updates on the Find X8 Pro, among the longer windows in the category. Connectivity is comprehensive too, and worth calling out on its own merits — Wi-Fi 7, eSIM support alongside the physical dual-SIM tray, and a built-in infrared port for controlling other devices are all present, areas where plenty of rivals at this price still cut corners. The top-spec 16GB/1TB configuration also adds satellite connectivity for emergency messaging outside normal signal coverage, though that specific capability is gated to that one configuration rather than available across the whole range.

Battery and Charging

The 5,910mAh cell — built around a silicon-carbon anode that packs more capacity into the same physical space than a conventional battery — delivers genuinely excellent endurance. GSMArena's Active Use testing clocked over 10 hours in its gaming benchmark, nearly 18 hours of video playback, and close to 14 hours of web browsing, adding up to some of the strongest battery life in the flagship class; DXOMARK's independent testing similarly found more than three days of moderate-use autonomy on a single charge.

Charging is fast, if not quite as fast as Oppo's own marketing implies. The box includes an 80W SUPERVOOC charger, and while the on-paper number sounds like a sub-40-minute full charge, GSMArena, ChargerLAB, and DXOMARK all independently clocked a real-world empty-to-full time closer to 56-62 minutes with the bundled charger — still quick, just not quite the number on the spec sheet. 50W AIRVOOC wireless charging is also supported, along with reverse wireless charging for topping up accessories.

Verdict

Frequently Asked Questions

How it compares: Oppo Find X8 Pro vs Vivo X300 Pro

Oppo

Oppo Find X8 Pro

From £849

88

Vivo

Vivo X300 Pro

From £1,099

89

vs

6.78" LTPO AMOLED 120Hz

Display

6.78" LTPO OLED 120Hz

Quad 50MP, dual periscope

Main cam

200MP Zeiss telephoto, 3.5x

Dimensity 9400

Chip

Dimensity 9500

5,910mAh · 80W

Battery

6,510mAh · 90W

From £849

Price

From £1,099

Full Oppo Find X8 Pro review

Full Vivo X300 Pro review