OPPO Find X8 review – The return of the OPPO flagship smartphone

The OPPO Find X7 series smartphones had skipped the Malaysian market previously. This year marks the return of the OPPO Find X smartphones, namely the OPPO Find X8 and the OPPO Find X8 Pro. Officially launched in Malaysia on 30th November 2024, OPPO Find X8 retails for RM3,699 while OPPO Find X8 Pro retails at RM4,999.

Here is our review of the OPPO Find X8 smartphone, based on the limited time we spent with the smartphone.

The Packaging:

OPPO Find X8 arrives in a mostly white box, with a reflective grey silver rectangle and the number 8 in the center, par usual for most OPPO smartphones. OPPO collaboration with Hasselblad is also prominently announced in the box, the “OPPO AI phone” moniker and the Find X8 model complete the front of the box.

Found inside, is the OPPO Find X8 smartphone in the Star Grey colourway, an 80W charging brick, a transparent TPU case, a data cable, a sim eject tool, and documentation. Everything is present as it should be.

The Phone itself:

The first thing that struck me was how well the OPPO Find X8 feels in the hands. With a slightly smaller 6.59-inch screen, the OPPO Find X8 slips and stays planted nicely in the palms. I had to check the official dimensions, the OPPO Find X8 is merely a few mm shorter, 1mm or less wide, less than 1mm thinner, and around 20 grams lighter than the most commonly sized 6.7+inches smartphones. But these mere millimeters and grams of differences make a whole lot of difference in the feel and handling of the OPPO Find X8. I loved it a lot, and I rate it as one of the best smartphones that I have held.

OPPO Find X8 has a 6.59-inch LTPS AMOLED screen. The key difference is that an LTPO screen has a much lower dynamic refresh rate than a LTPS screen. The display has a resolution of 2760 x 1256 pixels and a maximum 120Hz refresh rate. It has Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support, 3,840Hz PWM dimming, and OPPO claims a peak brightness of 4,500 nits. Using the OPPO Find X8 outdoors poses no issue with the screen, though gaming outdoors in our Malaysia sunny skies would still be less ideal.

A large circular camera housing occupies the top third of the back, itself being rather thin. The camera island is of two layers, with four circles for the three cameras. At the center is the H logo of Hasselblad, surrounded by circular etchings that fill the top island. Very eye-catching when it reflects light at the right angles.

The aluminium sides are flat, as are the back and front of the OPPO Find X8, so flat that I can stand the OPPO Find X8 on the bottom side. The aluminium alloy sides are in silver, curves at the corners, and the silver colour edges are visible from the from and the back. This could be the exact reason why the OPPO Find X8, when viewed from the front or sides, looks strikingly similar to a certain fruit-branded smartphone.

The front and the back of the OPPO Find X8 are protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 7i. The back is smooth glass, is rather resistant to fingerprints, and goes all the way up to the flat sides. This Star Grey colourway looks more silver than the darker grey as opposed to what the name implies. The other colour options for Malaysia are Space Black, which is darker grey than deep black, and Shell Pink, which is lighter pink than expected.

One standout feature of the OPPO Find X8 smartphone is that it has a slider switch on the left side of the phone. Set-able to three positions to control the main volume settings, from Ring, Vibrate, and Silent, respectively. At each position the slider stops, there will be a visual notification on display on the OPPO Find X8 screen.

Specifications at a glance:

Gaming on OPPO Find X8:

With my favourite performance stress test games installed in the OPPO Find X8, I began pushing the new MediaTek Dimensity 9400 chipset. All games are set to the highest possible graphic settings and at 60FPS.

Genshin Impact starts the test. The first thing I noticed is that loading times are speedy. When first entering the game and entering the login info, we are greeted with the initial white loading screen with the seven elemental sigils that show up indicating the loading progress. Yes, I had timed the entire white loading screen sequence, starting when I pressed the screen and stopping when the game fully loaded.

Previous generation Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and MediaTek Dimensity 9300 chips took around 20+ seconds to completely load into the game. With the latest MediaTek Dimensity 9400 chipset in the OPPO Find X8, it took about 13+ seconds. For context, the PS5 loads Genshin Impact at 10+ seconds. That’s how fast the latest Dimensity 9400 CPU is.

In the Genshin Impact game, the OPPO Find X8 performs very well. Fast loading, smooth gameplay, and no lags were the order of the day. The framerate was stable at 60FPS most of the time. Even during hectic battles with lots of elemental effects, OPPO Find X8 would not buckle and drop at most 1 or 2 frames at worst. For comparison, the previous-gen MediaTek Dimensity 9300 chip could drop to as low as the mid-40s FPS during these battle scenarios.

In Zenless Zone Zero, loading was just as speedy, and gameplay is about as smooth as Genshin Impact is. Traversal and mob battles are very smooth, fluctuating from 58 to 60FPS. Dips will occasionally occur when loading into dense areas and during battle animations. Even so, they dip to just around 57FPS as far as I can notice and capture.

Lastly, with the most demanding of the Hoyoverse game, Honkai: Star Rail, loading was just as speedy with traversal and mob battles being very smooth, fluctuating from 58 to 60FPS. And with expected certainty, the worst FPS drops occur immediately at loading in, and during battle segments that had many effects. Despite the preceding statement sounding dire, in reality, it isn’t at all. The lowest FPS I managed to notice and capture is at 55FPS only.

Overall, OPPO Find X8 would recover the framerates very very quickly, so quickly that I expect most players would not notice the drops. I had to keep looking out for framerate dips to capture the images above and below. Such is the MediaTek Dimensity 9400’s prowess contained within the OPPO Find X8.

OPPO Find X8 handles the heat generated during gaming very well. After a two-hour continuous session with the three games above, the temperature at the back and the sides were warm but not uncomfortably so. The temperature was recorded at 39℃ at the highest, thanks to the vapour chamber found inside the OPPO Find X8. This would also contribute that the OPPO Find X8 does not throttle the MediaTek Dimensity 9400, at least not noticed during the two-hour gaming sessions that we had.

Battery and speakers of the OPPO Find X8:

Using the newer Silicon Carbon Anode battery, OPPO Find X8 packs a bigger battery pack of 5,630mAh in such a small and thin chassis. Wired charging duties are handled by the included 80W adapter, taking about 45 minutes from 10% to full. OPPO Find X8 has wireless charging of 50W when used with compatible wireless charging solutions from OPPO. It is also capable of reverse wireless charging your other devices, at 10W.

Another improvement of the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 over its predecessor is its efficiency. One hour of gaming only consumed about 11% of the juice in the 5630mAh battery. That’s about a 50% consumption improvement over the MediaTek Dimensity 9300. Impressive, as it means the OPPO Finc X8 would easily complete the day with more than enough battery power even with heavy usage throughout the day.

The stereo speakers on the OPPO Find X8 are sufficient to enjoy games, videos, and music. It doesn’t get very loud, with good highs and mids. It is lacking in bass for the oomph, but overall they do the job they are assigned to well enough.

The Cameras:

OPPO continues the collaboration with Hasselblad with OPPO Find X8. Image processing as well as a plethora of Hasselblad filters are available as options when taking pictures with OPPO Find X8 cameras.

The main camera duties are handled by a 50MP Sony LYT-700 with a 1/1.56” sensor, f/1.8 aperture, and 24mm focal length. This main camera performs very well in daylight. The colours are accurate, with good detail and clarity. It handles dark areas and night shots just as well, but some more signs of processing. The 2x digital zoom that utilizes this camera offers a good crop, though I would prefer to use the optical telephoto camera for any zoom.

The telephoto is also a 50MP Sony sensor, the LYT-600 with a 1/1.95” sensor. It is a 3x optical camera with f/2.6 aperture and 73mm. The telephoto camera is as good as the main camera, with plenty of details, clarity, and colors being accurate. This telephoto camera is also optically stabilized, producing images that are usually sharp. With OIS, the digital 6x crop zoom using this sensor captures images that are very good as well.

The OPPO Find X8 is also able to go all the way to a 120x zoom, with AI Processing taking over when it detects a zoom reaches 60x and above. The AI touched-up images are rather usable in the daytime, but I would rarely want to exceed OPPO Find X8’s 10x zoom.

The last of three rear cameras is the 50MP Samsung JN5, 1/2.76”, f/2.0 15mm sensor, which is pretty good in day and night with more processing. Rounding up the cameras is the 32MP front selfie, a Sony IMX615 1/2.74”, f/2.4 sensor with 21mm focal length. The results are good, just not exceptional.

OPPO Find X8 can capture 4K60 videos with all four of its cameras, though only the rear three camera does it with HDR or Dolby Vision.

Software:

OPPO Find X8 ships with Color OS 15, on the base Android 15. OPPO claims to have optimized the OS for a smoother experience. AI features are found on the OPPO Find X8, such as Gemini chatbot, Circle to Search, AI Toolbox with AI Summary, AI Speak (read aloud text), and AI Write (compose text). Also included is the AI Studio, which uses AI to render portrait shots into stylized versions of the portraits.

There are also the usual AI editing tools found within the Gallery that were already present in Color OS 14, namely AI Eraser (which has gotten better at filling up the image), AI Ultra Clarity, and AI Unblur. Most of these AI functions will require an internet connection to the servers to work.

Unfortunately, we were unable to check out Color OS and the AI functions much deeper given the short time we had with the OPPO Find X8, but overall Color OS 15 does feel smooth and no lags were noticed even with many apps opened in the background.

What I Liked About the OPPO Find X8:

• The nice feel of holding the OPPO Find X8 in the hands
• The price
• Exceptional gaming performance
• Great looking display
• Cooler gaming temperatures
• Fast charging, with wireless and reverse wireless charging

What I Wished Was Better:

• LTPS panel instead of a LTPO panel

Verdict:

OPPO Find X8 is an excellent smartphone as a daily driver and for gaming use. The only downside, if I were to nitpick, is in the camera and imaging department, but the OPPO Find X8 well serves the normal users that are not that demanding in image quality.

Priced at a low RM3,699 and offering the latest MediaTek Dimensity 9400 flagship chipset, 16GB RAM with 512GB of storage, the OPPO Find X8 is an incredible value-for-money smartphone.