Oppo Find X review

BBK's favorite dual-camera setup is on the Oppo Find X

So, here we are again. The Oppo Find X packs one very familiar dual camera setup where the secondary sensor doesn't have a clearly defined purpose or benefit. The situation is similar to what we saw on the OnePlus 6 and 5T, Oppo R15 Pro and R11s.

Of course, we can only praise the primary 16MP IMX519 sensor. Oppo claims it was co-developed with Sony, specifically for the pair. We appreciate the comparatively larger 1.22µm pixels that should enable better low-light performance. And in the Find X - the 16MP eye is optically stabilized.

The choice of the 20MP secondary snapper is what doesn't make much sense. It is not black and white, and it practically has the same field of view as the main one, so there are no ultra-wide or zoom capabilities. Not only that, but it has the same aperture, its sensor is a bit smaller at 1/2.8" and it has smaller pixels, at 1.0µm, compared to the primary 16MP snapper. That means that it isn't that much help with low-light shots either. So, it seems that its main purpose, beyond playing the PR numbers game, is providing depth information for portrait shots. Oppo says it helps in low-light too, but we are yet to see these promised benefits in any of the phones by the BBK brands - Oppo, Vivo, or OnePlus.

And while we are comparing, the Find X Oppo has F/2.0 lenses for both snappers, while the R15 Pro and the OnePlus 6 relied on brighter F/1.7 ones.

The single LED flash is somewhat a letdown, but that's what you get on the Find X pop-up module.

The camera supports automatic scene detection - you'll see a small icon when a scene is successfully recognized, and the software will tweak all settings accordingly. Food, snow, pets, sunsets, grass, among other scenes, are caught mostly correctly.

The interface has borrowed a lot from the iOS app, of course. Most settings are on the left (or top, depending on the orientation), while different modes are selected on the right next to the shutter key. Strangely, the left-hand side also has a few additional modes that didn't find a spot in the carousel on the right.

Just don't let the 2X switch fool you - it's purely digital zoom, so don't expect a good looking photo if you choose to use it.

Camera UI

There are a few settings, including location tagging and guidelines, separated out in their own menu in the phone's settings. There is a total lack of any clear resolution control for stills. All you get is a choice of aspects, between the standard 4:3 one, 1:1 and 16:9. It's not clear which aspect ratio is native to the sensor, and how choosing any of the other affects the resolution of the images.

Expert mode is available for those seeking more manual controls. It comes with a handy horizon level and can change most settings on the primary camera (this mode doesn't work on the selfie cam). The shutter speed control lacks fine adjustment, good mostly for very low-light shooting - it starts at 1s and increments at full stops to a maximum of 16s. Manual focus adjustment is present as well.

The Portrait mode offers a regular (2x telephoto-like) view, or you can opt for the out zoomed option from the dedicated virtual key.

Image Quality

The 16MP daylight photos we took turned out very good with lots of detail, excellent contrast, and lively colors. The dynamic range is surprisingly high even without the HDR mode. The samples are sharp enough, but not over-sharpened - that's how we like them.

Oppo Find X 16MP camera samples

The 2x pictures are just cropped and then digitally upscaled to 16MP, and you can tell right away. There is no optical-like zoom on the Find X.

Oppo Find X 16MP 2x camera samples

There is an Auto HDR option, but we turned that off. For some reason the HDR samples are over-sharpened, and the benefits in the dynamic range are debatable.

HDR off • HDR on

Here we are again - trying to explain what the secondary 20MP does in low-light. In theory, it automatically gets involved in specific low-light conditions - that's when you get a Night Scene prompt. With its 'intelligent' technology, it's supposed to merge 4 pixels into one to cancel out some of the digital noise.

If we do the math, this should leave us with a 5MP image but what we get is a 16MP one so the way we see it, it's either that this process is not happening as promised or the system is upscaling the photo back to the regular resolution.

All in all, this sounds like just what the OnePlus 5T and 6 are doing, though on the Find X you will always get a 16MP image, whereas the 1+ sometimes would spit out a 20MP one. But we don't need to guess how the cogs are working behind the scenes if the show on stage is good, right?

And it is. The 16MP samples we got from the Find X are quite impressive - detailed and with low noise levels. The alleged noise canceling, helped by the OIS, created some excellent photos and even the darkest of them had little noise. So, what's important here is not how we got the images, but that we got them. These are definitely among the better low-light photos we've snapped with a smartphone - having high contrast, pleasant colors, and a lot of preserved detail. Well done, Oppo!

Oppo Find X 16MP low-light samples

We always appreciate a camera app that offers manual controls, and we weren't disappointed with the Oppo Find X.

Oppo Find X 16MP Manual low-light photos

Finally, you can head over to our Photo compare tool to see how the Oppo Find X handles the controlled environment of our studio. We've pre-selected the Oppo R15 Pro and OnePlus 6, but you can replace those with any two other phones you feel like.

Oppo Find X vs. Oppo R15 Pro vs. OnePlus 6 in our Photo compare tool

Native Portraits

The Portrait Mode spits high-res 16MP images. The photos are very good - subject separation works well, there aren't many abrupt transitions from sharp to blurred, the bokeh is nice, and overall - those are among the better portraits we've seen.

Oppo Find X 16MP Portrait samples (Natural Light)

The Find X offers a few Portrait Lightning modes, but except for the Canvas and Mono-Tone, we found the rest to be pretty odd.

Film Light • Mono-Tone Light • Bi-Color Light • Canvas Light • Shake Light

Film Light • Mono-Tone Light • Bi-Color Light • Canvas Light • Shake Light

Selfies

Oppo is the home of the Selfie Experts, so it isn't a surprise that the Find X takes those very seriously. The X has a 25MP selfie cam with f/2.0 lens. It doesn't have autofocus, which isn't an issue in and of itself - it's just that the focus plane is all too close to the phone and if you stretch your arm a bit, your face is no longer in the focal sweet spot and hence - not as sharp as it could be.

The Oppo Find X offers the company's 3-HDR tech for the selfie camera. It's a combination of tricks that results into better HDR selfies with the HDR effect applied in real-time and visible on the viewfinder. You can turn that off if you like (disable the HDR Auto), but we'd recommend leaving it on - the HDR effect is excellent and a great image booster.

3D Smart Selfie Capture is available as well. Once you complete a 3D scan of your face, you can add minor adjustments to your facial features such as your nose or eyes. Then the AI will offer suggestions on how to pose and will edit your expression with your predefined settings. That's some next level faux-plastic-surgery, but it's there if you need it.

3D scan • 3D scan • 3D scan • Face correction • Face correction • Face correction

Anyway, the resolved detail with selfies is flagship-grade (in selfie terms of course) unless your face is too far from the camera when you'd get less than ideal sharpness. Otherwise, the colors and contrast are usually superb on all shots.

Oppo Find X 25MP selfies

The Find X may lack a secondary selfie sensor for the bokeh shots, but it seems to be using the 3D Face sensor for depth information just like the iPhone X did. At least that's what we think, as the Portrait Selfies look a lot like the regular ones in terms of detail and subject separation - a huge improvement over previous Oppo selfie snappers.

Oppo Find X 25MP Portrait (Default - Natural Light) selfies

Various Portrait Lightning effects are available here, too, but once again, only the Canvas and Local ones seem usable to us.

Rim Light • Face Light • Bi-Color Light • Canvas Light • Local Light

Rim Light • Face Light • Bi-Color Light • Canvas Light • Local Light

Rim Light • Face Light • Bi-Color Light • Canvas Light • Local Light

Finally, there are lots of stickers available to apply to your selfies. The sticker-enabled selfies are also captured at 5MP.

Sticker fun

Video recording

The Oppo Find X records videos in 4K and 1080p at 30fps. There is no digital stabilization (EIS) available in any resolution, only optical one (OIS).

There is also a slow-motion mode available, that can go up to 120fps in 1080p and 240fps in 720p. However, it is not done in the super slow-motion Sony or Samsung way, but rather in the traditional manner, where the phone simply captures a high frame rate video full-length, which it then plays back as a slow-motion clip.

The standard 4K video recording mode captures 2160p/30fps footage and it's encoded at about 42Mbps, on par with the other flagships. Audio is recorded in stereo at 96Kbps, though, which is far from impressive.

Overall, the quality of the 4K videos is superb with more than enough detail, great contrast and true to life colors. The dynamic range is high and contributes for some excellent 4K clips.

The 1080p videos came out a bit softer than we'd like them but kept the rest of the 4K recording highlights - the good contrast, colors, and dynamic range.

You can, of course, download untouched video samples, the way they came out of the Oppo Find X - 2160p at 30 fps (10s, 63MB) and 1080p at 30fps (10s, 26MB).

Finally, for some extra pixel peeping head over to our Video compare tool, where you can examine the Oppo Find X output against any phone we've tested before. We've pre-selected the Oppo R15 Pro and the OnePlus 6, but you can, of course, pick your own set of phones.

2160p: Oppo Find X against the Oppo R15 Pro and the OnePlus 6 in our Video compare tool