Oppo Find X8 review

A powerful triple camera setup

The regular Oppo Find X8 doesn't have the dual telephoto camera setup of the Pro model, but it is still a powerful system, dubbed the "Hasselblad Master Camera System". It offers plenty of versatility.

Just like the Find X8 Pro, the regular Find X8 has a 50MP main camera. Don't expect quite as potent hardware, though. The vanilla model uses a Sony LYT-700 sensor instead of the LYT-808. It is a smaller sensor still with a 1/1.56" size.

Thankfully, the absence of the second telephoto and the swapped main camera sensor are the only two downgrades to the camera setup compared to the Pro model. The 3x zoom telephoto is still based on the Sony LYT-600 imager. It's placed behind a new lens assembly that features two prisms, making it more compact.

The ultrawide camera is yet another 50MP unit based on the Samsung ISOCELL JN5. It's a pretty small 1/2.76" sensor. Still, the ultrawide does have auto focus, which makes it pretty versatile since it can double as a macro shooter.

• Wide (main): 50MP Sony LYT-700 (1/1.56", 1.0µm - 2.0µm), f/1.8, 24mm, multi-directional PDAF, Laser AF, OIS; 2160p@60fps
• Ultrawide: 50MP Samsung ISOCELL JN5 (1/2.76", 0.64µm - 1.28µm), f/2.0, 15mm, multi-directional PDAF; 2160p@60fps
• Telephoto, 3x: 50MP Sony LYT-600 (1/1.95", 0.8µm - 1.6µm), periscope lens, f/2.6, 73mm, multi-directional PDAF, OIS; 2160p@60fps
• Front camera: 32MP Sony IMX615 (1/2.74", 0.8µm - 1.6µm), f/2.4, 21mm, fixed focus; 2160p@60fps

Unfortunately, the iPhone-inspired camera key from the Find X8 Pro is not present on the vanilla Find X8.

The camera interface is pretty busy but also quite well-organized and not what we would call chaotic.

There is a pretty full-featured Pro camera mode as well.

Daylight photo quality

Main camera

The main camera on the Find X8 captures binned stills in around 12.5MP by default. These photos are very detailed and clean, with practically no noise in the frame. Colors look great and very natural.

Oppo Find X8: 12.5MP main camera samples

Here are some portrait mode shots at 1x from the main camera. Subject detection and isolation are great, and so is the quality of the background blur.

Oppo Find X8: 12.5MP main camera portrait mode samples

The main camera can do 2x digital zoom photos. These come out relatively sharp and detailed.

Oppo Find X8: 12.5MP main camera 2x zoom samples

Here are some 2x portrait shots as well.

Oppo Find X8: 12.5MP main camera 2x zoom portrait samples

Telephoto camera

The 3x telephoto on the Find X8 may not be able to focus too close (minimum focus distance is around 50cm), but it's pretty great for mid to long-range shooting. We're getting clean and sharp photos with just slightly too much digital detail processing. White balance is ever so slightly off.

Oppo Find X8: 12.5MP telephoto camera 3x samples

The telephoto camera works great for portraits. Detail is great, and so are the colors. Skin texture comes out looking particularly believable and natural.

Oppo Find X8: 12.5MP telephoto camera 3x portrait samples

The Oppo Find X8 lacks a second 6x telephoto like the X8 Pro, but it can still shoot digital 6x zoom shots with the existing 3x telephoto snapper. These look surprisingly competent, with great detail and just a bit of expected softness, particularly on surfaces.

Oppo Find X8: 12.5MP telephoto camera 6x samples

Ultrawide camera

The ultrawide photos have excellent sharpness and detail and no noise in bright daylight. Dynamic range is nicely wide, and color reproduction is quite pleasing.

Oppo Find X8: 12.5MP ultrawide camera samples

Selfie camera

We haven't been overly enthused by a number of 32MP selfies lately, and Oppo's implementations are on that list. The amount of detail in the frame doesn't match up well with the expectations set forward by the resolution, but if you learn to think of these as 10-12MP images and expect about that much detail from them (possibly downscale them, even), you should be reasonably happy. That said, colors and dynamic range are very good here.

No amount of rationalizations will change the fact that there's no autofocus, though. That's quite unfortunate, though the focal plane of this particular selfie is pretty wide and forgiving as is.

Oppo Find X8: 32MP selfie camera samples

Low-light camera quality

Main camera

At night, the Find X8's main camera does a wonderful job. It captures well-exposed images with a wide dynamic range, excellent shadow development and competent highlight preservation. It also maintains a very natural detail rendition - no extreme sharpening or watercolor-like effects. The Find wasn't fazed by odd lighting and kept its white balance in check while also delivering very likable output in terms of saturation.

Oppo Find X8: 12.5MP main camera low-light samples

There is an automatic night mode on the Find X8. It triggers on its own very dependably. Beyond that, there is also a manual night mode that sometimes offers longer capture times and more stacking, at least in theory. In practice, we didn't notice much of a difference in overall quality.

At 2x zoom, global parameters remain unchanged, but sharpness drops noticeably, and these images are best suited for viewing in small sizes.

Oppo Find X8: 12.5MP main camera 2x zoom low-light samples

Telephoto camera

The telephoto camera's results are more to our liking. The 3x shots have very good detail and look nicely organic. Dynamic range is excellent, and colors are pleasing too.

Oppo Find X8: 12.5MP telephoto camera 3x zoom low-light samples

At 6x zoom during the night, the phone relies quite heavily on algorithmic processing and particularly sharpening. Even so, these photos look surprisingly good. The detail is there, colors are nice and natural with well-handled light sources as well as highlights. Darker areas are less well-developed.

Oppo Find X8: 12.5MP telephoto camera 6x zoom low-light samples

Ultrawide camera

The ultrawide does a respectable job in its own context. Its images have good detail, dynamic range is excellent, colors are generally on point, with a hint of extra warmth here or there.

Oppo Find X8: 12.5MP ultrawide camera low-light samples

Video capture quality

The Find X8 records video up to 4K60 with all of its cameras - the three on the back and the selfie camera. There's no 8K capture mode (nor should there be), and there's no 24fps capability directly in sight.

The default codec is h.265, but you can switch to h.264. Dolby Vision capture is available, too, masked behind the HDR toggle in the viewfinder. There's also a Movie mode that works in a 21:9 aspect (so 3840x1648px, no other resolution), where you can tweak exposure parameters, focus and white balance.

'Regular' electronic video stabilization is available in all resolutions and frame rate combos, and then there's Ultra steady mode, which also works in all modes - go figure.

You can check out the playlist below, which includes multiple video samples.

4K video quality from the Find X8's main camera is great, with wide dynamic range, accurate white balance and vibrant colors. Detail is very good, but we still feel it could be slightly better. 2x zoom clips are properly soft. We'd avoid shooting at that level. The 3x telephoto captures nicely detailed videos during the day. At 6x, videos from the telephoto are a bit soft as well and slightly noisy too. The ultrawide's footage is slightly noisy in the shadows but still solid overall.

The main camera maintains its composure at night and returns very good results with well-balanced grain-vs-detail processing. The 3x telephoto is somewhat surprisingly good, too. We would probably shy away from capturing 2x and 6x digital zoom videos, though. The ultrawide, meanwhile, returns somewhat harsh highlights but isn't half bad overall, either.

Stabilization is very good on the Find X8, with only some imperfections on the main camera when walking - the final footage has a bit more shake as your foot hits the ground than we'd like. Besides that, all cameras are great at steadying your clips, and the telephoto looks especially impressive. Panning is quite smooth, too.