OPPO Find X2 Pro Review: The Verdict
The Find X2 Pro is the arguably the high-end Android phone to beat right now. While it's not perfect, it comes close. A versatile triple lens camera setup and stunning display are let down by a battery that doesn't quite live up to OPPO's best, but the Find X2 Pro is still an excellent overall package.
What we love
- Fantastic cameras
- Excellent value
- Vegan leather finish is lovely
What could be improved
- Average battery life
- A few software quirks
The essentials
- Performance: Top tier, no complaints.
- Battery: One day of usage per charge, less if you have 5G switched on.
- Screen: One of the best screens on any smartphone.
- Camera: Excellent. Arguably the phone to beat in terms of photo quality and versatility right now.
85/100
OPPO gets better at making smartphones every year. Last year's Reno 5G marked the brand's transition to a genuinely premium manufacturer. It was a flagship smartphone that more than commanded its top-tier asking price.
The Find X2 Pro proves that was no fluke. If OPPO had offered more of the same, the Find X2 Pro would have still been a compelling device. Instead, OPPO has continued to push itself, implementing meaningful improvements almost across the board.
Thanks to these, the Find X2 Pro isn't just a great Android flagship. It's arguably the Android flagship to beat right now.
Conventional lover
- 6.7-inch Quad HD+ display
- Snapdragon 865
- 512GB storage, 12GB RAM
- 48MP + 48MP + 13MP
- 4,260mAh battery
From the get go, the Find X2 Pro is a little more conventional than past OPPO flagships. It eschews the pop-up camera of the original Find X and the Reno 5G for a camera cut-out in the top-left hand corner of the display. It's a shame to lose the stunning all-screen aesthetic from previous OPPO flagships, but the selfie camera is unobstructive for the most part.
The lack of moving parts necessitated by a pop-up camera make the Find X2 Pro a more practical smartphone. While it lose some wow-factor when compared to its predecessors, it gains IP68 water-resistance. That's a more than fair trade.
None of this is to say the Find X2 Pro lacks personality. One of the two finishes you can pick from is an orange "vegan leather", which frankly, is hot as hell. I love me a colourful smartphone, but there are also some practical benefits to leather. First and foremost is the grippy texture; it's a welcoming antithesis to slippery glass smartphones. It never feels like the Find X2 Pro is going to wiggle its way out of your grip.
Leather ostensibly means the phone is less breakable. Instead of two exposed glass surfaces, the orange Find X2 Pro only has one. While it's hard to test this empirically without some sort of torture routine, the Find X2 Pro bounced out of my pocket on a trail run, landing on its back. Other than two slight markings on the screen, it was otherwise unscathed. It's hard to tell exactly how much damage the leather back prevented, but I'd wager the phone would have been in a worse state if the back were also glass.
There's also a certain uniqueness to the Find X2 Pro's leather back. While OPPO is far from the first manufacturer to experiment with different materials - we've seen similar from LG, Motorola, and Huawei across the years - leather smartphones aren't exactly common. Given how similar smartphones have become, a slightly different finish is a win in itself.
Of course, caring for leather can have its own challenges. Since the material itself is synthetic, it shouldn't pick up a patina in the same way traditional leather will. I have however noticed a slight amount of discolouration where I normally rest a finger. OPPO says the leather has been treated to prevent oil and water damage, but you can use a pH-balanced leather cleaner in the case of stains. In addition, you should keep it away from ink, dye, or similar fluids. You probably shouldn't spill ink on any smartphone, for what it's worth, it's just definitely more of a concern when it comes to the Find X2 Pro.
If vegan leather isn't your thing, there's a more traditional Find X2 Pro available with a black ceramic back.
Shoot to trill
Camera quality is easily the area where OPPO's made the most improvement when it comes the Find X2 Pro. The Reno 5G camera was excellent, but the Find X2 Pro takes photo quality to the next level thanks to a more reliable zoom lens, a higher resolution ultra-wide lens, and improved lowlight performance.
On the back of the Find X2 Pro, you'll find three rear-facing cameras. The setup includes the following:
- A 48MP primary lens
- A 48MP ultra-wide angle lens
- A 13MP telephoto lens with 5x optical zoom
Using these three lens and some software magic, the Find X2 Pro is able to achieve up to 10x hybrid zoom. You can push this as a far as 60x digital zoom, but as with 100x digital zoom on the Galaxy S20 Ultra and the 50x on the Huawei P40 Pro, this mostly exists the sake of marketing. Even with a tripod, there's a good chance any photo taken at this kind of magnification will be a blurry impressionist mess.
When you're working within more reasonable confines, the Find X2 Pro's zooming capabilities are excellent. Even when shooting at 10x magnification, it's easy enough to frame up a subject. Hand shake doesn't affect your composition as much as with other long range zoom smartphones, making it easier to get the shot you want.
The Find X2 Pro camera app has four suggested zoom factors: 1x, 2x, 5x, and 10x. The below image compares the four:
Here's an image shot at 5x zoom:
And here's an image shot at 10x zoom:
Of course, zoom lens have a slower aperture by nature, which can make them slower to shoot. This makes them more prone to motion if you're got unsteady hands, or if you're shooting a moving subject, as seen in the following 10x photo:
At the very least, popping the Find X2 Pro on a tripod will compensate for any hand shake.
While telescopic zoom is clearly a drawcard, the Find X2 Pro's primary lens is excellent as a standalone shooter. It's hard to fault. It can take photos in complete darkness thanks to its night mode. Portrait shots have a lovely depth of field to them. The dynamic range is excellent. You'll get consistently great photos, almost effortlessly.
This photo was shot in an almost pitch black room at night:
Here's the same image with night mode switched on:
The Find X2 Pro's ultra-wide camera has had a significant upgrade from the Reno 5G, boasting a much higher 48MP resolution, up from 8MP. While resolution is hardly the most important part of a camera lens, the photos it takes are better too, especially when it comes to lowlight.
Ultra-wide lenses can often feel like a compromise when compared to a phone's standard lens thanks to fisheye distortion and worse lowlight performance, but this isn't the case on the Find X2 Pro. It's almost on par with the phone's excellent primary lens.
This photo was shot using the Find X2 Pro's ultra-wide lens at night:
For comparison, here's the same photo from the phone's primary lens:
The ultra-wide lens can also be used for macro photography, such this close up of a blanket:
All in all, the Find X2 Pro camera setup is as versatile as they get.
Almost a triple threat
The Find X2 Pro's sizeable 6.7-inch display is easily another defining feature. The panel is able to operate at Quad HD resolutions, while running at a refresh rate of 120Hz. Most other high refresh rate display smartphones make you choose between a higher resolution with a lower refresh rate, or a lower resolution at a high refresh rate. OPPO opting for both at the same time is awfully ambitious.
For reference, a conventional smartphone has a 60Hz refresh rate. This means it can display 60 images per second, versus 120 images per second on the Find X2 Pro. This makes motion on the Find X2 Pro look silky, and can be especially noticeable when it comes to animations and scrolling through apps. It's buttery smooth, like Chardonnay. When combined with the Quad HD panel, the effect is stunning.
Refresh rate and resolution aside, the Find X2 Pro display is simply gorgeous. It's wonderfully vibrant. It just pops.
Speaker quality isn't normally something I'd call out on a smartphone, but the Find X2 Pro genuinely sounds great. You're still going to want headphones nine out of ten times, but they're much better than what you'd expect to see on a phone. There's a surprisingly wide soundstage with a good sense of stereo separation. If you're watching a video and don't have headphones on hands, you won't be disappointed.
Oddly, the Find X2 Pro's Achilles Heel is battery life, which is atypical for OPPO smartphones. Most the manufacturer's handsets are easily able to hit at least a day-and-a-half, if not two. At best, the Find X2 Pro is only going to last a single day per charge, and is partially due the frankly ridiculous display.
Out of the box, the Find X2 Pro will set your resolution and refresh rate based on your activity. When it deems higher resolution or a faster refresh rate isn't necessary, it will tone down those settings to conserve battery life. With everything set to auto, I found I was only getting about four hours of screen time per charge, barely enough to make it to the end of a day with my usage.
Locking the resolution to 1080p+ and refresh rate to 60Hz created a more comfortable buffer, bringing my screen time to around five hours. It's an improvement, but it's a shame that you have to sacrifice a headlining feature to get there. For comparison, the iPhone 11 Pro Max can easily get between seven and eight hours of screen time per charge.
5G can also place a significant burden on the Find X2 Pro's battery. When connected to 5G, my screen time dropped to under three hours per charge - in some cases, as low as two. The drain was significant enough that I disabled 5G entirely. For me, faster mobile internet simply wasn't worth the trade-off in battery life. Given how taxing 5G is on the Find X2 Pro battery, I could only see myself reenabling it when needed; if I needed to download a large file in a hurry, for example.
While the Find X2 Pro's battery life leaves a little to be desired, freakishly fast charging almost makes up for it. A 10 or so minute charge can take the phone from flat to 40%. Around 40 minutes is enough for a full recharge. You'll need to use the bundled charger in order to achieve these speeds, however - you won't be able to top-up quite as fast with just any old wall plug. Fast charging doesn't quite balance out average battery life, but at the least, the sheer charging speed makes it a little easier to live with.
Not far from the tree
Even when OPPO makes a premium phone, it still tends to live up to the brand's value driven legacy. The Find X2 Pro is no exception.
At $1,599 outright, the Find X2 Pro isn't exactly affordable, but that becomes far more palatable when you consider the 512GB of storage you get out of the box. That's seriously compelling when compared to Samsung's Galaxy S20 Ultra, the phone the Find X2 Pro is ostensibly going head-to-head with. $1,999 gets you a 128GB Galaxy S20 Ultra, or $2,249 gets you 512GB. Hell, the $1,749 iPhone 11 Pro only has 64GB out of the box.
When compared to the Android flagship crowd, the Find X2 Pro is hard to beat when it comes to bang-for-buck. The only feature it's missing is wireless charging. For me, that's a much of a muchness. Your mileage may vary.
There are however a few software quirks worth being aware of. The Find X2 Pro's aggressive battery optimisation did result in a few delayed notifications from time to time In some cases I found notifications wouldn't appear until after I unlocked the phone, even after manually tweaking battery preferences for select apps. Turning off "Sleep Standby Optimisation" seemed to fix this, but you shouldn't have to jump through so many hoops to get notifications as they arrive.
OPPO Find X2 Pro - Final Thoughts
The Find X2 Pro is arguably the best Android flagship you can buy right now. It's not perfect, but every high-end Android phone on the market demands one compromise or another.
The Galaxy S20 Ultra is one of the priciest phones you can buy, its camera can be inconsistent, and the battery won't get you past a day unless you tone down display settings. The Pixel 4 design is a little awkward thanks to its bulky forehead, and the battery just melts. The Huawei P40 Pro has the strongest hardware combination around, but the lack of Google software makes it a no go for most.
The Find X2 Pro battery life should be better, especially given what OPPO achieves with its more affordable phones. It's unfortunate you have to disable some of the handset's coolest features to extend its life. Yet despite this, the Find X2 Pro offsets its compromises as best it can. Fast charging certainly helps, as does the fact that every other feature is very hard to fault.
OPPO Find X2 Pro camera samples
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