© Provided by T3 Oppo Find X2 Pro
Welcome to T3’s Oppo Find X2 Pro review. We’ve gone hands on with the Chinese smartphone manufacturer’s most advanced handset ahead of its release in May, to bring you everything you need to know about the new phone.
Well save you some time: it’s a phenomenal phone, and it’s the best-value top-tier Android handset in 2020’s set so far. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a better phone (or a nicer screen) for the same price.
Oppo Find X2 Pro
© Provided by T3 (Image credit: Oppo)
(Image credit: Oppo)
Dimensions: 165.2 x 74.4 x 9.5mm
Weight: 200g
Screen: 6.7-inch, OLED, 120Hz, 3168 x1440 pixels
CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 865
GPU: Adreno 650
RAM: 12GB
Storage: 512GB
Rear cameras: 48MP, 48MP, 13MP
Front camera: 32MP
Battery: 4,260mAh, 65W fast-charging
OS: ColorOS 7.0 based on Android 10.0
5G: Yes
© Provided by T3 (Image credit: Future) Oppo Find X2 Pro: Price, release date, what's in the box
The slickly-packaged Oppo Find X2 Pro contains the handset, a pair of wired USB-C earphones with two bud size options, a translucent gel case, and a USB-to-USB-C charger. The headphones are perfectly serviceable and suitable for most (I road-tested them during a few runs and had few complaints) but they're by no means bassy or well-constructed enough for serious audiophiles, who will obviously want to trade up.
The phone will cost £1,099, £300 cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra. It's still very expensive by most phone standards, but the Find X2 Pro provides all the features you'll really use from the S20 Ultra at the same massive size, along with the same incredible processing power and top-of-the-line specs. Due out in May this year, you can pre-order the Find X2 Pro now.
Oppo is putting great stock in the Find X2 Pro’s incredible 6.7” display. Much has been made by Oppo of the QHD+ screen, which houses its “True Billion Colour Display” technology, said to be able to create depth and detail within colour like never before. It is a sumptuous screen, and the buttery-smooth 120Hz refresh rate is as good as advertised whether putting the screen through its paces watching blockbuster movies, simple vlogs and games footage, which the screen supports with up to 60FPS (the standard high-quality gaming framerate).
In particular, due to the 20:9 ratio, the phone is well-suited to cinematics: it’s always a pleasure to watch a great scene fill the phone’s enormous screen and see the slick motion and deep colour settings in action. It’s great in everyday use, too: with a 240Hz touch sampling rate, it’s sensitive and responsive, with no noticeable drag when scrolling through apps or on the home menu.
Even using it in bright sunlight was a breeze, as the phone positively glows with 1200 nit on-screen brightness. However, the automatic brightness adjustment, said to be based on ambient light, worked better moving into darker climates than it did when moving from pocket to bright sunny day, so a little bit of manual tweaking might be necessary here.
This is all the result of Oppo’s O1 Ultra Vision Engine with a built-in independent display chip, which is said to intelligently enhance image quality performance. While we can’t speak to the activity going on behind the screen, from a front-of-house perspective, Oppo’s display was never anything less than magnificent for the few weeks we used the phone. We’d comfortably call it the phone’s best feature, which on a phone this good is definitely saying something.
Under the screen Oppo Find X2 Pro’s fingerprint sensor proved fast and responsive: I had a better time unlocking this phone than the Samsung Galaxy S20, for example. The only negative was the area where the leather backing meets the rest of the phone’s metal casing on the long edges: there is a small sharp “lip” of raised metal which made me a little bit nervous. It wouldn’t take much more than a glancing blow on the edge to cause damage to the phone’s display. However, it’s a nitpick.
Away from gushing about the display, the design choices of the phone are consistently high quality. We had the orange vegan leather phone to test, which retains a premium feel and is a pleasure to hold, but the ceramic black version also provides a great look and feel to the handset.
My only complaint? The garish orange is a little bit too big and eye-catching to use comfortably on the London tube. The power button and the volume rockers are all ergonomically placed: holding the phone in either left or right hands provides no awkwardness, despite the huge size.
© Provided by T3 (Image credit: Oppo) Oppo Find X2 Pro: Camera
Oppo Find X2 Pro’s rear camera array consists of a 48MP wide-angle lens, a 48MP ultra-wide angle and a periscope 13MP telephoto lens with up to 60x digital zoom. It doesn’t quite have the enormous power of the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra’s frankly brobdingnagian 100x “space zoom” functionality, but we’re not sure the phone really needs it.
As it stands, at the full 60x digital zoom, there’s not a lot of detail worth taking a photo with. It’s probably a useful spying tool though. At mid-range, the camera shines, with its wide-angle and ultra-wide angle capturing beautiful scenic shots and eye-popping colours. The camera’s 48MP sensor, the Sony IMX689, works with the phone’s Ultra Vision camera system’s algorithm to create great photos and consistent colours even in low light.
© Provided by T3 (Image credit: Future)
This is likely the camera function you’ll be using most often and Oppo has worked hard to take a lot of the heavy lifting off your shoulders when just snapping a photo offhand. Some comments on the phone have complained of slightly muted colours in low light, but it’s not an issue we’ve found in using the phone thus far.
Actually, the processing ends up with a very natural finish, with no artificial colour-popping or over-processing. Its night mode is particularly good, able to shoot and capture detail with almost no ambient light.
© Provided by T3 The Find X2 Pro is capable of hitting vibrant colours, as seen here with the blue and green hues (Image credit: Future)
It’s able to record footage in stunning 4K. However, one small disappointment is the inability to continue recording in such high definition and switch to the ultra wide-angle lens, as 4K recording is limited to the phone’s primary lens. The 32MP selfie camera is great, picking out fine details in both foreground and background with almost no in-app tweaking.
© Provided by T3 (Image credit: Future)
There are a few software bugs in some of the more esoteric camera functions. Oppo’s in-built Soloop software, for editing your videos on the fly, is a little fiddly in places: the things we didn’t want, such as filters, were very easy to add while the things we did want to do, such as trimming and duplicating segments of footage, were awkward and counter-intuitive to implement.
Google Lens, an Android functionality which is pre-loaded onto the Find X2 Pro's camera setting, searches the net for items viewed on your camera. It was consistently, laughably inaccurate. It thought my PS4 was alternately a wall-mount and a black leather clutch bag, and almost nothing I focused on was identified correctly. This feels like a Google app that was brought to market a little too early.
© Provided by T3 (Image credit: Oppo) Oppo Find X2 Pro: Performance
Oppo Find X2 Pro is based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865, the same 5G chipset as the Samsung Galaxy S20 series, and that should give you an indication of the phenomenal performance available here. With 12GB RAM and 512GB storage at your disposal, the Find X2 Pro is powerful and fast, processing high-resolution photos, edited videos and performing everyday tasks with speed and ease. GPS tracking, at least with apps like Google Maps and MyMyRun, is accurate and responsive.
Its ColorOS 7.1 goes a long way here. It’s ergonomic and user-friendly, allowing you to get where you need to go with minimal fuss. It’s pre-installed a lot of Google software: gmail, Chrome as the default browser, Google GBoard, but it assumes you’re already coming from an Android background, and most people on this phone will be.
For those already invested in Google’s mobile economy, the setup is a breeze and ridiculously easy to use, especially if you're used to Android devices before. Combined with the speed of the phone, it’s a real premium package.
The battery is where things could have really fallen down on the Oppo Find X2 Pro. With a gargantuan 120Hz, super-bright screen gobbling up power, the 4,260Hz battery takes a real hit during the day. It will comfortably retain charge all day with conservative, but not spartan, use of the handset on its lower setting, but who really buys a phone liek this and doesn't us the more powerful settings?
The saving grace is Oppo’s 65W fast-charging tech: plug the phone in when you first wake up, complete your morning routine and after an hour, it will see the average user through the day after you leave the house. However, there’s no fast wireless charging functionality, which is a huge omission when compared to other premium smartphones like the Huawei P40 Pro and the S20 Ultra. It's the one real setback we feel truly knocks the phone when compared to its contemporaries.
Oppo Find X2 Pro: Verdict
One of the best screens we’ve ever seen on one of the fastest Android handsets we’ve ever used, combined with the best price for an ultra-premium smartphone this year. The Oppo Find X2 Pro doesn’t always outstrip its competitors in the performance or camera stakes, but it’s an eye catching, high-spec, wonderful handset.
Anything you find you'll use day-to-day on an ultra-premium handset, and then some, can be found here. It seems to have stripped a lot of the gimmicky bloat away from other flagships, keeping what works and discarding what doesn't get used. From the vegan leather backing to the fantastic display, I felt excited while using it, and that tells me more than numbers on a spec sheet ever could.
It’s obviously not the cheapest smartphone on the market (at well over £1,000), but its well worth the money if you’re considering a premium Android bit of kit and don't want to splurge the better part of £1500 on a phone like the S20 Ultra or the Huawei P40 Pro Plus. One of the best phones of 2020 has just arrived, and we’re not even halfway through the year.