The OPPO Find X2 Pro is a great phone with one big shortcoming

OPPO Find X2 Pro release date and price

OPPO is entering the market very confidently with the Find X2 Pro. The Find X2 Pro and the somewhat slimmed-down Find X2, and will be available on the European market from May. For the 'small' OPPO Find X2, the Chinese manufacturer is charging a whopping €999. For the Find X2 Pro, OPPO would then like to add a surcharge of €200, so that at €1,199, it comes close to the price of the targeted competitors' Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, Huawei P40 Pro and Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max.

Beautiful, classy, and vegan

Anyone who has seen and held the OPPO Find X from 2018 may find the design of its successor somewhat boring. But in the crowd of current flagships, the Find X2 Pro's design doesn't stand out further, unless you have the version with "vegan leather". But don't be confused, in the past, we would have called vegan leather imitation leather. Anyway, the color is very noticeable, because this version is only available in orange. As an alternative, OPPO offers a version with a ceramic back for the Find X2 Pro, which is only available in black.

For our test, we had the version with vegan leather and matching gold metal frame. Another aesthetic feature is the OPPO logo embossed in a metal plate on the back. This accent makes the Find X2 Pro look like a small leather wallet of a noble brand. The Chinese manufacturer also very harmoniously frames the protruding camera unit in a gold metal frame.

Nice little detail known only to OPPO fans: the on/off button has a green strip. In the scope of delivery, OPPO also provides the Find X2 Pro buyer with wired USB-C headphones, the 65-watt SuperVOOC quick charger, a USB cable and a somewhat cheap transparent smartphone case, which doesn't quite do justice to a smartphone in this price range.

It's also a pity, as I mentioned before, that OPPO left the experiments with the retractable front cameras on the Find X2 Pro. But the phone now has an IP68 certification, which was not possible with the shark fin camera in the OPPO Reno 10x or with the Find X's pop-up camera from 2018.

A display to fall in love with

One of the absolute highlights of the OPPO Find X2 Pro is certainly the 6.7-inch AMOLED panel, which shines with a resolution of 3,168 x 1,440 pixels and can even offer a 120-hertz refresh rate. Interestingly enough, the display comes from Samsung and the question quickly arises: why can a third party manufacturer provide 120Hz at the maximum resolution, while Samsung as the manufacturer of the panel does not allow the option in its top smartphone, the Galaxy S20 Ultra?

Back to the 120Hz refresh rate: you can argue about the practical use. A refresh rate of 120 Hertz is not needed. Even 60 or 90Hz would have been enough. But let's be honest: we don't need resolutions beyond Full HD on a smartphone display, but we still think it's great to carry high-resolution displays around in our pockets. For my part, I have to admit that this display, even if it's not really necessary for everyday use, is awesome! It is bright throughout and displays colors realistically. If you switch to 120Hz, text and pictures fly smoothly over the display.

For everyday use, especially when it comes to media consumption on the smartphone, the OPPO Find X2 Pro has two more nice features. First, the display is an HDR10+ certified display. Moreover, OPPO provides its best smartphone with an own O1 Ultra Vision Engine Chip, with which SDR content is extrapolated in HDR and if possible adapted to the adjusted frame rate.

A big step in the right direction

OPPO has made a big leap forward in software. If you picked up an OPPO smartphone last year, you could tell from ColorOS 6 that it was designed for the Asian market. Icons were more colorful and the logic in the menus did not quite fit. However, the OPPO Find X2 Pro comes with ColorOS 7.1 and that is a good thing. The new ColorOS 7 is based on Android 10 and, in my opinion, is better adapted to the needs and tastes of the western world. Maybe OPPO has copied something from its sister brand OnePlus in terms of software. It's simple, fast, and well customizable, just as you want an OS to be. The only shortcoming of ColorOS 7 is that every now and then translations were wonky and I had to scratch my head.

A big question mark remains: what will happen with updates? After all, OPPO has only been officially active in Europe for a few months now, so we don't have that much experience with the update regularity and frequency of the manufacturer.

Full performance power

In terms of performance, one can hardly criticize OPPO's Find X2 Pro. The manufacturer stuffs everything that is good and expensive into this smartphone, which costs almost €1,200 let's not forget. The heart of the smartphone is Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865 platform including the X55 modem for connection to the 5G network. additionally, OPPO provides 12 GB of RAM (LPDDR) and 512GB of UFS 3.0 storage. Unfortunately, there is no possibility to expand the internal storage of the Find X2 Pro with SD cards.

In terms of performance, the OPPO Find X2 Pro definitely plays in the top league. Currently, we still lack the performance data of the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, but thus, the OPPO Find X2 Pro sets the bar for all upcoming top smartphones.

In everyday life, the OPPO Find X2 Pro proves to be a very powerful smartphone. Thanks to the 12GB of RAM, you can also keep memory-consuming applications permanently in the memory for fast access.

OPPO Find X2 Pro camera

During the development of the Find X2 Pro, OPPO placed great emphasis on the camera unit. The result is a triple camera system that, on paper, can easily compete with current top smartphones from Samsung, Huawei, and Apple. In detail, the camera units of the OPPO Find X2 Pro consist of the following components.

Cameras in the OPPO Find X2 Pro

The OPPO system is already unusual. For one thing, the Sony IMX586 has so far been used by almost all manufacturers before as a sensor for the main camera, but never for the ultra-wide-angle camera with an aperture angle of 120 degrees. OPPO has also received an image sensor from Sony, the IMX689, which has been specially adapted to OPPO's needs and specifications. For the first time, this sensor uses a technology called Dual Native ISO. Technically speaking, the sensor offers two native ISO values at which it delivers the best images. For dark scenarios, there is a high native ISO value, so that the image noise is minimized. The low native ISO value, on the other hand, is intended to improve dynamic range and color reproduction, especially in bright lighting conditions.

There are still so many innovations in this camera, so I decided to put the OPPO Find X2 Pro into the best hands in our editorial office, those of our Head of Photo and Video, Stefan, for the camera test and to skip a full review of the camera for this article. In the meantime you can read Stefan's review of the Galaxy S20 Ultra:

• Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra camera review: overwhelmed by new possibilities

Quick charging was yesterday

You might think the display is the best feature on the OPPO Find X2 Pro, or even the camera, but for me personally, the best feature is OPPO's own fast charging technology SuperVOOC. Thanks to the fast charging technology, you hardly have to worry about battery life anymore. If the battery display gets close to zero during the day because you simply forgot to charge it overnight, then simply turn on the power for 20 minutes and the OPPO Find X2 Pro battery is usually fully charged again. A complete charge of the 4,260 mAh (2x 2,130mAh) is fully charged after just under 35 minutes.

In terms of pure battery life, the OPPO Find X2 Pro cannot stand out from other flagship smartphones. Depending on the resolution and refresh rate, the OPPO Find X2 Pro managed between 7 hours 22 minutes (QHD+ with 120 hertz), 8 hours 50 minutes (QHD+ with 120 hertz) and 10 hours 14 minutes with Full HD+ and 60 hertz in our benchmark tests. In everyday life, I had no problems operating the new OPPO Smartphone from 7 o'clock in the morning to midnight and to finish the day with around 15 percent. Not too exhilarating you might think, but I reached this value with QHD+ resolution and the 120Hz refresh rate both switched on. The only criticism that can be made about the OPPO Find X2 Pro is the lack of wireless charging.

OPPO Find X2 Pro technical specifications