Oppo Find X2 Pro review: The Ultimate Alternative Flagship

Should You Buy The Oppo Find X2 Pro?

If buying an iPhone Pro 11 is out of the question and you don’t think you’ll miss the ability to charge your phone wirelessly, the Find X2 Pro is just about the best flagship Android handset you can buy right now.

Price when reviewed

In Australia, the Oppo Find X2 Pro is currently priced at AU$1599. You can also buy it on a postpaid plan using the widget below:

Oppo Find X2 Pro (2020) full review

Design - Look, Feel, Features and Camera

In Australia, the premium segment of the smartphone market has thinned out somewhat in recent years. Sony bailed on the smartphone market, HTC crumbled under the pressure, Motorola and TCL are sticking to what they know, Huawei have been held back by trade embargoes disputes and LG are still around but so very far from their prime. 

Apple remains dominant, of course. But if you’re looking at premium Android in 2020, the options really do come down to Samsung, Google and Oppo. And, even in such company as the Galaxy S20 Ultra and Pixel 4, Oppo’s new Find X2 Pro feels engineered to catch your eye. It’s hardly the first smartphone to rely on a leather back but, in a world of glass sandwiches, it makes for differences that’s both fast-felt and easily spotted. It also makes for a phone that’s a little easier to put down. 

Credit: Fergus Halliday

For obvious reasons, I found myself much less worried about damaging the back of the Find X2 Pro than other premium smartphones. When you’re spending this much on a phone, that peace of mind counts for a lot. The usual caveat applies here: who knows how well it’ll hold up over time? Right now, though, it’s slick as hell. 

In some ways, that sentiment is everything that needs to be said about the Find X2 Pro. 

At a glance, Oppo’s latest has a lot in common with last year’s Galaxy S10. With a softly-slanted glass display and glitzy stainless steel edges, it’s a confident continuation of the design chops that Oppo showed with last year’s Reno 5G. Like the above, the Find X2 Pro touts dual Dolby Atmos speakers, a USB Type-C port used for charging and a powerful triple-lens camera setup on the back of the piece. 

Unlike the Reno, the Find X2 Pro is also the first Oppo flagship to pack in formal IP68 water resistance. It’s a small sign of maturity for the brand, who have often promised water resilience but never gone so far as to attain the formal ratings found on much of their competition. 

Perhaps the thing that reminds me of Samsung the most is the focus on display here. The Find X2 Pro has a 6.7-inch QHD+ Ultra Vision Screen with 10-bit color, a maximum brightness of 1200 nits, a 120Hz refresh rate and a HDR+ certification. Unless the Galaxy Note 20 massively overperforms, it’s almost-certainly the nicest screen you’re gonna find in a smartphone this year. 

Credit: Fergus Halliday

Breaking from the legacy of its namesake, there's no pop-up camera on the Find X2 Pro. Instead, Oppo have opted for a Galaxy S10-style holepunch notch. The pros and cons of notches have been talked to death at this point but if you’d like to learn more, check out our guide here. 

The only thing you won’t find here in terms of premium perks is wireless charging. 

Despite joining the wireless power consortium back in 2019, Oppo has yet to release a single flagship with the feature. This omission is made even worse when you factor in that wireless charging is now a feature that mid-tier smartphones offer, courtesy of the iPhone SE. 

The Find X2 Pro might be cheaper than many other flagships but, when you’re paying this much for a smartphone, wireless charging is just one of those things you expect to find and it isn’t here. Realistically, it’s probably not going to be a dealbreaker for most but it remains the one false note in Oppo’s wider pitch as an alternative to the likes of Apple and Samsung.

Of course, once you go past $1000, camera quality is the area that arguably matters most. And, on that front, the Find X2 Pro all but assumes the lead. The front of the device features a 32-megapixel front-facing camera. The back of the device features a 48-megapixel wide-angle lens, a 48-megapixel ultra-wide angle lens and a 13-megapixel telephoto lens. 

Credit: Fergus Halliday

Like the Reno 5G before it, the Oppo Find X2 Pro supports up to 5x optical zoom, 10x hybrid zoom and 60x digital zoom. However, improving on that high level of performance, the new device also supports 12-bit RAW photography and and 10-bit video recording. 

Credit: Fergus Halliday

Credit: Fergus Halliday

As someone who has spent a lot of time with smartphone cameras this year, I found that the AI enhancement algorithms here sometimes weren’t as noticeable or consistent as what you’ll find in the Pixel or even Huawei’s still-formidable P30 Pro. 

Credit: Fergus Halliday

Credit: Fergus Halliday

That being said, in terms of the price and what it can do, the Find X2 Pro offers the best value flagship smartphone camera. You get the same high-end zoom found in last year’s Reno, plus improved low light and better wide-angle shots. 

Credit: Fergus Halliday

While having high-end zoom isn’t nearly as unique as it was last year, any comparisons to Samsung’s Galaxy S20 Ultra leave the Find X2 the beneficiary of inherited wisdom. Oppo's second attempt feels informed by their first. The autofocus is more reliable and the post-processing is more consistent.

Credit: Fergus Halliday

Like I said before, the AI image optimisation tech here isn’t quite as stunning as what the iPhone 11 Pro or Pixel can deliver but the baseline capabilities and the price still work to make the Find X2 Pro the more compelling blend of fidelity, flexibility and affordability. 

Performance - Specs, Software, Benchmarks and Battery Life

Specs

• Processor:  Snapdragon 865
  

• Operating System: Android 10 + ColorOS 7.1
  

• RAM: 12GB

• Storage: 512GB 

• MicroSD slot: No

• Headphone Jack: No

• Fingerprint sensor: Yes, in-display

• SIM: Single

• Battery: 4260mAh

• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, 5G, Bluetooth 5, NFC, GPS
  

• Rear Camera: 48-megapixel wide-angle lens (f/1.7), a 48-megapixel ultra-wide angle lens (f/3.0) and a 13-megapixel telephoto lens (f/2.2)

• Front-Facing Camera: 32-megapixel (f/2.4)
  

• Dimensions:  165.2 x 74.4 x 9.5 mm
  

• Weight:  217g

Software 

Software ends up feeling like something of a weak spot for the Find X2 Pro. 

As someone who couldn’t afford an iPhone when they bought their first Oppo device back in 2016, I usually dig ColorOS. However, my experiences with the Find X2 were plagued by weird software issues and haptic inconsistencies.

The edge-detection on the Find X2 Pro would sometimes prevent me from typing the on-screen keys on the right or left-most side of screen and, even when set to do-not-disturb or muted outright, the haptics in the device would often fire off for no apparent reason. 

This turned the otherwise ordinary experience of leaving my phone charging on the bedside table into something of a nightmare. It would - and did - often rumble through the night. Hopefully, this is something that Oppo can address through a software update sooner rather than later. 

Issues aside, the version of ColorOS on offer here isn’t a major advancement or evolution on  the overhaul introduced with last year’s Oppo phones. It’s got a slick night mode, a dedicated gaming mode and a new Pixel-style app drawer. It doesn’t feel as cohesively considered as Samsung’s OneUI or iOS but it’s a decent middle-ground between the two if you don’t want to choose between the fast-customizability of Android and the easy-accessibility of iOS. 

Benchmarks

Credit: Fergus Halliday

• PCMark (Work 2.0): 10031

• 3DMark SlingShot Extreme (OpenGL): 7113

• 3DMark SlingShot Extreme (Vulkan): 6353

• GeekBench (Single-Core): 902

• GeekBench (Multi-Core): 3268

• GeekBench (Compute): 2921

Battery Life

Of course, where the software is a mixed-bag, the battery life on the Find X2 Pro is arguably it’s biggest Achilles heel. Ultimately, it ends up feeling like a weakness borne of Oppo’s own ambition. 

If you’re using the device in a place with 5G connectivity, you’re going to get a significant difference in battery life here. 

Credit: Fergus Halliday

Used in locations where Telstra’s 5G network hasn’t yet reached, I found the Find X2 delivered a comfortable two-day battery life. On average, this worked out to around 5 or so hours of screen time. However, if I wandered into parts of Sydney where that have 5G, the battery life would drop much faster. I’d be lucky to get around two hours of screen time. 

The refresh rate here is another variable. You can turn the refresh down but I found it was much less of a significant factor here than 5G connectivity. Plus, if you're buying a phone like this for those advanced features, having to turn them off to get decent battery life sucks.

Run down with streaming video over Youtube, it took 14 hours and 5 minutes for the phone to run down from 100% to zero. This is a much better result than most other Android devices we’ve tested using the same method

The Oppo Find X2 Pro does not support wireless charging but does support VOOC fast wired charging via USB Type-C to the sum of 65W. 

The Bottom Line

After a few weeks with it, I’m unconvinced that the Find X2 Pro is the best phone you can buy right now. However, it is a clear winner when it comes to the value. It undercuts both the Android competition and Apple and, wireless charging aside, it has literally every feature in the book when it comes to flagship phones. 

That being said, the price that some of the more advanced features here exact made me think a lot about the problems facing premium in 2020. Opting for a more expensive device might get you a crazy-good camera, a bigger battery, 5G connectivity and a nicer screen. However, it feels like the cost of these inclusions on battery life and portability arguably makes the sum total less appealing than it ought be. 

Flagships like the Find X2 Pro tend to shine brighter but briefly compared to their mid-tier counterparts. Oppo’s Reno2 Z costs a third of what the Find X2 Pro does but the latter is certainly not three times more useful. 

In 2020, it honestly feels like the argument for spending this much on a phone is becoming harder and harder to make. For all they at excel on the fringes, the foundations here feel fraught. 

Still, with the Find X2 Pro, Oppo have all but taken the lead in the premium Android space. Its capabilities are constrained by the toll that 5G takes on battery life but when you’re this much cheaper than the closest competitor, it probably doesn’t matter if you don’t have wireless charging.

Credit: Fergus Halliday