OPPO Find X6 Pro Camera Review – OPPO’s Best Phone Ever
No, I won’t talk about the class-leading 6.82-inch OLED screen with Quad-HD (3168 x 1440) resolution, adaptive 120Hz refresh rate, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision, third-generation LTPO OLED panel with 10-bit color depth and protected by Gorilla Glass Victus 2 today. I won’t talk about 100W SuperVOOC wired charging, 50W fast wireless charging, 10W reverse wireless charging, and the 5000mAh battery capacity either. I also have no interest in telling you about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, LPDDR5X RAM, UFS4.0 storage, Wi-Fi 7, and Bluetooth 5.3 support.
These are pretty common specs among the latest flagship models on the market so who cares?
Today we are going to talk about what really matters about OPPO’s latest flagship Find X6 Pro, the design and the cameras. The two things that make this beast special and unique.
Available in leather and glass body options, the Oppo Find X6 Pro design is a breath of fresh air in the sea of bar phones. The leather version is not only two-tone in terms of colors, but also in materials, with the vegan material interrupted from the middle of the camera ring by a glass section rising to the upper edge of the phone which looks and feels like metal. It looks beautiful and the leather gives a warmer feel to the palm, in addition to the added grip traction. The design also resembles some Hasselblad retro cameras from the past.
We also welcome the new camera island placement right smack in the upper middle not only because it looks more symmetrical and downright elegant, but also because it is more ergonomic. Previously we had to be careful that our index finger doesn’t get in the way of a photo or a video, but now that point is moot, plus we don’t have to hunt for the right camera sensor to center a shot when taking pictures from a closer distance.
Oppo typically puts a lot of thought into ergonomics in the design of its handsets, be they with foldable displays or not, and the new Find X6 Pro is no exception. It lies firmly in the hand, with a good grip thanks to the tapered back and slightly curved display, with even weight distribution between the top and bottom that facilitates the one-hand operation of the touchscreen. Speaking of weight distribution, the leather version is rather light for a 6.8-inch behemoth, especially compared to the ceramic model of its predecessor. At 216 g, the phone is actually rather light for what it is.
Triple main cameras with big sensors it’s almost like an end game of all brands of camera phones this year since there’s not much space for the existing technologies to support annual upgrades. You will probably find a lot of new flagship models coming with a similar multi-line setup but hard to figure out what exactly got improved. Even though the shooting experience could be improved, it’s hard to say how much progress in imaging it has made over top conditions. But the Oppo Find the X6 Pro is an exception. It’s done almost all it can do to construct a huge round module and the fact is that its upgrade of the cameras is so straightforward instead of just staying on the advertisement and so-called algorithm optimization.
So what’s the most effective way to improve the image quality of the three lenses? It’s quite easy to answer this question.
A bigger sensor and another bigger sensor and another bigger sensor.
This is their most aggressive solution ever. The 0.6x ultra-wide angle lens and the 3X telephoto lens both use the same Sony IMX 890 sensor, (OnePlus 11’s main camera). While the main 1-inch main camera uses the same Sony IMX 989 as the main camera of the Vivo X90 Pro Plus and the Xiaomi 13 Pro (and 13 Ultra), the biggest sensor size in the smartphone world as of now. We can even say that Find X6 Pro comes with three main cameras without any secondary lenses.
Let’s compare Find X6 Pro’s cameras with some rivals.
This is how much you can zoom with Find X6 Pro, from 1x to 120x.
The Sony IMX 890 has almost twice the size of other telephoto sensors on flagship phones. Because of the large sensor size, the Find X6 Pro’s telephoto camera couldn’t have a high X optical zoom. Although the default optical zoom option is 3x, you will find that the lens could be switched at 2.8 x if you manually zoom in. So it’s actually a 65-millimeter full-frame equivalent lens. There is also a 6X option and thanks to the huge size and sufficient pixels of the IMX 890 sensor, OPPO brought the in-sensor zoom technology to the Find X6 Pro’s telephoto lens, which delivers sharper detail and less noise than traditional digital zooms. Another impressive experience is the smooth zooming in and out between the 3 lenses. The image and the colors are almost consistent in the viewfinder when the lenses switch. The optical zoom brings a much more subtle detail compared to the other lenses. When switched to the 6X zoom the detail of the photos would be even further enhanced which is not only attributed to the excellent optical quality of the sensor but also thanks to the optimization of the OPPO MariSilicon X NPU over the past two years. The AI capacity allowed for further enhancement of the textures of various objects in the photos.
For the samples here we can see that the Find X6 Pro’s telephoto lens not only brings amazing detail to the photos but also achieves great consistency in color and white balance with the 1X lenses. And if you capture zoom-in photos a lot, I highly recommend that you try the 6X zoom on the X6 Pro. The big sensor zoom took better advantage of the huge number of pixels on the sensor and you no longer need to tolerate the slow capture speed and huge size photos in high-resolution mode and crop the pictures by yourself. On the X6 Pro, it’s really smooth and convenient. There’s no doubt that the ultra-wide angle lens with the Sony IMX 890 is the best ultra-wide lens I’ve ever experienced. It has no noticeable lens distortion and the best detail will be seen on an ultra-wide angle lens, The Sony IMX 890 sensor makes it no longer a disposable appendage with great dynamics and consistent colors and no more fringing.
Oppo succeeds to pull off sharp shots with great dynamic range and eye-pleasing color science, as well as excellent macros or portraits with deeper bokeh when using the periscope zoom camera only.
All 3 cameras also support Macro mode, Photos 1-2 is a Normal shot, and the Macro shot of the main camera, 3rd is 6x zoom.
When we move indoors with more complex lighting the Find X6 Pro’s telephoto lens even showed us a comparable dynamic range with a sample shot with the one-inch main sensor. The complex reflection on the surface is so fantastic as you can see with the naked eye and its colors are more vibrant and vivid.
When we came to the scene that ambient light was even worse and it is a common factor that in this case many flagship phones with the telephoto lens will auto switch to the main camera when it detects insufficient lighting. Because the smaller sensor on most telephoto cameras may get worse photos with optical zoom in low light, but on the Find X6 Pro we can see that the photos captured by the telephoto lens are substantially better than the 1X camera in terms of detail, color and dynamic range.
I tried shooting these samples in low lighting conditions to find out which lens is better for night shooting but there’s no absolute answer on Find X6 Pro which now is really up to users. No matter which lens you use it can handle well with night scenes. You just have to make sure that the composition is what you really want. The X6 Pro makes the lenses indeed a no priority, all three lenses are able to get the best photos at their own focal length.
Oppo didn’t stop here and leveraged its partnership with the storied Hasselblad camera company for portraits with natural depth of field and filters bringing that distinctive Hasselblad look. The new Hasselblad portrait mode is also impressive and available at 24 and a 65-millimeter focal lens, the simulated lenses bring a stunning bokeh effect and impressive contrast. The photos do look pretty accurate and natural as they claimed a new bokeh algorithm is applied here.
These Portrait shots of Ozy were taken with the 1x and 3x.
But when we zoom in you can see that the detail level of the telephoto lens is better, higher.
My other freelance models for the 2x zoom portrait shots
My only complaint about the Find X6 Pro is still not able to bring live previews to the camera App. I think users would be happier if they could see what they would get in the camera viewfinder. And the lack of a dedicated hardware camera button, wouldn’t it be nice?
In terms of video recording, OPPO didn’t pursue 8K resolution but put more effort into color and dynamic range for up to 4K videos shot on all the 3 lenses including a 6X option. The footage here shows that the cloud has a very rich transition without overexposure issues. Even when we switch to the telephoto lens the rich detail of the surface of distant objects can be captured very well. The record-breaking zoom camera kit lets you do excellent macro shots from distances as close as an inch, just as you would on a DSLR camera, plus you can record 4K video with the telephoto camera from afar and get that natural depth of field portrait video look in low-light scenarios as well.
This is the first time I feel that smartphones are finally catching up with some portable digital cameras for video shooting. Another great surprise is the capacity of shooting Dolby Vision video and it’s also a pleasure to play back the footage on a bright display that X6 Pro has. The Dolby Vision shooting seems to be more meaningful at the same time as we can see a more immersive dynamic image on the phone and its rich colors and high contrast easily pull us into memories of the shot.
Given the Find X6 Pro’s incredible improvement in all the lenses, especially the telephoto shooting, I think it’s likely to be the best camera phone of 2023. Everybody is talking about the 1-inch sensors but Find X6 Pro’s biggest gun is its telephoto (zoom) lens. There is no other like it (sensor size) on the market.