OPPO Find X7 Ultra review: Should you buy it?

I was hugely impressed by the camera quality and versatility of the OPPO Find X6 Pro. Unfortunately, the phone’s availability was extremely limited, but its photography capability almost made it worth importing for serious mobile photographers. Almost. The OPPO Find X7 Ultra builds on the successful formula by introducing a 6x periscope zoom camera. It’s another 50MP sensor — four in total — although it’s a smaller sensor at 1/2.51-inches. The 2.8x zoom has a large 1/1.56-inch sensor and a narrower aperture than the phone’s other lenses at just f/4.3. Of course, building a sizeable long-distance zoom lens in a phone is difficult, but I’m not expecting the additional periscope camera to be quite as good as the other three, despite OPPO’s “Quad Main Camera” claims.

Still, its long-range specs are very comparable to the best in the business, and OPPO claims that its four high-quality cameras offer versatility you won’t find anywhere else, particularly regarding accurate focal lengths and less reliance on digital zoom. Let’s let some samples do the talking. I also grabbed the well-regarded Google Pixel 8 Pro and the new Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra to see how the phone stacks up.

Just like the Find X6 Pro, color, detail, exposure, and white balance are all very, very good across all four rear lenses. The phone also performs admirably in low light, even without the aid of night mode. But I’m paid to be pedantic: contrast and saturation can be a little high in some scenes, HDR isn’t quite as robust as the Galaxy S24 Ultra, and the dynamic range of the 6x periscope isn’t as quite good as the other three lenses in trickier lighting. But none of these will ruin your pictures.

My biggest criticism is the level of chromatic aberration in bright daylight, a symptom of pushing those lens apertures a little too far. Likewise, there’s some distortion at the edges of the ultrawide lens that again points to hitting the limits of such a small lens. Still, you’ll rarely come away with a bad-looking snap, whichever lens you’re shooting with, and that’s more than I can say for most other smartphone cameras I’ve used.

I love to zoom when shooting and spent a lot of time moving between the four lenses. I never once worried about receiving an inferior picture by zooming to the wrong level. In fact, this year, I felt much more confident about pushing the phone to longer distances with the new 6x periscope camera.

I found the new second periscope lens very usable at 10x and even a little beyond, so it keeps pace with the competition at a distance. But you also benefit from the 65mm lens for macro and portraits, something you don’t get with the best from Google and Samsung. Even if you’re not a fan of the camera’s Hasselblad image processing (I’m a convert to the recent less saturated implementation), the consistency across lenses makes this camera array stand out.

Speaking of, the Find X7 Ultra excels at portraits, even if the selfie camera’s ultrawide field of view distorts face shapes somewhat. While slightly softer than competitors, mainly while using the selfie camera, you’re always greeted with pleasing lighting and exposure, fine details but not overly sharp skin textures, and solid skin tones. Paired with the natural bokeh and 65mm focal length from the 2.8x zoom lens, the Find X7 Ultra’s portraits are worthy of a moderate mirrorless. Especially when compared to the overly rough Pixel 8 Pro or overly punchy Galaxy S24 Ultra. It’s miles ahead of the iPhone’s washed-out faces. If you’re big into taking pictures of friends and family, the Find X7 Ultra is an outright winner.

While the pursuit of perfection may be endless, OPPO has come as close as anyone with the Find X7 Ultra. Undoubtedly, this phone has one of the more consistent and versatile camera packages on the market. Combined with 4K60 recording capabilities on all lenses, robust video stabilization, and 10-bit HDR Dolby Vision, the Find X7 Ultra should be on every mobile photographer’s and videographer’s radar, and raises the bar for flagship camera phones.

As great as the OPPO Find X7 Ultra’s camera is, it takes more to be a great smartphone, and this flagship doesn’t scrimp here either. You’re treated to a brilliantly vivid 120Hz dynamic refresh AMOLED display, luxurious vegan leather casing on the back, familiar OPPO trimmings like 100W SuperVOOC wired and 50W wireless fast charging, an IP68 rating, and a speedy Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor.

On paper, the hardware is top-tier, and the phone is equally exquisite. The faux leather is lovely to hold, and OPPO has made the humungous camera housing look stylish. This is a seriously sumptuous smartphone.

However, we have reservations about the phone’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 implementation. For starters, we couldn’t install Play Store benchmark apps on our review unit, and the spoofed APKs we installed scored pretty lowly in GeekBench 6 and PCMark 3.0 unless putting the phone into its high-performance mode. Worse, our graphics stress tests caused the handset to display an overheating message and drained a ton of battery. Still, I didn’t have any problems running apps and games on the phone, but our results suggest the Find X7 Ultra might struggle to keep up with the most demanding users in the long term.

The Chinese version of Color OS 14 (Android 14) installed is equally disappointing. I eventually navigated through Baidu and the finicky keyboard to install the Play Store and my familiar app ensemble, but it was a frustrating experience. Even after a lot of work, you can’t remove all the apps and services that are useless for a Western audience. Potential importers beware. Looking past the roadblocks, Color OS 14 is a perfectly usable take on Android 14, boasting plenty of customization options and slightly overly aggressive battery management.

The OPPO Find X7 Ultra turns things back around in the battery and charging departments. The 5,000mAh battery is enough to take power users through a full day, but our benchmarks suggest the Find X7 Ultra doesn’t quite have the longest battery life in a super-size phone. The battery drain while running our gaming benchmark is particularly worrisome, but it’s likely the GPU is running at full tilt, which doesn’t happen in most games. Still, Color OS’ aforementioned aggressive background task killing can take you into a second day of lighter use. If you need to top up, the phone can draw 85W from the wall to hit full in just 30 minutes. Speedy.

Overall though, the software setup and lack of warranty makes it impossible to recommend the OPPO Find X7 Ultra to global consumers despite the otherwise solid hardware package. Hopefully, OPPO’s recent agreement with Nokia will see its flagship smartphones return to Western shores in the near future.

With OPPO Find X7 Ultra availability limited to China, the phone is out of reach of most consumers. Thankfully, there are plenty of brilliant alternative flagship handsets to pick from, even if they aren’t quite as stylish as OPPO’s wonderful vegan leather.

• Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra ($1419.99 at Samsung): If you’re looking for an ultra-premium Android flagship you can buy virtually anywhere in the world, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is hard to beat. As you’ve seen, it sports a solid quad camera setup, serious screen real estate, cutting-edge Galaxy AI features, and an S Pen for added productivity. Not to mention familiar high-end trappings that include wireless charging, an IP68 rating, and high-end performance thanks to its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chipset.
• Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max ($1199 at Amazon): For those willing to venture outside the Android ecosystem, Apple’s iPhone 15 Pro Max is a gargantuan phone built for power users. With ultra-durable battery life, speedy A17 Pro performance, solid video recording capabilities, and a wonderful titanium build, this is a fine pick when shopping at the top of the market.
• Google Pixel 8 Pro ($999 at Amazon): While not quite in the same price category as the rest of this list, it’s impossible to ignore the Google Pixel 8 Pro when talking about camera phones. Google’s latest flagship is an incredibly consistent shooter that won’t disappoint the discerning photographer. It’s not a top-tier gaming handset, but it boasts Google’s latest AI capabilities to help get more done than your typical flagship phone.