OnePlus 8 Pro Review – It’s still worth buying in 2021

It goes without saying. OnePlus 8 Pro is a flagship smartphone released in 2020 with the motto “Lead with Speed”. It packs in a flagship chipset along with a stunning curved display with a high refresh rate, blazing-fast Warp Charge, 48MP quad camera, and more. It is a premium-grade smartphone offering a much better outlook compared to OnePlus 7 Pro released a year before. It is a mesmerizing device in terms of design and has clean software as well.

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After testing the phone for 10 days, here’s a detailed hands-on OnePlus 8 Pro Review that you must read.

OnePlus 8 Pro is on sale on OnePlus. and Amazon India in three colour variants – Ultramarine Blue, Onyx Blue, and Glacial Green. It is available in two storage trims. The base 8GB+128GB variant fetches a price tag of Rs 48,999/- while the topmost variant with 12G+256GB storage is available at Rs 53,999/-. There are a bunch of offers and deals available including the OnePlus Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger at Rs 3,790/- and so on.

Before we talk in detail about the OnePlus 8 Pro let’s see what the on-paper specs look like?

• Display: 17.22 centimeters (6.78-inch) 120Hz Fluid AMOLED display
• Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 865
• Storage: 8GB/128GB
• Software: Oxygen OS based on Android 10
• Rear cameras: 48MP+8MP+48MP+5MP
• Front camera: 16MP
• Battery: 4510 mAh, Warp charge 30T
• Weight: 199g
• Dimensions: ‎16.5 x 0.9 x 7.4 cm

OnePlus has made a few changes with the OnePlus 8 Pro from the last year’s OnePlus 7 Pro. The pop-up front camera module is gone and instead, 8 Pro uses a tiny punch-hole cut-out that doesn’t eat much of the screen real estate.

The back is a frosted glass with a matte and anodized metal finish that looks premium. I had an Ultramarine Blue and it looks so spectacular that you won’t feel shy to flaunt it.

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Albeit the phone is taller, its width and thickness have remained the same (as of the OnePlus 7 Pro) which is bang on given the fact that it now has a larger battery and a wireless charging coil too. The rear camera has been reworked with a vertically stacked setup at the centre and protrudes a bit above the back panel as well.

The phone has a curved display on top with rounded edges which collectively enabled the OnePlus 8 Pro to achieve such an impressive screen-to-body ratio. It has a metal frame around the periphery that prevents it from any sort of damage. The phone isn’t all curvy though but just feels more comfortable to hold and use with its boxy-form factor now.

OnePlus 8 Pro is an amazing piece of technology and it cannot be denied. The display is huge and there is so much in the chassis, it is a bit hefty at 199 grams although it is solely based on perspective.

And yes, the phone comes with an official IP68 water and dust resistant rating which means it is secured against 1.5m in water for 30 minutes and you are still liable to get a replacement or repair as it will continue to stay under warranty for water damage.

Buttons and port placement remain the same with the OnePlus 7 Pro. This includes a physical alert slider and a power button on the right whereas the volume rockers are on the left side. There’s a secondary mic on top. OnePlus 8 Pro has the slightest of divots along the top edge which it has drawn for aesthetic purposes. Finally, the bottom gives you a well-balanced triple-section housing a USB-C port at the centre, a bottom-firing loudspeaker, and a SIM card tray on opposite sides.

OnePlus 8 Pro is fitted out with a 6.78-inch Fluid AMOLED 10-bit panel capable of producing 1B colours. The display has a 120Hz refresh rate with an HDR10+ certified display. The display is 1440×3168 pixels resolution and has a 513 PPI density.

OnePlus has bumped the refresh rate from 90Hz on OnePlus 7 Pro to 120Hz on this one. Although going up from 60Hz to 90Hz is a huge jump, the jump from 90Hz to 120Hz isn’t that of a major leap. Thus, if you are coming from a 90Hz smartphone, apart from the optimizations that the OnePlus 8 Pro offers with the HRR mode, you would feel much of a difference in many cases.

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One thing that pops up when it comes to 120Hz mode is that it applies the HRR on its whole QHD+ display where Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra can achieve 120Hz to FHD+ only. This improves the overall viewing experience to a great extent.

The display lights up at 538 nits on manual peak and 888 nits on auto peak brightness. Although it is still amazing for viewing the screen under broad daylight, we were able to reach the advertised 1300 nits. This is because companies usually choose a test pattern to advertise brightness and depending on that, the number can be huge.

The device is equipped with Motion graphics smoothing which is a feature that implements more frames in a 24fps or higher video playback to bring out smooth video transitions. It is something TV makers use to sell TVs with HRR for content that is not meant to be bumped up.

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Overall, the display is punchy, colour-accurate, with inky blacks and luminous whites and the display supports HDR10+ content. The front punch-hole snapper isn’t as distracting though as people think.

OnePlus 8 Pro packs in a 2020 flagship chipset Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 5G. Built on a 7nm node, the chipset has a tri-cluster arrangement. It includes a single high-performance Kryo 585 core clocked at 2.84GHz plus three Kryo 585 cores clocked at 2.42GHz and four power-efficient Kryo 585 cores clocked at 1.80GHz. There’s an Adreno 650 GPU that handles its graphics. Two storage trims include 128+8GB and 256+12GB UFS 3.0 storage.

If the numbers are your concern, the OnePlus 8 Pro scores 3374 points on the multi-core test on GeekBench 5.1 along with 902 points on the single-core. On AnTuTu 8, the device scored 573,276 points that the successor iPhone 11 Pro Max by an inch.

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The device comes with a pro-gaming-grade flagship chipset so what do you expect from it. It can handle anything and everything you throw at it be its day-to-day tasks, hardcore apps, and graphics-intensive games, and more. Games are its finest chops as they can handle even the most graphics-drenching games effortlessly.

I was able to play Fortnite and some other high-octane titles at the highest fps and graphics possible. The device comes paired with blazing-fast LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 storage that makes it powerful enough to do a lot more than you can think. The phone rarely gets warm when subjected to usual tasks. Even if going through hardcore tasks, the chipset rarely budges.

OnePlus 8 Pro arrived with Android 10-powered OxygenOS 10 out-of-the-box and has since got various iterations of Android 11. It has since entered OxygenOS 12 Open Beta at the time of writing this review which brings Android 12 on board. With this, the device has received a tonne of features from both Android from Google and OxygenOS from OnePlus.

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I have been using OxygenOS 11 for a while now on the OnePlus 8 Pro and it is highly optimized for carrying out operations with ease. This includes a super clean interface with smooth 120Hz HRR support as well as Widevine L1 certification. OnePlus 8 Pro is covered with two major Android OS upgrades and three years of Android security patches.

OnePlus 8 Pro is packed with a quad rear camera setup. This includes a 48MP primary snapper with f/1.8 aperture, Laser AF, OIS, omnidirectional PDAF; a secondary 8MP telephoto sensor with PDAF, OIS, 3x optical zoom, and an aperture of f/2.4. There’s a tertiary 48MP ultrawide snapper with PDAF, f/2.2 aperture, and a 116-degree field of view. Finally, there’s a fourth 5MP colour filter camera on board. About the front camera, there’s a single 16MP snapper with an f/2.5 aperture.

OnePlus 8 Pro has a 3x hybrid zoom, after which it uses a telephoto sensor to get up to 30x digital zoom. Plus, the 8 Pro uses various systems of autofocus including laser AF, contrast AF, and PDAF. The primary sensor by default uses the 4-in-1 pixel binning method and thus, grabs shoots at 12MP. All the shots had a neutral colour tone, a good amount of details, and the textures looked natural. You don’t get any noticeable noise in broad daylight. The ultrawide snapper uses pixel binning as well as capturing 12MP shots or you can go full-blown with 48MP.

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The ultrawide snapper has a Super Macro mode that you can use to capture shots with subjects at close distances. The super macro shots were amazing compared to the 2MP macro shooter available on the OnePlus 8.

The telephoto shooter can go as high as 30x although as you move above the latter on the zoom level, the noise level increases manifold. Overall, the telephoto shots were of good-quality and impressive details which is something OnePlus isn’t making a big fuss out of unlike many other OEMs out there.

Low Light photography on the OnePlus 8 Pro does a good job capturing details and highlighting shadows areas. Nightscape which is OnePlus’s dedicated night mode does a good job taking snaps at night although some scenes might look artificial. The ultrawide snapper has a night mode too although it isn’t that robust so shooting with it could prove a bit inconsistent.

I captured a few portrait shots and to be honest, OnePlus has an A-game when it comes to subjected separation and adding bokeh effects using the rear and the front camera for that matter. You can even go for portrait shots on the telephoto sensor if you want.

OnePlus hasn’t included 8K video recording on the OnePlus 8 Pro which is something a bit disappointing. Apparently, OnePlus can add it via a software update (or it might have added it) based on when you are reading this. The rear camera is capped at 4K 60fps at 21:9 and 16:9 aspect ratio. The selfie shooter is capped at 1080p@30fps though.

The 16MP selfie shooter is among the weakest although it grabs quality shots at daytime. Skin tones look decent in HDR mode and the shots are overall well processed. The indoor shots using the selfie shooter turned out to have softer details with artificial lighting.

OnePlus 8 Pro has a beefy battery pack of 4,510 mAh capacity under its pristine chassis. I tested the phone in both 60Hz and 120Hz settings where the latter is, of course, battery drenching. Turns out the phone is available to score 18:03 hours of video playback and 10:58 hours of web browsing. Switch on the 60Hz mode and you get 12:45 hours of web browsing whereas video playback since the latter is 60Hz irrespective of the high refresh rate mode.

The battery is capable enough to provide a battery life lasting a day on moderate to high usage. Even if you are into hardcore gaming, you will still get 5-6 hours of backup to play even the most graphics-laden games.

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Well, a 4,510 mAh battery is huge, and yet, it doesn’t go near 5,000 mAh battery packs mounted on LG and Samsung flagship phones. However, its stealthily fast Warp Charge 30T makes up for it charging the battery from 0 to 63 per cent in just half an hour. There’s a Warp Charge 30 Wireless as well that charges the battery to half limit in just 30-minutes. However, you would need an additional wireless charger to use this tech.

OnePlus smartphones have quick and reliable authentication methods. Similarly, the OnePlus 8 Pro offers both under-the-display fingerprint scanner and facial unlock systems on-board. The FPS is quick and reliable and more secure than other modes. Simply point the phone’s selfie camera towards your phone and it will unlock the phone faster than you can count a “second” to say it.

The loudspeakers produce deep bass and the vocals are clear and the audio as a whole has a fullness to it. OnePlus 8 Pro does go a bit ahead but the difference is negligible unless you know exactly what you are looking out for. The Dolby Atmos support further enhances the audio quality as well as spatial separation. I had a really good time watching HDR content on the phone with its exceptional stereo speaker setup.

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OnePlus 8 Pro packs in a lot of connectivity features. This includes dual-band Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth v5.1 covering aptX HD, A2DP, and LE. There’s NFC on-board along with USB Type-C 3.1, GPS including SBAS, Galileo, BDS, Glonass, and A-GPS. There’s no 3.5mm headphone jack available though which isn’t surprising for OnePlus flagship phones.

Pros:

• Wireless charging
• 120Hz Quad HD+ AMOLED display
• 5G connectivity
• Superb quad cameras

Cons:

• Similar design
• Non-expandable storage