Oppo Find X6 Pro review

Why, Oppo, why?

I loved the Oppo Find X3 Pro in 2021 and was just as taken with 2022’s Find X5 Pro, two phones that set a high bar for design, performance, and camera quality on Android phones.

They were globally available handsets I could easily recommend alongside Samsung or Google. But the Oppo Find X6 Pro is only officially available in China, which makes it very difficult to recommend anyone in the US or Europe buy it.

That’s incredibly frustrating given the phone has one of the best smartphone cameras I’ve ever used. It doesn’t run the Google Play Store out of the box, immediately pigeonholing it as an enthusiast’s curiosity in the West.

Design & build

• Bulky design
• Huge camera module
• Matt glass or vegan leather

The Find X6 Pro takes a design change away from the Find X3 Pro and Find X5 Pro, no longer the glimmering silver metal of those two phones.

My review unit was a green matt glass – attractive and Gorilla Glass 5 enforced, but incredibly slippery. Luckily there was a good quality plastic case in the box with a vegan leather coating. There’s also a black version, both of which are 9.1mm thick.

I prefer the two-tone silver and brown vegan leather design of the other Find X6 Pro option to the one I reviewed, which is reminiscent of classic cameras. This model is 9.6mm thick. All three models are IP68 dust and water resistant.

If it wasn’t obvious cameras are the focus here, Oppo circled the phone’s main feature with a huge round module on the rear that houses three sensors, some of it glass and some of it textured. I don’t mind the look, and it’s good that it’s central as it means the phone doesn’t rock when used flat on a table, but it sure is huge, and makes the device top-heavy in the hand.

There’s bold camera branding with ‘Hasselblad’ and ‘Powered by MariSilicon’ stamped onto the back, but otherwise this design is unusually restrained for Oppo, with a subtle logo and plain shiny green rails around the edges of the phone.

At 218g it’s quite heavy but notably lighter than the 240g iPhone 14 Pro Max. The Find X6 Pro’s haptics are also excellent, with tightly clipped vibrations across the system that don’t rattle audibly.

The under-display fingerprint scanner works well too, and there’s 2D face unlock via the central selfie camera cut-out.

At 218g it’s quite heavy but notably lighter than the 240g iPhone 14 Pro Max

Screen & speakers

• Great 6.82in 120Hz AMOLED
• Energy-saving LTPO tech
• Loud dual stereo speakers

The Find X6 Pro has one of the best looking smartphone displays out there with a pin-sharp 1440 x 3168p resolution 6.82in AMOLED panel that refreshes smoothly at 120Hz.

With LTPO tech that refreshes the screen dynamically to save energy despite the high-end specs, it looks and feels like the premium screen it is. Apps and photos look incredible, and there are granular settings for you to change the colour profiles and resolution.

It’s slightly curved at the edges which I quite like on a phone as it makes the largest ones feel slimmer in your hand. Oppo claims it’s the brightest screen on a smartphone with a peak brightness of 2,500 nits. I’m inclined to believe it, as the thing is blindingly bright at 100% setting.

That superior screen is backed up by very capable dual stereo speakers. Even blasting music out of them at over 50% volume isn’t totally awful, much to my surprise, and they’re great for video calls and podcasts.

Oppo claims it’s the brightest screen on a smartphone with a peak brightness of 2,500 nits. I’m inclined to believe it

Specs & performance

• Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset
• 12/16GB RAM
• 256/512GB storage

You can get the Find X6 Pro with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB of UFS 4.0 storage at a minimum, but there’s also a 16/256GB version, which I reviewed, and even a 16/512GB version.

This is backed up by the excellent Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 across the board, a phenomenally powerful chipset with great energy efficiency.

These specs combine with the software to make the Find X6 Pro exceedingly snappy to use.

Oppo Find X6 Pro benchmarks

Everything flowed and loaded perfectly, and high-end mobile games are easily dealt with.

You also get physical dual SIM slots, USB-C 3.1, and a lesser-spotted infrared remote control for turning up the volume of the TV at your local pub, obviously.

Connectivity comes in the form of 4G, 5G, Wi-Fi 7 support, Bluetooth 5.3, and NFC for mobile payments. Despite the lack of native Google services, I got Google Wallet working fine with my Mastercard debit card in the UK.

Camera & video

• Amazing 1in main sensor
• Ultra-wide and periscope telephoto
• Oppo’s own imaging chip

This entire section should just be a massive chef’s kiss GIF (my editor wouldn’t have allowed it).

The Find X6 Pro’s main camera sensor is the best I’ve ever used on a phone, hands down. Thanks to its large 1in sensor size, I’ve taken photos that I simply could not have achieved on another phone – apart maybe from the Xiaomi 13 Ultra and Vivo X90 Pro, which also use the same sensor.

It’s not that I had to have any photography skills, either. The phone does all the work for you, combining excellent hardware along with the image processing of Oppo’s integrated neural processing unit (NPU) that tweak the images to their best.

The Find X6 Pro’s main camera sensor is the best I’ve ever used on a phone, hands down

This f/1.8 Sony IMX989 1in sensor is unprecedentedly large for a phone camera sensor, 156% larger than the main camera on the Find X5 Pro. The sheer volume of light it can let in is increased (up 142%), allowing it to better render a scene with accurate and sharp detailing, colours, and dynamic range.

I’ll let it speak for itself:

After taking photos, the MariSilicon NPU kicks in with some extra magic, processing the photos to almost too-good quality. The Xiaomi and Vivo competition are good too, and it’s hard to pick a winner. Admiring the Oppo’s quality helps when you view them all through the phone’s excellent screen.

With a larger than usual 1in sensor, the camera creates a natural bokeh (blur) effect where other phones have to create the effect with software – that’s why phones have portrait modes in the camera app. The Find X6 Pro doesn’t need much software help to shoot amazing, natural bokeh shots with the regular Photo mode:

Portrait mode at 1x and 2x also uses the main sensor. Oppo employs a bit of software with the Hasselblad branding from its camera-maker partnership, even showing pop-ups that explain how the sensors mimic physical camera lenses, though the 3x zoom mode switches to use the telephoto lens.

Here are two portrait mode shots using the main 1in sensor and then the 3x telephoto:

I would be happy if this phone only came with just the single lens, to be honest. But Oppo spoils you here with two supporting lenses that use the same Sony IMX890 50Mp sensor – one ultrawide, and one periscope telephoto.

The ultrawide captures a decent amount of detail and is one of the better examples out there with an f/2.2 aperture:

The telephoto lens can optically zoom up to 3x, which is good but not as far-reaching as the Google Pixel 7 Pro’s 5x or the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra’s 10x. Digital zoom goes up to a mad 120x.

This is what the zoom can do at various lengths:

Video is ably handled at up to 4K at 60fps on the main sensor, but the iPhone 14 Pro is still the gold standard for video clarity and processing at this price point.

A 32Mp Sony IMX709 front-facing camera doesn’t need the annoying beauty modes that Oppo has stuffed into the software and works very well in normal or portrait modes for photos or video calls, but it needs a bit of light or things are slightly washed out:

Battery life & charging

• Incredibly fast 100W wired charging
• 50W wireless
• 5000mAh battery

Another feather to the Find X6 Pro’s bow is the huge 5000mAh battery and amazingly fast 100W wired charging with the included charging brick and cable.

I charged the phone from 0% to 56% in just 15 minutes, and to 97% in 30 minutes. For comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra can only hit 43% in 30 minutes at a maximum of 45W, and it doesn’t come with a charger in the box.

Battery life itself is very good. I got more than a day and a half out of the phone when using it constantly, and this was backed up by PC Mark’s battery test, which scored an impressive 16 hours and 43 minutes. It’s so great to use a phone that has amazing battery life and charges incredibly fast.

You can also wirelessly charge the Find X6 Pro at 50W with an Oppo AirVooc charger, or at a slower pace with any Qi charging pad. Flip the phone over, and you can share its power with reverse wireless charging to Qi compatible earbuds and other devices, even phones.

Oppo says the battery will maintain up to 80% of its original capacity even four years after normal use of the phone and its fast charging. I can’t test that, but it’s encouraging to hear given smartphone batteries can often degrade considerably over this period of time.

Software & features

• Color OS 13.1 based on Android 13
• No Google services out the box
• Chinese software hard to budge

If you live in China, the Oppo Find X6 Pro’s software is absolutely what you’d expect.

However, if you live outside of China, the Find X6 Pro’s software is different enough to be its Achilles’ heel, and the main reason not to buy the phone. It’s so ingrained in the Chinese ways of Android that Western buyers will simply be frustrated or hindered.

There’s no Google Play Store out of the box. It’s possible to install, along with system-level support for Google services, but it took me two tries with a factory reset halfway through by installing Google Chrome from Oppo’s App Market app store, then downloading an APK for the Play Store.

If you want Google apps and services and don’t know what an APK is, you really won’t want to buy this phone.

In my three weeks with the Find X6 Pro things did work normally though. I got all Google apps working, and every app I installed from the Play Store worked no problem.

It’s more that the system is full of Chinese characters and pop-ups in places you might not expect, remnants of a phone that’s not been designed to run outside of that country.

System apps display in Chinese whereas you might expect them to run in English. Screensavers display Chinese news, landscapes, and adverts. ColorOS widgets are indecipherable.

It’s a real shame, as ColorOS 13.1 over Android 13 looks great, and is pleasingly playful, akin to Google’s Pixel software. In this instance though, the experience for a Western user is much better on the OnePlus 11.

I did my best to strip the phone back to essential Western and Google services, and it worked. But I felt annoyed at how often the phone reverted to Chinese when I didn’t expect it, and I wouldn’t want this experience for the asking price.

While Google apps and services play nice on the X6 Pro for now, there’s no guarantee of this into the future when you must sideload them in the first place.

Price & availability

The Oppo Find X6 Pro is only available in China and costs ¥5,999 for the 12GB/256GB model, which is about $830/£650 at the time of writing.

The 16/256GB model is ¥6,499 ($900/£700) while the 16/512GB model is ¥6,999 ($970/£760).

You can buy it direct from Oppo China.

The phone is not officially for sale in the US or UK, or any other country other than China for that matter. If you want to import it we suggest trying trusted consumer technology exporters such as Giztop, but you might find the prices are higher than the converted Chinese retail price.

Despite that, I don’t recommend importing the phone. You will struggle to claim on any manufacturing warranty if you buy a phone from a region outside of the one you live in, and especially from a grey market exporter.

Great alternatives to the Oppo Find X6 Pro come in the form of the best phones out there: the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, iPhone 14 Pro Max, and Google Pixel 7 Pro – phones with large screens, big batteries, and nearly-as-good cameras.

You should also consider Oppo stablemate OnePlus’s OnePlus 11 – a fine phone at a very reasonable $699/£729, though the cameras are a way off being as good as the Find X6 Pro.  

Verdict

The Find X6 Pro is Oppo’s best-ever phone and has one of the best, if not the best, main cameras of any phone ever made. If it was on sale in the Western market this publication is aimed at, this would be one of the best phones to buy. Probably a rare five-star rating – the camera is that good.

As it stands, I can’t recommend the phone to most people because you won’t get a proper warranty if you import it, and because of its Chinese software. If money is no object and you can afford the phone – and might only use it as a camera, not your main phone – then go for it. I got the phone working with all my apps, and you probably will too with time and effort.

But it’s an annoying experience daily with Chinese apps and script popping up frequently because you can’t truly disable all their instances. I would not want to rely on the phone always seamlessly supporting Google services either, and it’s a pain to keep the Play Store updated when it’s sideloaded rather than baked into the software.

It pains me because this really is the best main camera sensor on a phone I’ve used. Though, 1in sensors will probably make it to Western phones soon and those will be the ones you should buy.

For now, you should approach the Find X6 Pro with caution.

Specs

• Android 13 with ColorOS 13.1
• 6.82in 1440 x 3168 120Hz LTPO AMOLED
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
• 12/16GB LPDDR5X RAM
• 256/512GB UFS 4.0 storage
• Cameras:
  • 50Mp f/1.8 1in main sensor, Sony IMX989
  • 50Mp f/2.6 3x periscope telephoto optical zoom, Sony IMX890
  • 50Mp f/2.2 ultra-wide sensor, Sony IMX890
  • 32Mp f/2.4 front facing camera, Sony IMX709
• In-screen fingerprint scanner
• 2D face recognition
• Wi-Fi 7/6/5
• Bluetooth 5.3
• GPS
• NFC
• 5G
• 4G LTE
• IP68
• USB-C
• 5,000mAh non-removable battery
• 100W wired charging
• Up to 50W wireless charging
• Glass model: 164.8mm × 76.2mm × 9.1mm
• Vegan leather model: 164.8mm × 76.3mm × 9.5mm
• 218g/216g