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[THE LAB] - OnePlus 8 Pro Review by Dries Bleus Apr 15, 2020

superplus · Apr 20, 2020

superplus , Apr 20, 2020 :

DriesBleus said: ↑

I’m a bit of a pixel-peeper
Click to expand...

I wouldn't want it any other way Thanks for this thorough peeping, much appreciated!

DriesBleus · Apr 20, 2020

DriesBleus , via OnePlus 8 Pro , Apr 20, 2020 :

superplus said: ↑

I wouldn't want it any other way Thanks for this thorough peeping, much appreciated!
Click to expand...

Pixel-peeper Dries at your service! [e]1f601[/e]
Thank for reading!

YRJ · Apr 20, 2020

YRJ , Apr 20, 2020 :

DriesBleus said: ↑

PART IV: CAMERA

WARNING! I’m a bit of a pixel-peeper, so if you think I’m overreacting about the nitty-gritty camera stuff… you’re probably completely right. Anyway, on to the cameras!

On the back of the OnePlus 8, you're greeted by a 4 camera setup: A 48mp Sony IMX689 sensor with an f1.8 lens for standard shots, a second 48mp Sony IMX586 sensor with f2.2 120° wide-angle optics, and an 8mp sensor with an f2.45 3x telephoto lens. The fourth? A 5mp color filter sensor that, at least at this point, I find a complete and utter waste of space.

The gap between phone cameras and 'professional' DSLR' s or mirrorless cameras has definitely narrowed over the years, yet there are still a few areas where phones will fall short due to their inherently smaller sensor design (For example, less light will be captured, so it needs to add digital amplification of the signal to get a properly exposed and corrected picture, introducing noise in the process), but smart software manages to deal with such shortcomings for the most part.

The main sensor is surprisingly capable, and especially in 12mp mode it puts out some decent-looking images with accurate and vivid colors, excellent sharpness and -for the most part- dead-on exposure. HDR is quite strong, but it made a positive contribution to most shots, without overdoing it and creating an ugly fake look. In less-than-ideal lighting, HDR sometimes introduced noise in lifted shadows that I think should've been left alone, but overall I'm pretty happy with how it performs so I leave it on all the time.

The wide-angle module is not quite as good as the main camera -which is to be expected because they are optically much trickier to get right. Especially the corners of the wide-angle images are wonky, stretched out and soft, luckily that's not typically where the main focus of your image lies, so I can let that slide. Overall, I really like the images coming from the wide-angle camera. Not because they are technically perfect (spoiler alert: they aren’t!), but because the wide field of view gives even the most mundane topics (which is literally EVERYTHING I could find on my lockdown-allowed walk around the neighborhood) a more dramatic look.

THE THREE MAIN CAMERAS COMBINED MAKE FOR A VERY VERSATILE RANGE...
Going into 3x zoom, the telephoto sensor seamlessly takes over and still does quite a commendable job with good clarity, sharpness and contrast.

... BUT MAYBE 30X IS A BIT TOO MUCH RANGE
Zooming in past 3x takes you into digital zoom up to 30x handled by the telephoto camera, but please don’t go past 10x or so. It’s not pretty. Interestingly, the camera software scales up the digitally zoomed footage to the full 8MP file size, but it’s not difficult to realize that you’re not actually getting that resolution at the furthest end. These start to look like those images of a spotted bigfoot or the monster of Loch Ness. Ok well, maybe they’re not quite that bad…

Macro performance is absolutely brilliant, I have to say. It's also easy and fun to play around with (Luckily our dining table had this bouquet filled with absolutely stunning flowers to experiment with!). There’s no dedicated macro camera, but the wide-angle graciously takes care of all your closeup needs. You don’t quite get the extremely soft bokeh of a full-frame DSLR with a dedicated macro lens, but then again, this is cheaper than said DSLR…and also makes calls.

Low light performance is surprisingly well-behaved, probably in no small part due to the very large 1/1.4” sensor and pixel binning capability of the main camera, that lets it capture a lot of light. You start losing a tiny bit of detail above ISO800, but the noise is contained very well by the software. At ISO3200 the software processing becomes more apparent and the details are less crisp, but it’s still usable. In auto mode the ISO goes up to 6000, or 12500 in extreme cases, which is absurdly high for a phone camera. Results remain remarkably usable throughout that entire range, but obviously you shouldn’t expect pristine image quality above ISO1600-3200. For comparison, the S8+ shows its' age with a much lower ISO range (seemingly only up to ISO1250?), but that’s probably for the better because even at just ISO800 the image quality ship has long sailed.

I tried the ‘Nightscape’ option in my test setup, but the results were a bit of a mixed bag. Yes, in low-light the Nightscape mode managed to often stick to slightly lower ISO, creating sharper and less noisy photos. But it also sometimes completely missed the ball in determining whether or not the camera was steady enough to take long (8-30s, can be turned on or off in the settings) exposures. When propped up completely steady against a wall (in lack of a proper tripod phone mount) it used ISO 6400 and short shutter times, but some handheld shots were apparently steady enough for a waaay too long multiple-second exposure (clearly, they weren’t). It then proceeded to not care at all about how bad the end result would be, happily stacking exposure after mismatched exposure to create some kind of an avantgardistic mess. The image came out blurry AF (and I don’t mean AF as in autofocus) of course, but at least it did indeed stick to a lower ISO 1600 for better noise performance. YAY! Thanks but no thanks, camera. I included this massive failure in the test shot gallery, so you can laugh at my petty attempt all day if you want.

1080P CROP FROM A 48MP WIDE-ANGLE IMAGE
I also noticed that the camera software on the 8 Pro seems to have a bit of a processing issue. As a pixel-peeper first class, I noticed some strange artefacting going on in highly textured areas of the images (not always as pronounced), especially at further distances where the textures become very small. It looks almost as if the photos were processed through Google's DeepDream AI. Especially the wide-angle had trouble with this (mostly noticeable in the high-resolution 48mp mode), which I suspect is also the least sharp lens. And to be honest, my test photos are quite challenging in that most of them are just littered with grass, flowers and other tiny textures that the software will struggle on recognizing and sharpening appropriately. On a 48mp file (8000x6000 pixels!), you can zoom at your heart’s content, but at that pixel level, the camera can’t possibly still resolve those very tiny textures (it’s just not physically possible). A DSLR handles that resolvation a bit better, in that it has less depth of field to begin with, so far-away details will be blurrier. And the software does a better job of leaving those blurry areas alone to create a nice transition.

Difficult subject or not, it seems to me that the software just wants to oversharpen everything a bit too heavy-handed, I think it could do with a little less of that to create results that are a bit easier on the eyes. Then again, I’m pixel-peeping the hell out of this, so take my criticism with a grain of salt. When not zoomed in like crazy, all test shots look absolutely fantastic, even on a larger computer monitor they hold up very well. The results are so good, and the multi-camera system is SO flexible to use, that that DSLR started to feel very heavy and bothersome around my neck…

SELFIES WITHOUT (LEFT) AND WITH (RIGHT) PORTRAIT MODE
The 16MP front facing Sony IMX471 camera, despite being fixed focus (meaning that it doesn’t have autofocus to adjust for the best possible sharpness where you want it), is very capable in producing a decent selfie (although no camera will be able to make my face look good, but that’s another issue altogether). Images are sharp enough (although autofocus on that 16mp sensor would’ve probably pushed it a bit further) and again the phone spits out images that are quite pleasing to look at and properly exposed, straight out of the camera. The portrait mode blurs out the background but doesn’t overdo the effect. There are some parts of the edges that aren’t properly blurred out, but you wouldn’t notice it if you don’t zoom in.

If you want to get a bit more technical about the camera… (albeit with a slightly unscientific test setup, I must admit)

I wanted to take a look at dynamic range, which is important when you want to lift the shadows on a slightly dim picture or bring back a bit of contrast in the overexposed sky of your landscape shot. To test the dynamic range of the main camera, I underexposed a scene on the OP 8 and S8+ (both shot in pro mode RAW) as well as my trusty Canon 6D MkII DSLR, and then brought the exposure back up 2.5EV (or 2.1EV in the case of the S8+) using Snapseed or Lightroom mobile. For those of you that are a bit into photography, the Canon 6DmkII received a bad rep for having subpar dynamic range compared to other modern full-frame cameras, so let's see how the OP stacks up against it.

As expected, you get some noise and the colors start to go a bit wonky, but all in all the results after editing are decent and definitely good enough to be shared on social media or as digital content. I was pleasantly surprised by the well-behaved noise from the 8 Pro, which to be honest could compete with the full-frame sensor of the 6DmkII, and was noticeably ahead of the mediocre performance of the S8+ (even at almost half a stop less added exposure). OP’s raw mode seemed to have a noticeable green cast, making it a bit difficult to get a good white balance and hue dialed in afterward (both the S8+ and 6DmkII fared better in that regard).

Opening these test files on a large screen, you'll see that the camera on the OnePlus struggled. But in all fairness, the results from the 6DmkII were not much better if it weren’t for the larger (26MP compared to the 12MP RAW files of the OP 8 Pro) resolution that helped somewhat redeem the picture quality. Is it fair to compare a phone to a 3500$ camera setup? No, probably not. But the gap between phone cameras and full-fledged digital cameras is shrinking, fast. In reality, you’d probably never push the phone (or any camera) this far, but at least it goes to show how much latitude the camera has, for example in low-light situations. It’s a testimony to the remarkably good sensor and -in most scenarios- capable imaging software of the 8 Pro.

THE SAME YELLOW FIELD AS BEFORE. ONLY, NOT YELLOW.
Oh, I almost forgot about the color filter camera… well, that’s ok really, because I don’t see a use for it. The sensor is so low resolution (5MP) and supposedly has an infrared filter to let through certain parts of the infrared spectrum to give sort of an inverted look. The problem is, the camera is really quite potato-quality and the phone’s software deals with that by applying an unhealthy amount of sharpening. Not a fan. If you want to be a good hipster, use VSCO filters.

Another absentee in this review: video capture. For one I know nothing about videography. Secondly, on paper, it’s very good, up to 4k30p with ‘super stable’ stabilization or HDR (not both at the same time) or 4k60p without the stabilization, but I experienced consistent lag and stuttering at the start of the recording, which led to me sort of giving up (at least for now). Although I’m pretty sure OP will fix that with a software patch in the near future.

If you want to go on a pixel-peeping adventure through my test images, you can do so right HERE. I want to point out that all of these photos are straight-out-of-camera (except for the ones where I explicitly changed the exposure, obviously).

If you want to see a few very lightly edited photos (mostly just some hipster VSCO filters and minor overall tweaks, you can find those HERE.
Click to expand...

Wow! Loved the pictures. The Cameras have improved significantly
You are going great! Keep up the good work 👍

maarten_lisboa · Apr 21, 2020

maarten_lisboa , via OnePlus 6T , Apr 21, 2020 :

A good read with some very quality pictures to support it, job well done.
Best part is your camera review, very detailed and interesting thoughts in which I can agree. Goe bezig

DriesBleus · Apr 21, 2020

DriesBleus , via OnePlus 8 Pro , Apr 21, 2020 :

maarten_lisboa said: ↑

A good read with some very quality pictures to support it, job well done.
Best part is your camera review, very detailed and interesting thoughts in which I can agree. Goe bezig
Click to expand...

Thank you Maarten! unfortunately the images are a bit boring but you have to work with the scenery you have, in these times

DriesBleus · Apr 21, 2020

DriesBleus , via OnePlus 8 Pro , Apr 21, 2020 :

YRJ said: ↑

Wow! Loved the pictures. The Cameras have improved significantly
You are going great! Keep up the good work 👍
Click to expand...

thank you! I -as a bit of a camera snob- was certainly impressed with the performance! it's not quite the same yet, but you can make some very nice shots with this nonetheless!

AnonymousWP · Apr 21, 2020

AnonymousWP , Apr 21, 2020 :

@DriesBleus Great close-up photos! I like the comparisons between different manual settings.

Batman360 · Apr 21, 2020

Batman360 , via OnePlus 7 Pro Nebula Blue , Apr 21, 2020 :

Woah!!! One of my favourite reviews so far[e]1f60d[/e][e]1f60d[/e][e]1f60d[/e]

DriesBleus · Apr 21, 2020

DriesBleus , Apr 21, 2020 :

AnonymousWP said: ↑

@DriesBleus Great close-up photos! I like the comparisons between different manual settings.
Click to expand...

Thank you!

DriesBleus · Apr 21, 2020

DriesBleus , Apr 21, 2020 :

Batman360 said: ↑

Woah!!! One of my favourite reviews so far[e]1f60d[/e][e]1f60d[/e][e]1f60d[/e]
Click to expand...

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoy reading my ramblings!

Edward_ · Apr 21, 2020

Edward_ , Apr 21, 2020 :

DriesBleus said: ↑

The curvature on the 8 pro seems to cast a bit of a dark shadow with a slightly green hue on the side edges of the screen, maybe due to the way the Oled panel is curved? It’s not terribly distracting, but enough to notice. To be honest, I’ve sort of had it with the curved displays. It’s been nice for a little while, but that was three years ago and now I’d rather just have an undistorted, easy to operate screen. Because yes, the curvature does make gestures trickier, and you never quite get the full, unobstructed picture or movie you’re viewing in full screen (especially when you get blinded by the sunlight hitting those edges).
Click to expand...

Nice to hear an honest review.

As I've complained about many times before, curved displays are not fit for purpose. You've mentioned the glare and distortion that I can't abide, and have no doubt suffered a multitude of false touches due to your palm hitting the edge of the screen.

Please @Pete, do NOT make another curved-screen phone!

DriesBleus · Apr 21, 2020

DriesBleus , via OnePlus 8 Pro , Apr 21, 2020 :

Edward_ said: ↑

Nice to hear an honest review.

As I've complained about many times before, curved displays are not fit for purpose. You've mentioned the glare and distortion that I can't abide, and have no doubt suffered a multitude of false touches due to your palm hitting the edge of the screen.

Please @Pete, do NOT make another curved-screen phone!
Click to expand...

The accidental touches are quite limited in my experience, but maybe because I already came from a similar screen so I know how to deal with it?
But yeah the shadow and hue cast is certainly annoying and distracts from the otherwise excellent screen. With Samsung now going back to less curved edges, it feels like OnePlus is still a few years behind on that knowledge...

Maximus Decimus Meridius · Apr 21, 2020

Maximus Decimus Meridius , Apr 21, 2020 :

One of the best "reports". Thank you, Dries! @DriesBleus

DriesBleus · Apr 21, 2020

DriesBleus , via OnePlus 8 Pro , Apr 21, 2020 :

Maximus Decimus Meridius said: ↑

One of the best "reports". Thank you, Dries! @DriesBleus
Click to expand...

Thank you very much Maximus!

bezilz · Apr 21, 2020

bezilz , Apr 21, 2020 :

Great review, loved unbiased writings there... one thing though, who keeps their SLR photos on phone Waiting for further review.

Edward_ · Apr 21, 2020

Edward_ , Apr 21, 2020 :

DriesBleus said: ↑

The accidental touches are quite limited in my experience, but maybe because I already came from a similar screen so I know how to deal with it?
But yeah the shadow and hue cast is certainly annoying and distracts from the otherwise excellent screen. With Samsung now going back to less curved edges, it feels like OnePlus is still a few years behind on that knowledge...
Click to expand...

I don't know if the 8 is as bad as the 7, but here is the thread I started last year after attending the launch event.

I watch a ton of TV and movies on my commute every day (when I'm allowed to go to London!) and a curved screen would drive me absolutely potty.

DriesBleus · Apr 21, 2020

DriesBleus , Apr 21, 2020 :

Edward_ said: ↑

I don't know if the 8 is as bad as the 7, but here is the thread I started last year after attending the launch event.

I watch a ton of TV and movies on my commute every day (when I'm allowed to go to London!) and a curved screen would drive me absolutely potty.
Click to expand...

Yeah if you don't like curved screens I'm confident you won't like this one either. In harsh sunlight it can get annoying, although it's not as big of a problem indoors. I was kind of used to it at this point so I don't feel like it's a step back (it's just more of the same for me, haha), although I wouldn't mind if all the phone manufacturers would now just go back to flat(-ish) screens... But you know, it can always be worse: take a look at Huawei who decided to make the P40 pro curved on all four sides haha!

Edward_ · Apr 21, 2020

Edward_ , Apr 21, 2020 :

DriesBleus said: ↑

Yeah if you don't like curved screens I'm confident you won't like this one either. In harsh sunlight it can get annoying, although it's not as big of a problem indoors. I was kind of used to it at this point so I don't feel like it's a step back (it's just more of the same for me, haha), although I wouldn't mind if all the phone manufacturers would now just go back to flat(-ish) screens... But you know, it can always be worse: take a look at Huawei who decided to make the P40 pro curved on all four sides haha!
Click to expand...

Yes - form over function!

Don't get me wrong, these are beautiful phones to look at. Just unsatisfactory to use!

bagufix · Apr 21, 2020

bagufix , Apr 21, 2020 :

very good review

DriesBleus · Apr 21, 2020

DriesBleus , via OnePlus 8 Pro , Apr 21, 2020 :

bagufix said: ↑

very good review
Click to expand...

thanks!

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[THE LAB] - OnePlus 8 Pro Review by Dries Bleus Apr 15, 2020

superplus
Head Moderator Head Moderator Apr 20, 2020

DriesBleus
The Lab - OnePlus 8 Pro Reviewer Apr 20, 2020

via OnePlus 8 Pro

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The Lab - OnePlus 8 Pro Reviewer Apr 21, 2020

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The Lab - OnePlus 7 Pro Reviewer Apr 21, 2020

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The Lab - OnePlus 8 Pro Reviewer Apr 21, 2020

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Ice Cream Sandwich Apr 21, 2020

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Marshmallow Apr 21, 2020

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Honeycomb Apr 21, 2020

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Ice Cream Sandwich Apr 21, 2020

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Ice Cream Sandwich Apr 21, 2020

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