OnePlus 8 review
Our Verdict
The OnePlus 8 delivers solid operation, long battery life and 5G at an attractive price, but the cameras could be ameliorate.
For
- Excellent brandish
- Very adept battery life
- Powerful processor
- Good low-light photos
Against
- No optical zoom
- Middling photos overall
- Curved screen is prone to accidental touches
Tom's Guide Verdict
The OnePlus 8 delivers solid operation, long battery life and 5G at an bonny price, but the cameras could be better.
Pros
- +
Fantabulous display
- +
Very good battery life
- +
Powerful processor
- +
Good low-lite photos
Cons
- -
No optical zoom
- -
Middling photos overall
- -
Curved screen is prone to accidental touches
OnePlus 8 review: Specs
OS: Android 10 with OxygenOS
Display: 6.55-inch AMOLED (2400 x 1080), 90Hz
CPU: Snapdragon 865
RAM: 8GB, 12GB
Storage: 128GB, 256GB
Rear cameras: 48MP master (f/1.vii), 16MP ultra wide bending (f/2.2), 2MP macro camera
Front camera: 16MP (f/2.0)
Battery size: 4,300 mAh
Charging speed: 30 watts (included charger)
Size: 6.3 x ii.nine x 0.31 inches
Weight: six.three ounces
OnePlus has always courted a reputation as the telephone maker you turn to when you don't want to spend big bucks on premium features. That's as true as e'er with the OnePlus eight, especially as OnePlus courts the high-stop of the smartphone market with its more than fully featured — and college-priced — OnePlus eight Pro.
The OnePlus 8 lacks some of the flashier capabilities found in its upward-climbing sibling, but it's yet i of the best Android phones. It boasts a meridian-of-the-line processor, large battery and gorgeous display. Just as important, OnePlus has reined in the price on this model. It's not a deal on the level of the OnePlus Nord — assuming y'all tin go your easily on that upkeep phone — only the OnePlus 8 proves you don't take to put upwards four figures to enjoy a top Android phone.
Are the tradeoffs yous have to make for the OnePlus viii's comparatively lower price worth it? Our OnePlus 8 review finds that they more often than not are, though fans of superior mobile photography may exist put off by some of this telephone's compromises.
- OnePlus 8 Pro review
- OnePlus viii vs OnePlus viii Pro: Which telephone should yous purchase?
OnePlus 8 review: Price and release date
The OnePlus 8 costs $699, which gives y'all a phone with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. To bump the retention to 12GB and double the storage to 256GB, you'll demand to pay an extra $100. The phone goes on sale at Amazon and on OnePlus' website on April 29.
The $699 price for the OnePlus 8 is noteworthy, in light of the $899 OnePlus is charging for the OnePlus 8 Pro. By scaling back some of the features in this new round of flagship phones, OnePlus tin still offering a device that costs the aforementioned as the iPhone 11 and a total $300 less than the Milky way S20. (Nosotros've got an in-depth breakup on what features you're giving upward in our OnePlus viii vs. OnePlus 8 Pro comparing.)
Both T-Mobile and Verizon sell the phone. You'll pay a little fleck extra for the phone at Verizon, where a version that works on the carrier's 5G network costs $799. That works out to $33.33 a month over 24 months of payments. Before yous purchase the OnePlus 8 at Verizon, you should know that it has a dissimilar design than other OnePlus 8 models to accommodate the antenna needed to connect to Verizon's 5G network. That means cases that fit other OnePlus viii models won't fit the version Verizon sells.
Equally for T-Mobile, information technology'south selling the phone for $699, or $29.17 a month if y'all spread out payments over 24 months. A deal at T-Mobile lets y'all go the telephone for half off if you merchandise in an eligible phone or open a new line with the carrier. (Detect other OnePlus 8 deals in our guide on how to order the OnePlus 8.)
Because the OnePlus 8 includes a 5G modem, y'all'll exist able to use the telephone on those carriers' 5G networks where bachelor — though merely the Verizon variant will support millimeter-moving ridge connectivity for the fastest speeds possible.
Cheaper 5G-capable phones have come out since our OnePlus 8 review beginning appeared, highlighted by the OnePlus Nord, which costs less than $500. For now, though, that phone is only available in Bharat and Europe, equally OnePlus mulls whether to brand the Nord available hither. To get a cheaper 5G phone than the OnePlus 8, you'd have to turn to a device like the 5G selection of the Samsung Galaxy A51, which is now on sale for $549 at Verizon.
OnePlus viii review: Blueprint
If you've been post-obit OnePlus' virtually recent phone releases, you'll notice some changes with the look of the OnePlus 8. The pop-up selfie cam from the OnePlus vii Pro is gone, as is the OnePlus 7T'due south teardrop notch housing the front camera. Instead, the selfie cam now resides in a punch-hole cutout in the upper left corner of the OnePlus 8's brandish. And while the top and bottom bezels are still there, they're also as thin as they tin exist, and then that OnePlus can maximize screen real manor on this 6.55-inch phone.
Another deviation from the expect of by OnePlus phones is a switch to a curved screen on the OnePlus 8, where the edges of the brandish wrap around the tops of the phone's sides. It certainly creates a striking look for this phone, and it makes the OnePlus 8 easier to grip than phones with flat screens and rounded edges that seem to sideslip out of my hands with alarming frequency. Unfortunately, the curved edges too makes it easy to inadvertently tap a role of the OnePlus viii's screen when all you're trying to do is hold or pick up the phone. I've launched more than than one app I had no plans of tapping during my time with the phone.
For a phone with such a big screen, the OnePlus eight doesn't take upwardly that much space, at least when information technology comes to width. At 6.3 x 2.9 10 0.31 inches, OnePlus' phone is taller than the iPhone 11 (5.94 x ii.98 x 0.33 inches) and Galaxy S20 (five.nine 10 iii ten 0.31 inches), though not every bit wide. With 8mm of thickness, the OnePlus viii is also fractionally thinner than Apple's iPhone 11, so you'll have minimal problem slipping the OnePlus device into a pocket. At 6.3 ounces, it'southward lighter than the iPhone xi, too, though not as light as the v.7-ounce S20.
Where OnePlus has Samsung beat out involves colour options. Samsung's latest phones opt for some pretty conventional color schemes, but the OnePlus 8 mixes things up with a choice between the cool tint of Glacial Green and the shifting colorway of Interstellar Glow. I reviewed the latter color and I appreciated how the Gorilla Glass back of the OnePlus 8 scaled from cool purple hues at the top of the phone to a warm pink at the bottom — an upshot not unlike the heaven at sunset. Your conventional sunset is less likely to option upwards as many fingerprints and smudges as the back of the OnePlus 8, though.
Instead of the jutting foursquare camera bump that'due south become commonplace on flagship phones these days, OnePlus sticks the three rear lenses in a vertical array down the upper eye of the phone. I'm less probable to put my fingers over the OnePlus 8's camera when I hold the phone in landscape way this manner. The lenses do stick out noticeably from the back of the phone, though.
OnePlus has made much of the fact that the OnePlus eight Pro is the first of its phones to have an IP rating (IP68 to exist exact, which means can be submerged in upward to 5 anxiety of water for 30 minutes without damage). At that place's no such designation on the OnePlus eight, at to the lowest degree not on the unlocked version I'm using. (Carrier versions of the phone may exist a dissimilar story.) It'south a scrap of a bummer yous have to sacrifice this peace of mind for the less expensive of OnePlus's new flagships.
OnePlus 8 review: Display
If you pay upward for the $899 OnePlus eight Pro, y'all can enjoy a screen with a 120Hz refresh rate. OnePlus 8 users, all the same, must brand do with a 90Hz refresh charge per unit — which also happens to exist noticeably faster than the 60Hz charge per unit found on most phones these days.
I honestly don't think that this is much of a tradeoff between the two versions of the OnePlus 8. Aye, the Pro model features smoother scrolling and information technology has an MEMC mode to upscale Netflix and YouTube videos to 120 frames per second. But whatever improved scrolling you get from 120Hz vs. 90Hz escaped my center when I used a Galaxy S20 Plus (with its 120Hz refresh rate turned on) aslope the OnePlus 8's 90Hz screen. In other words, the OnePlus 8 lets you bask the benefits of faster scrolling at a lower overall price. And yous don't have to downscale the resolution on your OnePlus eight to savor this feature the way you practice on Samsung's S20 phones.
With a maximum brightness of 1,100 nits, the OnePlus 8'south AMOLED screen is plenty bright plenty to see in bright sunlight. When I went out to shoot photos with the telephone, I never had to max out the effulgence (and drain the bombardment faster) to encounter the OnePlus 8'south on-screen controls.
Watching trailers for both No Time to Die and Cats on both the OnePlus viii and Milky way S20 Plus, I idea the OnePlus viii matched up well against Samsung's more expensive telephone in the color section. Colors looked a little more than vibrant on the S20 Plus, just they besides had a blueish cast, particularly when James Bond or assorted Jellicle cats were skulking around in darker scenes of their corresponding movies.
Our test numbers deport that out. The OnePlus 8 registers 155.vii% of the sRGB color spectrum, which isn't as much as the S20 Plus' 222.4% result (though it does beat the iPhone eleven's 113% tally). But colors are more authentic on the OnePlus 8, which has a Delta-E rating of 0.25, compared to 0.36 for the Galaxy S20 Plus. A score of zero is perfect on this examination. You lot're getting an splendid display with the OnePlus 8 that captures colour well.
OnePlus eight review: Cameras
A bigger tradeoff that OnePlus viii owners accept to make, at least compared to the OnePlus viii Pro, concerns the cameras. While the Pro model features 4 lenses, the OnePlus 8 sports just three — and ane of those isn't a telephoto lens. Instead, the 48-megapixel main shooter with its f/175 discontinuity and 16MP ultra wide camera are joined by a 2MP macro lens. That's great, in theory, for taking detailed objects, just if you desire to zoom in, yous're at the mercy of a digital zoom that tin can add noise to your shots.
If yous shoot a lot of photos where yous can become upward close and personal with your subject field, the macro lens may come in handy, just I'd rather have a good zoom lens on my phone. If a phone does come equipped with a macro lens, I wish it performed more consistently than the one on the OnePlus eight.
While this close-up shot of a tulip organisation captures the folds and patterns of the purple tulip's leaf, likewise many of the macro shots I took with the OnePlus eight had too much of a blur that I didn't notice until I was able to look at my photos on a larger screen than the telephone's viewfinder. There's probably an art to taking macro shots, simply the OnePlus eight certainly doesn't aid y'all detect it.
As for the lack of a telephoto lens, you see the disadvantage OnePlus eight is working at when you stack information technology up against a phone capable of an optical zoom like the Galaxy S20 Plus. (The lower price S20 would be a better comparison to the OnePlus 8, but the S20 Plus is what I have on hand during this time of sheltering in identify.)
This shot of the Oakland skyline from beyond the San Leandro Channel shot at a 2x zoom looks generally the aforementioned on the OnePlus 8, as it does on the S20. But focus in on the buildings in the background, and you lot can see that they stand out more sharply in the Samsung phone's rendering. The S20 Plus also captures more gradients of blue in the spring heaven.
The more you zoom in, though, the greater the disparity becomes. The OnePlus 8 maxes out at a 10x digital zoom, and by that signal, the photo looks like nothing you lot'd intendance to share — everything's fuzzy and out of focus and the colors are decidedly muted. The S20 Plus can use lossless zoom to however deliver a focused photo where Oakland'southward Tribune Tower pops out confronting the sky and you tin can clearly read the Wells Fargo sign on the building next to information technology. If you count on your photographic camera phone to zoom in for more details, you'll desire to look across the OnePlus 8.
The OnePlus 8 makes a better show of it when you're turning to its other lenses for photos. OnePlus' telephone did a decent job with this jar of multicolored jellybeans on my porch, though it struggles with figuring out where the drinking glass jar ends and the mass of jelly beans begins. The Galaxy S20 Plus does a better job distinguishing between those two objects, even if it has a warmer color cast than I call up is accurate.
Note that the OnePlus viii uses pixel-binning with its master lens to nowadays 12MP photos with improve dynamic range. You lot have the option to switch to 48MP photos, though that feature works best in brightly lit scenes. In the example of the jelly edible bean jar, you become a photograph that'due south closer to what the S20 Plus shoots by default, with less glare from the glass jar.
The OnePlus eight seems to have trouble focusing with some photos equally I found out when photographing a basin of pork abdomen that whipped up for dinner. The glaze on the pork glistens in the OnePlus 8 shot, though y'all can't actually make out the individual grains of rice that the S20 Plus had a amend fourth dimension capturing. More than significantly, the kale salad in the groundwork of the OnePlus 8 shot is clearly out of focus, and not in an artistic way. It's just a mass of dark-green, whereas the S20 Plus is able to keep both the main dish and the salad in sharp contrast.
To see how the OnePlus'south ultra broad angle lens fares, I went to a nearby shoreline to take a photo of a statue in front end of some houseboats. I really similar the OnePlus eight's effort here, equally information technology produced a bright, well-equanimous shot that matches upwardly well against the Milky way S20 Plus' output. The S20 Plus darkens the scene a little too dramatically for my tastes, while the OnePlus accurately reflects what a sunny day it was when I took these photos.
Switching to the broad bending, though, the OnePlus 8 falters. The formerly bright colors are now fairly dull. Compare the xanthous trim on the houseboat — information technology pops in the S20's photo, while it looks muted in the OnePlus 8 shot. The bending on the S20 Plus is also wider, capturing more background detail.
There are few instances where the OnePlus 8 outperformed the Galaxy S20. The OnePlus 8's Nightscape manner, for example, does a superlative job in low-light. A mural on a local shop is even so heavily detailed in the OnePlus 8's photograph, even if the flowers in the upper right color got a little washed out. (The S20 Plus struggled with those flowers as well.) The S20 Plus, while showing more than coloration in the nighttime heaven, too imposes also warm of a cast, while the cool look of the OnePlus viii'due south shot feels like a amend representation of the scene.
Neither phone really stood out with their attempts to take a portrait of my girl, though I think the OnePlus 8 has the better overall shot. Information technology struggles separating her hair from the groundwork mistiness, communicable more than than a few strands in the bokeh event. But the colors are more accurate and vibrant, even if the OnePlus 8 has a footling bit of trouble with shadows on this vivid, sunny day. The S20 Plus removed all the colour from my daughter'due south face up, every bit both phones got over-aggressive with smoothing out her peel.
That same aggression with removing whatsoever blemish or freckle appears again when we switch over to the 16MP selfie cam on the front of the OnePlus 8. Like the Galaxy S20 Plus, OnePlus' camera software wants to make my skin look as shine as possible, accuracy be damned. I think the OnePlus 8 shot ameliorate reflects my skin tone than the S20 Plus, which makes it look like I'yard wearing bronzer. The background mistiness in the S20's photo is more stylish, though.
My testing of the OnePlus 8'south video capture capabilities hasn't been as extensive, but so far I like what I've seen. By default, you shoot video at 1080p/30fps resolution, though if yous dig into settings, you tin can upgrade to 4K video at 60fps. (Exist prepared to eat up a lot of storage infinite if y'all do that.) Video I shot of my girl running to and fro appeared steady, which I'll credit to the OnePlus viii's hybrid stabilization that taps into both OIS and EIS technologies.
OnePlus 8 review: Performance
Like the other leading Android phones coming out this year, the OnePlus 8 features Qualcomm'south Snapdragon 865 organisation-on-fleck, which promises better functioning and more efficient power consumption than the Snapdragon 855 that powered the previous OnePlus flagships. (Since our review, phones using the Snapdragon 865 Plus, such every bit the Milky way Note 20, take come up out, and they figure to outperform their 865-powered counterparts.) OnePlus augments that chipset with either 8GB or 12GB of RAM. Our OnePlus 8 review unit featured 12GB of RAM alongside 256GB of onboard storage.
That extra RAM gave the OnePlus 8 a boost when we ran Geekbench 5, a examination that measures overall operation. The OnePlus viii'south multicore score of 3,387 landed squarely among the top-performing Android phones we've seen this year — ahead of the Galaxy S20 (3,147), but behind the LG V60 ThinQ 5G (3,420).
| Telephone | Processor | Geekbench v multicore score |
| OnePlus 8 | Snapdragon 865 | iii,387 |
| iPhone eleven | A13 Bionic | 3,251 |
| Milky way S20 | Snapdragon 865 | 3,147 |
| LG V60 ThinQ 5G | Snapdragon 865 | 3,420 |
| OnePlus 7T | Snapdragon 855+ | 2,759 |
| Google Pixel 4 | Snapdragon 855 | 2,329 |
More than impressively, the OnePlus 8 beat the iPhone 11's multicore Geekbench v score of 3,251, showing that the gap between iPhones and leading Android devices grows smaller all the fourth dimension — at least when yous pack your Android phones full of RAM. (The iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone xi Pro Max handily bested the OnePlus 8's multicore result, while the iPhone xi had a improve single-cadre result — one,333 versus 920 for the OnePlus 8.)
On the graphics front, the OnePlus 8 delivered comparable results to other Snapdragon 865-powered phones, producing a score of 1,322 frames (21 frames per 2nd) on the GFX Bench Aztec Ruins Vulkan test. That's in line with what nosotros saw from the Galaxy S20 (ane,319) and LG V60 (1,313), only behind the iPhone eleven and its 1,481-frame (23 fps) outcome.
The OnePlus 8 lagged other phones when it came to a real-globe exam where we use Adobe Premiere Blitz to transcode a 4K video to 1080p after applying an effect and transition. Information technology took the OnePlus 8 1 minute and 43 seconds to pull off that task — nearly xxx seconds backside the Galaxy S20'south ane:15 fourth dimension. The iPhone 11 continues to set the stride here with a 45-2d outcome.
When using the OnePlus 8 over a week-plus worth of testing, though, I didn't notice any lags in performance. I could switch between apps with ease and demanding games like PUBG Mobile played on the OnePlus eight without any hiccups or stutters. Other phones may out-musculus the OnePlus 8, but you'll certainly become comparable performance from this OnePlus flagship without having to pay a comparable price.
OnePlus eight review: Battery life and charging
The OnePlus 8 comes with a 4,300-mAh battery — bigger than the three,800-mAh power pack in the OnePlus 7T though non every bit large as the 4,510 mAh battery you'll get past paying up for the OnePlus 8 Pro. That shouldn't matter too much, as the OnePlus 8 delivers pinnacle battery life, though that event comes with a caveat.
When we put the OnePlus viii through the Tom's Guide bombardment test — that's continuous web-surfing over T-Mobile's LTE network with the display set to 150 nits of brightness — the new OnePlus telephone lasted an boilerplate of 11 hours and 4 minutes. The best phone bombardment life for the devices we've tested tops 11 hours, so the OnePlus 8 finds itself in rare company, even if recent flagships like the Galaxy S20 Ultra and LG V60 ThinQ outlast it.
That xi hour-plus fourth dimension comes with the OnePlus 8's refresh rate fix to 60Hz. Opt for the faster refresh speed, and battery life takes a hitting. When we ran our battery test later on setting the OnePlus 8's display to a 90Hz refresh rate, the average result dropped to 9 hours and 55 minutes, which is more in line with the average smartphone'southward performance. Losing an hour of battery life to savor one of the OnePlus eight's marquee features isn't platonic, but it's a tradeoff some users won't heed. It's too not as steep as the three-hour difference nosotros saw when testing the Milky way S20 Ultra's battery with a 120Hz refresh rate turned on.
OnePlus finally added wireless charging support to the OnePlus 8 Pro, just the standard OnePlus 8 model remains stuck in the by with only wired charging capabilities. At least that charging is ridiculously speedy, thank you to OnePlus' Warp Charge 30T technology. Using the included 30-watt charger, I routinely saw the OnePlus 8 go from a drained battery to a 68% charge afterward xxx minutes. The Galaxy S20 Plus and iPhone 11 Pro both hit 55% after 30 minutes of charging.
OnePlus 8 review: Software and special features
The OnePlus 8 runs OxygenOS, an in-business firm version of Android 10 that adds a couple of new features like a dark mode that's compatible with more apps and optimized for better battery life. OnePlus has too introduced new dynamic wallpapers that shift tones based on ambient lighting.
I think the highlight of the special features for the OnePlus viii, though, is the phone'south in-display fingerprint sensor, a returning characteristic from past OnePlus flagships. The sensor's spot on the brandish is clearly shown with the outline of a fingerprint, and I observe information technology more than responsive and forgiving than similar features on the Galaxy S20 lineup.
The OnePlus 8 likewise benefits from a facial recognition feature that's a lot quicker than the iPhone'southward Confront ID, which scans your face to unlock your device just however requires you to swipe up to move past the lock screen. Glance at the OnePlus 8 and information technology will launch immediately. Of course, OnePlus' face unlocking feature isn't as secure as what Apple does with Face up ID, which uses a 3D scan of your face to verify your identity. That might explicate why I was able to unlock the OnePlus 8 while wearing a pandemic-inspired mask over my nose and mouth. That same mask was blocked by Face ID.
OnePlus eight review: Verdict
Normally, I'yard a large advocate of opting for the less expensive of the multiple models that phone makers put out. Plus, Pro and Ultra models have flashy features that appeal to power users, but rarely justify the added cost for about smartphone owners. And while the excellent brandish on the OnePlus viii won't have users feeling short-inverse, the better performing cameras on the OnePlus 8 Pro only might.
Every bit for how the OnePlus eight measures up to devices beyond those fabricated by OnePlus itself, at that place'southward a compelling case to exist made for this flagship phone. The OnePlus 8 performs as well as any leading Android device and fifty-fifty makes the iPhone 11 sweat a little. You'll get very expert bombardment life — at least when the phone'due south faster refresh rate isn't taxing the battery — and the color schemes on the OnePlus 8 help this phone stand out from a selection of increasingly indistinguishable black smartphones.
The big question in whatsoever OnePlus viii review comes downward to the camera. If you lot want an Android phone that produces the best possible shots, you'll want to pay upwardly for Samsung's Galaxy S20 models. But if y'all don't actually brand utilise of optical zooms and don't listen photos that don't measure out upwards to what the best camera phones produce, the OnePlus 8 can save y'all anywhere from $100 to $300 on your side by side handset.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/oneplus-8
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