real talk time there's no reason to use a flagship killer phone that falls short
in water resistance camera quality or features like wireless charging when you
can just grab one of the other half a dozen or more than half a dozen actual
flagships that are crammed into a drawer in your office
and that is the biggest reason that i've
never daily driven a oneplus device
their slogan is never settle but their
shtick has always been bang for the buck which made them devices that were easy
to recommend but never one that i would actually keep in my pocket for the long
term never i really hope that word is delicious
because the oneplus 8 pro and its little brother the oneplus 8 are getting
dangerously close to making me eat it
just like you guys eat up these segways to our sponsors like thermal grizzly
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the specs of both the oneplus 8 and oneplus 8 pro are cutting edge
snapdragon 865 processors with 8 or 12
gigs of RAM 128 or 256 gigs of
high-speed ufs 3.0 storage lightning fast in-display fingerprint sensors
oneplus legendarily optimized oxygen os Android variant and x55 5g modems for
the latest in modern mobile connectivity that is assuming your neighbors haven't
burned down all the nearby antennas and they are just as pretty on the
outside both the 8 and 8 pro are aluminum and
curved gorilla glass sandwich designs that remind me very much of a galaxy s9
and s9 plus but with a notification slider instead of a bixby button and to
be clear i intend that comparison in a good way the feel in the hand is
absolutely wonderful with a subtly more rounded curve on the back and very
smooth transitions from glass to metal to glass
although that doesn't mean i don't have complaints it's kind of my job to complain about
things oneplus camera bump is extremely
aggressive this year with the eight pros in particular likely to cause some
discomfort for those of us who go bareback with our devices now it
wouldn't bother me quite so much if the ridge wasn't as sharp
making it such a strong contrast against the smooth curvy feel of the rest of the
device my other gripe is with the inclusion of
a hole punch display last year's 7 pro and 7t pro used a
motorized selfie camera that gave oneplus my humble opinion the best
implementation of an all-screen phone now i understand that this was to save
weight and internal space and unofficially probably to improve the
water resistance that oneplus builds in but doesn't certify on their phones
but now we're stuck on both models
regular and pro with an asymmetrical
dead zone that makes me honestly think longingly of the anxiety that i used to
feel about my fear of getting a dead or stuck pixel on my new monitor and not
being able to return it how far we've come
at least the displays are a lot better than they used to be though both are
high refresh rate OLED panels with a thin sexy aspect ratio and outstanding
color accuracy and HDR performance delivering a wonderful on-the-go movie
watching experience coupled with the strong clear stereo speakers
enough of what's the same between the two devices though let's talk about what
is different the a pro is a touch larger and about 10
percent heavier now it's not a huge difference on paper but in practice it
makes them feel kind of like his and hers devices it also comes with some
extra features i'm going to start with the least important ones
memc or motion estimation motion compensation technology is that high
frame rate video conversion mode that sports fans leave enabled on their tvs
that makes everything look like a cheap soap opera at best and an
artifact-written pile of garbage at worst it's
obviously thankfully it's turned off by default so good job oneplus there's
adaptive color temperature i also turned this off i don't like it on iphones and
i don't like it here but what it has got that i do like is a 200 nit brighter and
higher resolution display now at this kind of a size the
difference between 1080p and 1440p is
something that i would have to be trying to read my google docs
in their thumbnail preview in order to notice
but it is there and on the oneplus 8 pro
it's the only way i'm aware of to have both your high resolution cake and eat
your 120 hertz refresh rate too yes my friends unlike samsung who locked
out simultaneously maxing the refresh rate and resolution of their s20 lineup
oneplus has allowed their users both silky smooth scrolling
and ultra sharp picture quality now i didn't find myself noticing the
120hz difference much after the initial whoa oh gee this is so smooth excitement
because 90 hertz feels pretty good too but
given our next differences here the upgrade to faster more power efficient
lp ddr5 RAM and the 210 milliamp hour
bigger battery well what the hey might as well keep it enabled
bringing us finally to a really really big one
warp charge 30t 30 watt charging that
well okay actually strictly speaking they do they do both have that but the
difference is that the 8 pro does it wirelessly
i read that i was like what it's true my friends if you're willing
to endure the whiny fan noise of oneplus warp charge 30 wireless charger and the
fact that your phone will still be noticeably warm to the touch when you
pick it up in spite of the chargers built-in cooling fan you can wirelessly
charge your oneplus 8 pro faster than most of your friends are topping up with
a cable and a standard wall wart
and it's got reverse charging too which can be handy if you use wireless earbuds
which you will because no headphone jack there i got that in there there's no
headphone jack finally there's the camera hardware instead of a primary
ultra wide and macro loadout the pro gets a primary ultra wide optically
stabilized 3x hybrid zoom telephoto with a fourth color filter camera that's
supposed to allow you to apply various lighting effects and filters i don't
know i'll leave it to the instagramers to tell you how good that is because i'm not really into that stuff
as for whether the other cameras held up to my expectations
oh man this is the one part of this review where things get a little bit
tough for me i already alluded to oneplus's abandonment of their flagship
killer positioning and so i guess i might as well say it the 8 starts at 700
us dollars and the fully loaded 8 pro
costs 1 000. now i can forgive a solid if not
industry-leading camera when you're not flirting with the one
thousand dollar price barrier but when your night mode performance
gets crushed by my two-year-old daily driver note 9 and then utterly
embarrassed by an iphone 11 pro
it starts to raise some uncomfortable questions now the hardware itself is top shelf i'm
especially impressed by the inclusion of two 48 megapixel sensors in the eight
pro one cutting edge model in the main shooter and a lower tier one in the wide
and i generally like oneplus approach to software processing they take a what you
see is what you get approach to colors that i respect a lot compared to some
manufacturer's tendency to over compensate for poor lighting to the
point where you end up capturing a completely different looking scene
but there are definitely going to be edge cases if you buy this device and
particularly its little brother where you're going to be acutely aware that it
is no not in fact an iphone or a pixel in your hands and it's always going to
be apparent when you're shooting video this footage of our cat dash shows the
inconsistency of oneplus on the fly white balance and also what a blocky
mess her fur turns into shows the relatively poor processing under poor
indoor lighting conditions the aesup oneplus sleeve that might counterbalance
the camera for a lot of people though is oxygen less it is such an apt name for
it because the switch from anything else feels like such a breath of fresh air i
mean it's almost fast to its own detriment sometimes double clicking the
lock button to launch the camera while the display is on will lock the phone
then it's like oh snap you want the camera and it wakes
the phone back up then launches the camera all almost as quickly as an
iphone 11 pro just launches the camera app to be clear i'm
not hating on the iphone either it's a really fast phone i'm just saying that
this is darn impressive
and it's clear that oneplus has made the right investments over the last few
years the writing's been on the wall for the hardware race for some time phone
processors just aren't going to get faster the way that they used to look at
the marginal improvements from the 2018 to 2020 ipad pros
it's all going to be in software moving forward and oxygen os with its
snappiness and all-day everyday battery management is one of the best if not the
best Android experiences out there if you can afford it that's something
i've never had to say before as for me i don't have to afford it so the only
question left to answer is do i go for it do i put a notch in my
pocket and give up my headphone jack for
this snappy lightning fast experience
i think i'm going to give it a try i use my airpods pros more often than anything
else these days anyway and the galaxy fold
rest in peace the youtube app doesn't support stories which i need for work
so i haven't been able to use that already had a notch and so i guess i
kind of kind of like moved on
i might end up moving back though we'll see
just like we'll see how he transitions to our sponsor this
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video description so thanks for watching guys if you
enjoyed this video you know maybe check out what a difference a camera can make
we did a photography challenge putting a high-end smartphone camera in the hands
of an experienced photographer against a high-end real camera in the hands of
basically a novice me it's a really fun video it's worth checking out