Oppo has followed up one of my favourite phones of last year with a successor that addresses almost every small complaint. The Find X7 Ultra builds on the Find X6 Pro with world-class hardware, confirming it as a strong 2024 contender in markets where it's available.
Which is to say it’s only a strong contender in one market — China. But make no mistake, the X7 Ultra eats most competitors' lunch on a hardware level and would be worthy of consideration anywhere.
And surprisingly, its biggest camera overhaul is all about the software.
Design-wise, the X7 Ultra is a fairly slight evolution. It keeps the same basic size and shape as the X6 Pro and has nearly identical dimensions, keeping a large circular camera bump and a curved 6.82" OLED screen.
I love the colourway on my review unit, which combines navy blue vegan leather, a silver frame and camera system, and a glossy white back panel. The way the vegan leather curves right into the phone's edges is really nicely done, and the combination gives off fun nautical vibes. This would be my number-one choice to take on board a billionaire's yacht.
One new design element is the alert slider, borrowed from BBK stablemate OnePlus. Oppo’s implementation is a little different; sliding it to the top position invokes a VIP mode, which disables the camera, microphone, and location access. I switched this on by accident a few too many times for me to call it a useful addition, but maybe you have greater privacy demands.
The display is similar to before, with the same 120Hz refresh rate and 1440p resolution, but Oppo has turbocharged the brightness. You get a theoretical peak of 4,500 nits, which resolves at up to 2,600 nits across the panel when using high-brightness mode in direct sunlight, or 1,600 nits in more typical situations. It's the brightest screen on any phone.
This is the obligatory paragraph where I tell you that the Find X7 Ultra is a flagship phone released in 2024 and therefore has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor with up to 16GB of RAM. The battery is 5,000mAh and can be charged at up to 100W with a cable or 50W wirelessly. I didn't see anything remarkable about the battery life in either direction; you can get a couple days if you're using it lightly, and you can kill it in a day if you're pushing it.
Okay, it's camera time.
The Find X7 Ultra has an extremely capable camera system with unique strengths. Like its predecessor, it has a 1" main sensor with a f/1.8 lens, as well as a f/2.6 2.8x telephoto lens with a periscope design to enable a 1/1.56" sensor, which is much larger than any competitor.
Oppo's clever approach to periscope cameras — using them for larger sensors rather than longer reach — meant that the Find X6 Pro delivered peerless results at around 3x zoom in daylight and at 5x in low light. In daylight, however, it couldn't quite compete on detail with Xiaomi and Google's 5x cameras that came out later in the year. Those phones had smaller sensors, but at a certain point there’s no substitute for longer glass.
To compensate for that, Oppo has added a second periscope telephoto camera to the Find X7 Ultra. This one has a 6x lens and a 1/2.51" sensor, which is about the same size as the 5x telephoto cameras in the Xiaomi 13 Ultra and the Google Pixel 8 Pro. The Find X7 Ultra is the first phone to ship with two periscope cameras.
The main camera now uses a Sony LYT-900 1" sensor, which is designed for smartphones (unlike the previous IMX989) and is claimed to be 32% more power-efficient. Oppo also says the lens cuts down on reflections by 50%.
The ultrawide, meanwhile, uses a Sony LYT-600 sensor with similar tech to the main camera's, which presumably makes it easier to produce consistent results across the pair. Oppo has been good at that for a long time — the Find X5 Pro actually used the same sensors for the main camera and ultrawide.
In this case, though, the 1/1.95" LYT-600 represents a size downgrade over the X6 Pro, which used the same 1/1.56" sensor for the ultrawide and telephoto. However, the LYT-600 is still a bigger ultrawide sensor than every other competitor's.
In auto mode, the Find X7 Ultra turns out generally pleasing smartphone-style photos. The colour processing is vibrant without being too intense, and while the phone captures a lot of HDR detail, the results generally don't succumb to flatness as much as most competitors.
I didn’t notice a huge year-to-year jump in image quality, but the bar was already very high. As you’d expect from a 1” sensor and a fast f/1.8 lens, you get excellent results with genuine depth that are easily comparable to entry-level enthusiast cameras.
Oppo says that natural HDR was a focus for the Find X7 Ultra, though in truth I thought the X6 Pro was already pretty solid in that regard. However, there’s an extra twist to the X7 Ultra’s processing that we’ll get into soon.
Oppo’s 2.8x telephoto hasn’t changed from last year, but it’s still the best zoom lens on a phone. The large sensor makes it genuinely usable in challenging situations like Tokyo snowstorms and Taylor Swift bleacher seats, with unbeatable contrast and dynamic range.
The new 6x telephoto camera is useful in daylight, delivering a significant increase in detail over the X6 Pro’s digital zoom. It’s the only camera on the X7 Ultra that isn’t class-leading on a hardware level, though.
The slow f/4.3 aperture means it doesn’t have a very shallow depth of field, and it usually won’t even activate in low light — the 2.8x lens is often a better option. You can see the difference in depth of field in this comparison with the telephoto on Google’s Pixel 8 Pro, which has a similar size sensor but a faster f/2.8 aperture.
Still, the Find X6 Pro had a real disadvantage when it came to rendering detail from distance in daylight, and now that gap has closed.
Although the ultrawide camera uses a smaller sensor than before, this isn’t particularly noticeable in practice. It’s still bigger than just about any other phone, and most photos you’d take with an ultrawide tend to have deep depth of field anyway — in other words, most of the frame is in focus.
The LYT-600 sensor delivers excellent, well-exposed results that are a good match for the Find X7 Ultra’s main camera. Side by side I don’t see much difference with the Find X6 Pro, which is to say this is still the best ultrawide you’ll find on a phone until further notice.
Overall, the Find X7 Ultra’s hardware is as good as it gets. Oppo has the best main sensor available, the best ultrawide, the best mid-range telephoto, and a solid long-range telephoto.
The biggest upgrade, though, is in the software, and it’s actually quite easy to miss. There’s a major new feature that I haven’t really seen other reviews delve into, which is unfortunate because it completely changes the way the Find X7 Ultra works as a camera.
I’ve written before about how I’ve long been over the typical smartphone approach to HDR and image processing. Xiaomi’s recent flagship phones have gone in another direction, with Leica-branded settings that are applied to every picture you take in default mode on a phone like the Xiaomi 14 or 13 Ultra. The result is photos that actually look like photos — or at least photos that you’ve spent some time editing after uploading them from a “real” camera.
Oppo’s answer to this is the Find X7 Ultra’s Master mode. Most phones ship with a similar mode that gives you more control over exposure settings, but Oppo’s new Master mode radically alters the camera’s output. As well as enabling RAW capture and the ability to exposure parameters like ISO and shutter speed, you can also change settings like sharpness, saturation, and vignetting.
Oppo says it worked with Hasselblad to emulate the output of the iconic camera maker’s X2D 100C, a 100-megapixel medium format camera that sells for more than $8,000. I’m not sure about that, but out of the box the Find X7 Ultra’s Master mode gives you softer, vignetted results with greater contrast and less aggressive HDR. (It’s also worth mentioning that Oppo recently added the same Master mode to the Find X6 Pro in a software update.)
The photo on the left used Master mode without any changes to its stock settings, while the one on the right was shot in Auto mode.
Personally, I much prefer the Master shot. I know I said earlier that Oppo’s Auto photos aren’t as flat as competitors’, but this one is still so artificial in comparison to the Master mode. You might prefer the extra sharpening and the way its HDR preserves more shadow detail, but I think it looks unnatural and detracts from the subject.
In low light here, Master mode looks like a single exposure from a real camera. Again, this won’t be for everyone — the Auto shot is brighter and you can see into the building. But to me it comes off as over-processed by comparison.
Oppo’s Master mode is well-designed and easily customisable. If you think the vignetting is too heavy, for example, you can just turn it down a touch. You also need to swipe all the way to the left in the camera UI to even activate the mode in the first place, though it does remember your place if you lock and unlock the phone.
I think this Master mode is great — it brings Oppo’s hardware right up to speed with Xiaomi’s software. But I am a little torn on whether it’s a better approach. I like that when I use a phone like the Xiaomi 14, I know what to expect from the colours regardless of which mode I’m using. I’m also not sure whether most people who buy this phone will ever even give the Master mode a real shot.
At the same time, there’s something to be said for offering a crowd-pleasing default, and I do like Oppo’s Auto processing more than that of most competitors. Overall, between its hardware and software additions, the Find X7 Ultra makes a strong claim to be the most capable and versatile smartphone camera around.
Oppo’s Find X series has been extremely good for several years, and the X7 Ultra is no exception. From the extra telephoto reach to the reimagined approach to image processing, Oppo has given me a lot more to consider when deciding what to use as my main mobile camera.
And I really do love the design of this phone. Oppo has done a great job refining the X6 Pro’s distinctive look, and despite its considerable size the X7 Ultra is comfortable to hold and use. Its ultra-bright screen is gorgeous in just about any setting.
Ultimately, the biggest knock against the Find X7 Ultra is that most people reading this won’t be able to buy it. Despite putting out international versions of the Find N3 and N3 Flip last year, Oppo continues to reserve the Find X flagships for China. I’ve asked Oppo executives about this, but it clearly isn’t a priority right now.
Using Chinese phones outside their home market is easier than it used to be. Google services can be enabled in the settings menu, for example. It’s still hard to recommend anyone actually go out and import a phone as expensive as this, though, given the realities of mobile network bands and technical support.
But I care about excellent things that exist in the world, regardless of whether I could walk down the street and buy them. The Oppo Find X7 Ultra is plainly an excellent thing.