OnePlus 8 Review: Special No More! By Marques Brownlee

Hey, what's up guys MHD here and this is one plus eight now OnePlus didn't just also come out with a one plus eight pro. This is the phone. One plus would mark it as flagship killer right, but we all see OnePlus slowly moving away from that direction. Now they have a different slogan fast and smooth, and you can tell they're getting away from the flagship killer thing now that they actually make a flagship. But this is exactly what I'd expect from the OnePlus that I feel like we've always known, so this interstellar glow, one plus eight-star set $6.99, and it has the bleeding edge high-end specs you'd want for fast performance, snapdragon 865 with the 5g modems in their eight or twelve gigs of fast Ram, UFS, 3.0 storage, Wi-Fi. Six, like that's all nice.

It's a fast phone, definitely love that. But there are a few things here: cut down to save cost, and I'll. Compare this a lot to the 1+8 pro. So if you haven't watched that it's the previous video, firstly pull the like button. If you want to watch it to catch up, that's there, but the story is if you work for one plus, and you started off with this nine hundred two thousand dollar phone, and you're like alright.

What are we going to cut out of this phone to get the price way down, but still give people a pretty close to a flagship experience? What would we do well? This is what they did. First it's overall a bit of a smaller form factor. Now it's by no means a small phone. It's definitely still big. It has a six point, five inch display, which makes it still a little taller than the iPhone 11 Pro max.

So it's not small, but it is a little smaller than the eight pro, and it's also definitely lighter. It's noticeably lighter to me. It's 180 grams on paper to be exact and to me, it feels comfortable in the hand, then there's that display. Furthermore, it still has the optical fingerprint reader, underneath it's still HDR 10, plus certified and still super color, accurate and much brighter than last year, which is key. So it's super visible outdoors, but now it's 1080p resolution instead of 1440, that's a smart move that they've done in the past, and it's also now high refresh rate at 90 Hertz instead of 120 Hertz I'd love to get blind tested on this, but I've said: I can personally see the difference between 90 and 120 Hertz, but it's small, and you have to be looking for it, but I'll definitely prefer either of those two 60 Hertz, because that difference is visually huge.

So this is still high refresh rate. So this is a cost-saving trade-off. That makes perfect sense. It's still a really smooth, responsive screen. We've seen other phones bring high refresh rate down in price, so it doesn't really make this one stand out any more like it used to, but that's not a complaint at all I'm.

Clearly, a fan of high refresh rate, and I'm glad to see it everywhere, plus if you're, if you're still in the mindset of you work for OnePlus, and you're, trying to cut down on things you get to say you know, high refresh rate and high resolution are nice. But if you go too high on those things you cut into battery life, so we're giving you 90, Hertz and 1080p, and that's a good balance to still give you fast and smooth while being friendly to your battery and that's turned out to be absolutely true. This phone has a 4300 William hour battery, and it's been impressively good on battery life lasting me easily through the end of every day, I've tested it with like 15 to 20 percent left over. So it's honestly slightly better battery life than the eight pro which I've been running maxed out, so I guess. I should expect that, so then there are three more trade-offs: ip68 wireless charging and the cameras.

The OnePlus 8- doesn't have an IP 68 water and dust resistance certification. But this is another one of those instances where OnePlus would probably claim they've put the necessary seals and pieces inside the phone and tested it themselves, but then passed on the savings of not getting it officially tested. I, don't know about that. I haven't tested mine, I'll, wait for the jury, rig everything test to see those seals. Thank you very much, but then this phone straight up doesn't have wireless charging at all same deals last year.

It has a glass back, but it doesn't have the wireless charging coil to take advantage of that glass. Back now at 700 bucks. There is a way lower number of phones at this price that don't have wireless charging. So it's much harder to justify, but that's always been I guess one plus's thing you know saying wireless charging isn't fast enough for their standards. So again, there's still fast water charging here, still warped charge, 30 T so zero to 50% in 25 minutes, and it's included in the box too.

So all that good stuff, but yet no wireless charging. It kind of makes me wonder how much per unit like that would cost like. Could they have just swallowed their pride and put in just an ordinary wireless charging coil on the phone and just been like? You know what? Finally, we added it probably, but you know, then again they are trying to save money. But anyway, last but not least, there is a different and lesser camera array in the OnePlus 8. On paper, it's a 48, megapixel main sensor and a different one from the pro then a 16, megapixel, ultra-wide camera and a dedicated 2 megapixel macro no telephoto.

And to me, that's the correct one to leave out, but it's funny, there's still a telephoto button in the camera, app which punches into 2x but like LG, did with the v60. That's just a digital crop in from the main sensor, which honestly looks just as good, if not better than a cheap telephoto would have now. This dedicated macro camera, it's kind of fun, but honestly, not very good quality, and I'm, not just saying that, because it's 2 megapixels like it's just lacking quality, it's not a great dynamic range and not great color. Overall quality is pretty lacking, so you know: I have some fun taking some macros with it, but I think it's one of those cameras that you'd forget about after the first week and then the main camera. It does have a 48 megapixel number attached to it.

But again it's a step-down from flagship quality in sharpness and detail, and in colors and just overall performance I mean it feels like the classic one plus of the past amazing everything else on the phone subpar camera. Honestly, if you're serious about camera quality, you probably shouldn't be looking at this phone, you should check out something like the Pixel 3a or even the brand-new air quotes brand-new iPhone SE, which looks like it'll, have a flagship quality camera for 399, an iPhone quality camera for 399, so definitely stay tuned for the video. When I get my hands on that phone very soon should be a fun. Video also in case you've been wondering what color this phone is just because it's its looked like a different color and like every shot in this video. This interstellar glow is a nightmare honestly, it's definitely unique.

I'll give it that this finish, underneath the gives it a different refraction index from different angles. You get all kinds of wild colors reflecting off of it, but it's a hundred percent one of those phones that looks better on camera and in promos than it does in real life. This thing catches more fingerprints than the CSI agent of the month. Do I, even don't even have to make this segue dangerously close to lioness territory? Well, you should consider something. A little more low-key channel sponsor deb rand will help you clean up your act if you accidentally pull the trigger on this colorway of the phone personally I think this black camo looks pretty tight.

So all right, here's my summary for 1+8, aside from the crazy color I, really like this phone, it's got a great display, it's a great performer for the price, obviously really high in specs. It's not the king for this price, but it's a great performer. It's got the fast charging, it's included in the box. Furthermore, it's got oxygen OS, to which I've talked about in the past, as one of my favorite Android, overlays, and I frequently get software updates too. So it's its a clean package.

I could tailor this phone right now, and I'd probably be super happy. It also happens to be one of the absolute cheapest 5g compatible phones on the market right now. It's not why I would buy it, but that is a nice bonus for longevity having the phone for four or five years. But it's not it's not amazing. It's not it's, not some special phone like it used to be, and really it's the stratification of phone prices over these past couple years that has caused this situation like I.

Remember this just a couple of years ago. Maybe it was longer than I think, but high-end phones used to just be like five 600, maybe 650 bucks, 700 bucks, and so it felt like you were either reaching for racing for the top for the absolute highest end, bleeding-edge best phone or racing to the bottom, for the cheapest phone, the best budget phone and so on plus came along and it sort of slipped right in the middle. They were undercutting the flagships. They positioned the cells as flagship killers because they were somewhere in the middle. But now today we have what like 200 to $300 budget phones.

We have our 400 $500600 mid-range phones. Then we have our seven eight $900 premium phones. Then we four thousand eleven hundred $1400 ultra premium, flagship phones and so there's more chaos. There's more activity than ever at, like all of these different price ranges. So today, at this price for $6.99, you could get this, or you could get. If you wanted a smaller phone, you could get galaxy s, 10 e, or if you absolutely had to have 120 Hertz, you could get the Polka phone x2 or if you had to have a gaming phone, you could get the red magic phone or if you absolutely wanted the best camera quality, you should go for Pixel 3a or even the new iPhone SE plus AirPods Pro, plus a wireless charger.

I, usually don't go super in-depth with price in my reviews, just because that is one of those things that usually changes over time, but I think that's, that's something I'm going to be changing now, just because the positioning of these phones, maybe ever since, like the essential phone, sometimes is the reason why they live or die, but yeah one plus eight, it's a nice phone, it's not special anymore, but it is one of the favorites in this awkward middle child price point of $6.99 to start, but yeah look around, there's a whole landscape out there thanks to the stratification of pricing, I guess, but maybe you can watch other videos about those other options to either way thanks for watching this one catch, you guys in the next one very soon peace.

Source : Marques Brownlee