Video Recording

Next up, some video sample comparisons between both phone’s different modules and capture modes.


OnePlus 8 Pro
OnePlus 8

Starting off with the colour renditions of the scene, both phones do ok but I feel that there’s something off with the tone curves as things either look a bit too oversaturated or some highlights are being flattened too much? It’s a weird look that more present on the main sensor of the 8 Pro than on its ultra-wide or on the regular 8. Both main camera sensors suffer from lens flaring in the sun, but the 8 Pro here is especially predominant compared to its other two camera modules.

Switching between the modules is fast when zooming in and out – naturally the regular OnePlus 8 doesn’t have a telephoto module so zooming in beyond 2x comes at a great loss of quality as it’s just digitally cropping the frame.

Electronic image stabilisation works great on both phones. Switching over to 60fps recording disables EIS and here we can see the OIS performance of both phones. The OnePlus 8 Pro has a significantly better stabilisation as the OnePlus 8 becomes quite a lot shakier.

OnePlus is still pretty nuts in regards to the video bitrate at 60fps as for a H.264 recording we’re jumping from 50Mbps at 4K30 to a whopping 160Mbps at 4K60, resulting in file sizes exceeding 1GB per minute. The quality is outstanding of course, but it far exceeds what you’d be able to upload and view on any video platform such as YouTube. I wish OnePlus would give the option to scale this down in its camera app as it’s a bit overkill for most use-cases.

OnePlus 8 Pro - 4K30

OnePlus 8 Pro - 4K30 HDR

Dynamic range can be an issue in bright scenarios, and the OnePlus 8 Pro offers HDR recording. This actually means it’s an HDR processed capture in an SDR recording. In the above frame captures between the two phones we see that this gives a significant boost to shadows and the effective dynamic range of the scene. Unfortunately, the phone is only able to record in this mode on its main camera module, and it’s not available on the regular OnePlus 8. I also noticed that the phone has big troubles focusing while in this mode.

Audio recording was recording on both phones, but there was wind noise present in both, but particularly prominent on the regular OnePlus 8.

Overall, I’d say video recording quality and experience on both phones is good, but the OnePlus 8 Pro is the clear winner, with the ultra-wide-angle recording experience in particular being the best.

Camera Recap - Amongst The Best Conclusion & End Remarks
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  • jaju123 - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link

    It's pretty much universally agreed to be the iPhone as far as i know. Otherwise, every android phone generally has some kind of downside to their video as you have said.
  • eastcoast_pete - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link

    I agree that the respective top of the line iPhone is usually very good at video, and I have been tempted. My main concerns are 1. price (ouch, especially with 256 GB or more storage and, related 2. No expansion slot (microSD) to add more. Good 4K video really needs at least 50 MB/s even in HEVC, and more tends to be better. Plus, it's better in some situations to be able to remove the storage that has the videos, and you can't do that with an iPhone.
    So, maybe I should have phrased it this way: which is currently the best phone for video that has removable storage and still good 4k video with stabilization and not completely disastrous in low light?
  • chaose - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link

    iphone seems to be the best all around phone for video, photos, gaming, screen, and battery life.
  • sonny73n - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link

    - Can iPhone play 10bit h265 mkv natively using hardware decode?
    - Can you sort, rename and tag your photos with the native Photos app?
    - Can you play games with iPhone on external monitor? Can iPhone play demanding games without being a toaster and performance throttled?
    - Is Apple capable of making display instead of relying on Samsung‘s AMOLED? And what’s with the fat notch design for 3 generations?
    - iPhone battery life is far from the top.

    Can you stop being a sheeple? If not, please don’t spam the web with misinformation/fake news.
  • rrinker - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link

    Well,. right there in the charts, the SUSTAINED graphics speed of the iPhone beats the BURST speed of any of the Android phones, so can it play games without excessive thermal throttling? Why yes, it can. The fake news would be claiming Android is just as fast. Funny how iPhones can do it without cramming 12 or 16GB RAM in there, too. That's desktop computer levels of RAM.
  • m00bee - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link

    1 thing that bothers, on Iphone sometime is not registering my action on screen.
    Try simple thing like open setting menu, after that scroll down as fast after screen shown the menu.
    Apple just freeze. Same when open long conversation on whatsapp, click it, than scroll, it freeze for a while. it still happen on my wife iphone 11pro, and previous iphone X.

    Unlike android, it may showing some lag or jitters, but it always registers every click, swipe or scroll.
    I did use iphone 7 and note 10, so I experience this every day.

    Sorry for my English.
  • star-affinity - Sunday, July 12, 2020 - link

    @m00bee

    Strange. Not a behaviour I recognize on my iPhones. And I’m quite picky with those sorts of things I think.
  • drajitshnew - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link

    There are sheeple I agree, but there are also apple baiters. iPhone did not become the most successful smartphone JUST because it looked good. I have never owned an apple device , but seeing what Android devices are on the market I am sorely tempted. If it was not for the price gouging on storage I would have gone over.
  • Daro - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link

    True that. Years and years and there is not a good android phone. Please stop with the curved screens!. S10e its the best.
  • Daro - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link

    True that. Years and years and there is not a good android phone. Please stop with the curved screens!. S10e its the best.

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