OnePlus Ace Pro: OnePlus’s new game-targeted high-end smartphone

In August, OnePlus launched its new high-end smartphone, the OnePlus Ace Pro, which ships with ColorOS 12.1 on top of Android 12.

For people who know OPPO shouldn’t be unfamiliar with the Ace lineup, which was previously subject to OPPO’s RENO line, is now an independently game-oriented product line.

✔ Design and Handling

Compared with the OnePlus 10 or OnePlus 10 Pro, the new phone can witness its biggest improvement in the performance, since it’s fueled by the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC, which leads to better cooling performance and power usage. A 4,800mAh battery can be found on the inside, while the device supports 150W fast wired charging.

In design, it has thin bezels, a centered display camera hole, a flat display, and more. There are three cameras on the back, and the glass back is coated. A 50-megapixel main camera is backed by an 8-megapixel ultrawide camera, and a 2-megapixel macro camera.

✔ Theoretical Test

We are mainly focused o the main camera since the ultra-wide lens is not available in Pro mode of the Ace Pro.

001 Sharpness

We shot JPEG pictures with the main and ultra-wide cameras for the test.

Looking at the above image, we can find that the main lens is sharp, both in center and corner, while the ultra-wide lens performs relatively worse, with a sense of smearing and slightly soft image quality.

A telephone lens is not installed in the Ace Pro, while we can shoot similar images with the 2x shooting mode provided by its APP. All but, advanced algorithm can’t help with soft image quality in corners.

002 Latitude
The Ace Pro supports both JPG, RAW and Raw Plus formats, we accordingly tested the latitude on the three fronts. The Raw Plus format mentioned above is the product of multi-frame compositing, which shows better detail and dynamic range compared to the regular RAW file.

We only dialed the exposure from negative 2 to positive 2 stops with the shutter speed and ISO set by default.

(JPG)

(RAW)

(RAW Plus)

JPEG format file size: less than 5M
RAW format file size: 26M
RAW Plus file size: 28M

As can be seen above, all of the three types of images can be pushed back ranging from negative 3 to negative 1 stops. When it comes to positive 1 or 2 stop, Raw Plus takes the lead in maintaining the most details. Therefore, it is highly recommended to keep the RAW file when you shoot large light-ratio pictures to facilitate restoring in the post.

003 Sensitivity
You can adjust the exposure manually when the Pro mode is on. Adjusting within a sensitivity range of ISO 100 to 6400, we shot images and analyzed details and dark parts to see how the image quality changes as the sensitivity gradually increases.

(JPG)

(RAW)

As you can see, the Ace Pro presents a relatively pure picture in terms of details and dark parts under ISO 800. At ISO 1600, the dark parts appear partially smeared; at ISO 3200, a lot of details are missed and dark parts are further smeared.

004 Lens distortion
By shooting the equally spaced grid with four lenses respectively, we observe the distortion of the image. Due to the advanced distortion correction, even straight-out images are met with the least distortion.

(THE MAIN LENS)

(THE ULTRA-WIDE LENS)

(2X SHOOTING)

✔ Real-world Experience

001 the main and ultra-wide lens
The Ace Pro owns a 50-megapixel main camera with a focal length of 23mm (35mm equivalent) and an 8-megapixel ultrawide camera with a focal length of 16mm (35mm equivalent).

The main lens is powered by the 1/1.56" IMX766 sensor, delivering pictures of 3072×4096 resolution characterized by bright and rich colors. The 2x telephoto shot is a crop from the main camera, therefore its image quality gets slightly worse.

The ultra-wide lens of the phone is fueled by an OV08D sensor, providing pictures with a resolution of 2448×3264. Seeing below, it shows more soft images with apparently chromatic aberration.

002 macro lens
Its best shooting distance is 4 cm, but it has noticeable dispersion and purple fringe in highly contrasting environment.

003 low-light shooting
We chose a blacksmith store for the test, which features low light and little artificial light. With the Nighttime shooting algorithm, the sample looks relatively clean. The person in the image is even moving slightly can be captured well, as the phone exposes and fixes the highlights first before filling lighting in the rest of the frame.

Straight-out JPEG images feature bigger contrast and stronger immersive sense.

Utilizing RAW formats calls for more cautions to avoid capturing blurred images, which however allows a bigger space for post-production.

004 long-exposure shooting
In the camera app of the Ace Pro, there is a built-in "long exposure shooting" function with three shooting options available.

We chose one of them and set up the phone on the LENNON tripod. After pressing the shutter for 4-5 seconds, we got the following image. Its simple and straightforward operation can provide fun experience for popular users.

005 time-lapse shooting
This mode only supports wide and 2x crop shots, which can only be displayed using time multipliers, including 10X, 60X, 120X, 480X and 960X. We often use a LENNON tripod and related accessories to ensure the shooting stability.

In practice, short time-lapse shooting can adopt 10X, 60X and 120X, and long time-lapse samples can select 480X and 960X.

006 video recording
For this part, the OnePlus Ace Pro supports up to 4K 60fps/30fps, 1080P 60fps/30fps, 720P 60fps/30fps video recording, and 1080P 240fps, 720P 480fps for slow-motion shooting.

When using 4K 60fps, although in a dark environment, the picture taken is also rich in detail. But because of the limitations of the light-sensitive chip, the highlights are slightly overexposed.

While using the 1080P 240fp shooting footage, we can find that due to the limitations of the ambient light, the quality of the image is also significantly worse.

Thanks to its OIS optical stabilization, you can obtain smooth images, or you can turn on super stabilization which can only shoot up to 1080P 60fps video format.

As can be seen below, the 4K footage looks smooth and relatively stable with rich details.

✔ Verdict
As a product that focuses on gaming, the OnePlus Ace Pro falls slightly short of professional imaging flagships in terms of imaging. However, for daily shooting the phone is still comparable, not to mention 150W fast charging, 4800mAh battery and the new Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC…

Sample gallery
(only for learning use)