In use

A super-fast screen wouldn't count for much if the rest of the phone couldn't keep up, but that's certainly not a worry here. There's a Snapdragon 865 plugging away inside the 8 Pro, along with 8 or 12GB of RAM, and you could probably guess how this thing runs -- I’ve been testing the standard 8GB model and no gorgeous game, no multitasking scenario, nothing I did made it skip a beat. If you're concerned about whether it's fast enough for you, don't be. It just is. Then again, the same is also true of just about any Snapdragon 865-powered phone we've tested to date, and most people probably won't come close to pushing phones like this to their limits.

The OnePlus 8 Pro is also faster in ways you might not notice every day. Consider all the storage tucked away in there: Like the 7 Pro before it, the 8 Pro uses UFS 3.0 for faster read and write speeds. (Slightly down-market devices like the LG V60 ThinQ use older, somewhat slower UFS 2.1.) Beyond that, the phone also uses new LPDDR5 RAM, which promises faster speeds with less impact on battery life, though you'd probably be hard-pressed to spot the differences right now. The more immediate concern is how much RAM you actually need. The 8GB you get in the base model has been more than enough during our testing, especially with features like RAM Boost that keep apps you use frequently in system memory. That said, if you're the kind of person who buys a phone and plans to keep it until it's unusable, the 12GB model is the safer bet.

In case your eyes glazed over at the sight of flash-memory standards, here's what you need to know: The 8 Pro is fast enough to stay relevant for a long time to come. Yes, you might not see the benefits of some of these choices all the time, but the thing to remember is that today's overkill is tomorrow's necessity. As apps and Android itself become more sophisticated, you'll be thankful for that extra headroom. For now though just relax and enjoy what feels like rock-solid performance.