Speaking of the OPPO Reno series, it’s pretty easy to associate it with words like ‘fashion, young and camera experience’. A few days ago, the latest model of the lineup, the Reno 7 series, was officially released with significant upgrades in terms of appearance and imaging capability. Today, we are going to go deeper into the OPPO Reno 7 Pro and show you what real upgrades it gets.
Reno7 Pro Review: Design
The Reno 7 Pro is really impressive with a whole new look featuring a flat and sharp design. Inspired by the recent Apple design, there are not a lot of curved details on the Reno 7 Series. And meanwhile, it’s especially slim and lightweight, although it comes with a polished metal frame.
The Pro model has a thickness of 7.45mm and a weight of 180g, which is quite a surprise considering that the iPhone 13 Pro features a smaller display but weighs more. On the other hand, due to the bigger 6.55-inch display, the Reno Pro brings a quite different hands-on feeling than most models did before. Probably for those who are used to curved backs, it could be a bit uncomfortable when holding it for a while.
There are three colors for options, Morning Gold, Starry-night black, and Star Rain Wish. Well, the color names sound a bit strange. But indeed, they are named so for a reason. Let’s look at the Star-rain variant in our hands.
On the back, the model applies a new process to simulate a new gradient texture of star rain. The brand claims that they leave 1.2million fine traces on the back cover and make it like a meteor shower across the night sky. Meanwhile, the new process also brings much better scratch and fingerprint resistance. But as this process is too delicate, the back feels a bit slippery.
The new design also includes a new triple-camera setup, adopting a module that is divided between a glossy part and a slightly raised knurled part for the primary sensor. The other two sensors are an 8MP ultra-wide one and another 2MP macro sensor. And surrounding the camera module, you would find an interesting detail: the protrusion under the rear camera is used to include a notification LED ring light.
Let’s move to the front face. The optimized narrow bezel on the phone is a pleasant surprise, with a fantastic screen-to-body ratio of 92.8%, which brings an even more stunning visual experience when looking at the display. The AMOLED 90Hz hole-punched display has the touch sampling at 180Hz with Gorilla Glass 5 protection. For display quality, it’s not exactly a top option at the price range, but thanks to the super-narrow bezels, it still has a pretty good visual experience and good support for HDR content.
Reno7 Pro Review: Performance & Gaming
The Reno 7 Pro is powered by the MTK Dimensity 1200-Max, which varies from the standard model, featuring the Snapdragon 778G. According to the results we got from the benchmarks, it’s obvious that the MTK chipset can deliver performance that almost equals to Snapdragon 870.
Compared to the standard Reno 7, the Pro boasts upgraded 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage, stereo speakers, and an X-Axis vibration motor. And all these upgraded features greatly improve its gaming performance and experience. Another surprise for gamers is the pre-installed gaming assistant software. With the software, actions like keeping games running in the background and turning on Pro Gamer mode for best performance now are available on the Reno 7 Pro, even though it’s not designed as a gaming phone.
In the actual gaming test, the game PUBG mobile didn’t put any pressure on it, and the frame rate was stably kept at 60fps; while in another game, Genshin Impact, the phone seems to apply a more conservative strategy to maintain a stable running state but relatively lock it under 50fps. But eventually, the average frame rate of 50.1fps is not so bad.
In another game, the Nimian Legends, the game’s running experienced much more fluctuations and the frame rate eventually reached 41.7fps.
OPPO Reno7 Pro Review: Cameras
Main
The triple-camera module is another big selling point for the Reno 7 series. Let’s check some samples shot on the Reno 7 Pro. The images shot on the 50MP Sony IMX766 are pretty decent with great dynamic range. Even when taking pictures facing the sun, the exposure was still excellent with great shadow detail. The colors are pretty close to what we actually saw in real life. And it also does a great job of solving the purple fringing issue.
And under portrait mode, the images shot on the main camera also present a wonderful bokeh effect, naturally simulating the light spots with different apertures.
Ultra Wide
As for the wide-angle camera, the images are not as surprising as what we got on the main camera. Due to the limit of 8MP resolution, the samples do not look very sharp. And the dynamic range is not as impressive as the main camera offers. Sometimes it might lose control over the exposure for brightness.
Night
As we move to night shooting, we found that the night mode on the Reno 7 Pro works pretty well. No matter for the main camera or the wide-angle sensor, it greatly improved the overall brightness and reserved much more detail for night shooting.
Especially for the main camera, the restoration of the night scenes looks pretty natural with better pureness. As for the wide-angle sensor, no doubt the improvement is more visible and effective.
Speaking of the front camera, the AI algorithm tends to offer beauty effects for portrait shooting even when there’s no retouch being activated. In addition, it also has wide options of Makeup and filters for users. Well, it’s probably more attractive and useful for female users.
Macro
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- Reno7 Pro Macro -1206155928
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- Reno7 Pro Macro -1206161427
The third sensor is a macro sensor for extremely close shooting. But we didn’t really find anything special from other macro sensors. So just check the samples here for yourself.
OPPO Reno7 Pro Review: Battery
The combination of a 4500mAh battery and 65W fast charge also provided great power support for the Reno 7 Pro. With the included 65W charger, it could charge back to 50% of power within just 15 mins and be fully charged in just 35 mins. And here’s a simple battery life test we did on the Reno 7 Pro. At least from the results, it performed pretty well.
And by the way, the color 12 OS run on the Reno 7 Pro looks pretty nice. And during our time with the device, it offered a pretty smooth experience with the 90Hz display, though we still want to complain about the lack of a 120Hz option.
So that’s it. It’s hard to define the Reno 7 Pro as a flagship model or a flagship killer. To some extent, it did create a category for those who focus more on good design, premium built, and a delightful camera experience. But on the other hand, you’ll also find obvious drawbacks of this phone, such as the not very premium display and the relatively high pricing.
So we wonder whether the 7 Pro will continue the success of the series in the market?
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