Lately, I am a bit disappointed with the flagship phones that have been released this year. I mean, can you believe it? They are worse than the previous generation in a lot of departments. And the price isn’t much cheaper either. In contrast, you could be better off getting last year’s flagship phones. That’s right, I’m talking about Xiaomi, IQOO, and today’s star: OnePlus 10 Pro.

I think the biggest upgrade to the OnePlus 10 Pro this year is in its appearance. Those who like it must feel that it has a really unique look. It’s easier to recognize than the OnePlus 9 Pro.

OnePlus 10 Pro Review: Design & Display

The frosted glass on the back cover is still silky smooth as ever. And the lens module part is made of ceramic, which looks extra premium when illuminated by light. But some people feel that this design does not look good. They think it copies Samsung’s design. Not to mention there is a gap between the frame and the lens. The upper frame is cut and flattened, but the lower frame is still rounded.

It looks like the design features four lenses but it’s actually just three. What looks like a ring flash design turns out to be just an ordinary dual flash. The lens is very easy to get fingerprints on. All in all, it’s a good thing that some people are debating how good the OnePlus 10 Pro looks. 

At least it shows that it’s different this year, which is an improvement of sorts, right?

When compared to last year’s 9 Pro, the OnePlus 10 Pro’s screen is almost unchanged. It still features 1440P resolution, 120Hz refresh rate. Even the light-emitting material is still the same Samsung E4 material. Although this screen is still top-level, bright and vivid, the screen is not significantly off-color when viewed obliquely. But it also means that if you switch from the OnePlus 9 Pro to the 10 Pro, you won’t see any change. There are still a few upgrades in the experience though. The first upgrade is that the fingerprint recognition area has been moved up, making it more comfortable to unlock.

The second upgrade is that it uses the second generation of LTPO. the principle of LTPO 2.0 was explained in detail in the Xiaomi 12 Pro review, so we won’t go over it again. But it has a different adaptive refresh rate strategy than the Xiaomi 12 Pro. When you stop swiping the screen, the OnePlus 10 Pro can reduce it to 1Hz in a very short time. and that’s true for almost all apps.I also found that the LTPO 2.0 screen refresh rate is also related to the brightness. For example, if you are in high brightness, the screen can go down to 1Hz when it is stationary, but when the screen brightness is slightly reduced, it can only go down to 5Hz or 10Hz at minimum. When the brightness is low enough, the OnePlus 10 Pro can only display at 120Hz refresh rate all the time.

The Xiaomi 12 Pro, which also uses LTPO 2.0, will have a similar phenomenon, except that it can be displayed at a 60Hz refresh rate even when reduced to its lowest brightness. So when you’re in a room at night with the lights off and a low brightness screen, LTPO does little to save power.

OnePlus 10 Pro Review: Performance & Gaming

Although the OnePlus 10 Pro is using Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, OnePlus says: Hey, we’re very confident in our optimization tuning for gaming. So let’s see what happens.

 Antutu scores 980,000, GeekBench 5 scores 1239 single-core and 3407 multi-cores. 3D MARK scores over 10,000, making it the first phone we’ve tested to break 10,000 in room temperature conditions. And whether or not the high-performance mode is turned on, it can successfully complete the 3D Mark Extreme Stress Test.

The maximum temperature of the body is only about 47 degrees Celsius. Although the stability is not high, but it is much better than some Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 phones that cannot even complete the test.

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Before we start the OnePlus 10 Pro gaming test, I would like to introduce two features. The first is the Hyper Response Engine, which allows you to be more responsive with your touch. Although we can see in the slow-mo video that it does make you shoot faster, you can hardly feel it in reality. And it will increase your power consumption, so this feature will not be turned on for the next test. There is also a feature called Ultra-steady frames which allows you to have smoother transitions when the frame rate drops. This feature is also available on the OnePlus 9 RT and is a really good experience, and will be turned on for the next game tests.

PUBG is the same as ever and is not a threat to Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. Almost 60fps all the way through. There was a big update to Genshin Impact recently. It boosted the highest resolution of all Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 phones, so we retested the Xiaomi 12 Pro’s results before comparing them.

As you can see there is actually a big difference between the OnePlus 10 Pro and the Xiaomi 12 Pro. The Xiaomi tends to keep the FPS high, but lags more often. On the other hand, OnePlus lowered the average FPS in order to reduce lag. However, the temperature difference between them is not much, neither of them exceeds 50 degrees Celsius.

Brightridge both have strikingly similar gameplay strategies, with both phones going back and forth between 40 and 25 fps late in the game. The maximum temperature is also close to 50 degrees Celsius.

It seems that both phones perform pretty much the same for games that are not optimized. Based on the above tests, I am quite satisfied with the gaming performance of the OnePlus 10 Pro. At least the more stable frame rate results in a good gaming experience.

OnePlus 10 Pro Review: Cameras

The biggest step back for the OnePlus 10 Pro this year is the camera system. Let’s compare the camera system of the OnePlus 9 Pro.

There is a monochrome camera missing, which is not a big deal. The biggest problem is the ultra-wide camera has been downgraded to the even weaker JN 1. Last year we did a comparison of flagship phones, and the OnePlus 9 Pro had the best ultra-wide camera of the bunch last year.

Ultra-Wide 150-degree camera

Can the OnePlus 10 Pro defend that honor? The answer is No. First of all, it is very difficult to take pictures with this 150-degree fisheye lens. It is very difficult to compose a picture. Its severe distortion will make all objects very strange. And your fingers are very easy to enter the picture. Second, the ultra-wide image is doomed to its edge quality is not too good. The image quality performance at the edge of the frame is poor. It’s really a step backward compared to the Freeform Lens of the 9 Pro. OnePlus is aware of these issues, so after cropping and AI correction, this fisheye lens is also usable as a normal ultra-wide camera. The processed ultra-wide photos perform much better. As long as you don’t zoom in to see it, both exposure, dynamic range, and color are excellent. Especially in night mode, the OnePlus 10 Pro takes very bright images. But there are still some things that can’t be fixed by AI. For example, the light in the upper right corner of this photo looks like it was cut off. Also, if you take a picture of a street lamp, there will definitely be a circular halo. However, the normal ultra-wide lens will not have this problem. This lens because there is no more auto-focus function, so you also have no way to take macro photos.

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Main Camera

The main camera performed better than last year’s OnePlus 9 Pro. There is no problem with greenish photos. Daytime colors are vibrant and dynamic range is excellent. Colors and exposure are very accurate at night. Auto mode is almost at the level of night mode. Overall, this lens is excellent. The only thing to worry about is its stability. The night mode is sometimes buggy when there is not enough light, but this bug should be fixed soon. So, there is no need to worry.

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Telephoto Camera

This 3.3x telephoto lens has a relatively small sensor size, so you can probably tell what its performance is like. Its main drawback is that the dynamic range is not as good as the first two cameras. It tends to overexpose the high light areas. However, because it has OIS stabilization, it has a higher success rate at night than other phone telephoto lenses that don’t have OIS. Of course, the sensor size is small, so even if you don’t blur the photo because of shaky hands, you won’t get much of an excellent photo. But even so, it is one of the best telephoto lenses in the new phones of 2022. It really is so ironic.

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The main camera supports up to 8K 24fps video recording. The ultra-wide lens supports up to 4k 30fps, while the telephoto can only record 1080p video. Probably considering the problem of poor image quality at the edges, the ultra-wide camera can’t use 150° fisheye mode when recording video. In fact, this mode is probably much more useful for video recording than for taking photos. Because this view is very much like a sports camera like GoPro shot, shooting a first-person video will be very interesting.

OnePlus 10 Pro Review: Battery & Charging

There is an 80w charger inside the box. So that means it can charge at 80w. You must be thinking: Wow, 80w must be much faster than the 65w charging speed of the OnePlus 9 Pro. But in reality, that’s not true. When charging the phone, we were surprised to see ow  this 80w charger is so slow. Although the battery is 500mAh, larger than the 9 Pro, it’s not like this charging time is an 80w charging result. And this charger went back to USB-A to C wire from the 9 Pro’s USB-C to C wire. So, charging wise OnePlus 10 Pro can be said to have no real progress. The charger even regressed.

Can that big 5000mAh battery make the OnePlus 10 Pro battery life longer? Watching videos and Tiktok for half an hour both consume 5%. Half-hour video recording is 14%. Genshin Impact consumes 12%. It does seem that the battery life has improved a bit with 5000mAh and LTPO 2.0.

OnePlus 10 Pro Review: Verdict

Is the OnePlus 10 Pro a good phone? Yes, it excels in comparison to recently released flagship phones. I even think it’s the best Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 phone to buy right now.

But is it a good OnePlus flagship phone? No, it’s not a qualified successor to the OnePlus 9 Pro. Missing IP68, a weaker ultra-wide camera, and almost the same charging speed as the 9 Pro. Makes me think the 10 Pro really isn’t much of an improvement. Instead, over a hundred dollars cheaper OnePlus 9 Pro seems like a much better choice.

Since OnePlus came back under the OPPO umbrella, “Never Settle” has become “Always Settle”. I miss the days when OnePlus was the flagship killer, at least when I didn’t have to pay more for less. Well, that’s it for our OnePlus 10 Pro review.

What do you think of this year’s OnePlus 10 Pro?

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