OPPO Reno5 Pro Review: Checks all the right boxes

Joel Joseph — Sat, 13 Feb 2021 13:49:37 +0000

Over the past couple of years, OPPO has focused on adding consumer pleasing attributes like a feature-rich camera setup and premium build quality on its Reno smartphones. However, the earlier models lacked the processing power to take on the flagships in the market. That changed in 2021 when OPPO released the Reno5 Pro 5G with the new Dimensity 1000+ 5G SoC which ensures CPU power is no longer an issue.

The Reno5 Pro 5G is already seeing better reception than the Reno4 Pro model with the phone registering 91% growth in the first week sales as compared to its predecessor. This isn’t surprising given how the new model is a much better upgrade as compared to its predecessor and retails at a similar price point.

So today, in this OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G review, let’s take a closer look at the phone and its features and see if the Dimensity 1000+ is worth the hype.

OPPO Reno5 Pro Inside the Box:

OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G box contents

The Reno5 Pro Box comes with the following items:

Handset
Charger
Earphone
USB Data Cable
SIM Ejector Tool
Quick Guide
Safety Guide
Protective Case

OPPO Reno5 Pro Review: Design

The biggest selling point of the OPPO Reno5 Pro is its premium design. I know a lot of people like to throw the word premium towards any phone with a decent design but the new Reno model definitely deserves this adjective. The phone stands out thanks to its extremely thin and lightweight design and a sparkly finish on the back.

The unit I have is the Astral Blue variant. It sparkles at certain angles in a matte finish, which means you don’t have to worry about cleaning fingerprint smudges from its back. The blue color shifts to a shade of purple at certain angles. To top it off, the phone has a polished aluminum frame going around the body, adding to its elegant design.

The phone is just 7.6mm thick

The Reno5 Pro is sleek at 7.6mm and weighs 173 grams. This polished design and the form factor is what makes the new Reno model special. The smooth edges make it comfortable to hold, even with one hand. Given that this is a 5G phone with a pretty decent 4350mAh battery, the design is definitely its stand out feature.

The aluminum frame feels solid and the power and volume buttons housed on the sides are clicky and easily accessible, as they are located around the middle of the frame instead of the upper half like other flagships.

At the bottom, you get a USB-C port, microphone, single speakers, and dual SIM card slot. On the top, you have the ‘Designed for Reno’ branding along with another microphone opening.

Like most other flagship smartphones, the OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G features an in-display fingerprint sensor. We’ve come to a stage where in-display sensors have evolved to be nearly as fast as a physical sensor and the new Reno’s sensor is no exception.

Unfortunately, the Reno5 Pro 5G does not have a certified IP rating so it’s best that you keep the phone away from water and moisture.

The single speaker setup is sufficiently loud and clear but you will end up missing stereo speakers, especially if you are going to rely on its loudspeakers regularly.

OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G Display

Another big highlight of the OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G is its 6.55-inch 2400 x 1080p Super AMOLED display. The panel is bright and well saturated, even when you use it outdoors, and comes with a 90Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ certification. An area where this phone shines is video playback. The super-thin top bezels and the edges which curve into the back, make for a truly immersive experience, whether it’s watching a video or playing games.

This Super AMOLED panel with its curved edges features vibrant colors and good viewing angles, making it a flagship worthy screen, even if it’s just 1080p. So whether it was watching a video on Netflix or browsing through the gallery, the 90Hz refresh rate display provided a smooth scrolling and viewing experience. The front and back are both protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5.

Also, for those who are worried about the edges registering ghost touches, be assured that the software is smart enough to not allow the edges to come in between your experience.

The 32MP front camera is housed inside a punch-hole that’s located on the top-left corner. It small enough to ensure a distraction-free viewing experience and the software has now matured to smartly hide it in plain sight. Note that my review unit came with a scratch guard installed, so you don’t have to run off searching for one when you purchase the device.

Overall, the Reno5 Pro 5G shines in both display and design departments.

OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G Review: Performance & Gaming

When it comes to benchmark the OPPO Reno5 Pro unit scored 405600 on Antutu 8.3.4 which was pretty good. The score may not be close to the flagship Snapdragon chips but it’s still a good indication that the chip should handle most of the processes that you throw at it. Other benchmark scores are given below, you can have a look at them if interested.

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The 7nm MediaTek Dimensity 1000+ is the chipmaker’s best SoC from 2020. It comes with four performance Cortex-A77 cores and a 9-core Mali G77 MP9 GPU. In real life, the chip ensures the Reno5 Pro 5G runs without any glitches or lags. The UI is fluid, animations are smooth, and even the gestures work properly. Multi-tasking is also a breeze on this phone so everyday tasks like watching videos, listening to music, editing a few photos on apps like snapseed, and browsing through websites for hours — all work very smoothly.

As for the gaming performance, I am not much of a mobile gamer, but I tried my luck with COD: Mobile and Asphalt 8, and both the games ran smoothly. COD Mobile in the highest graphics settings didn’t encounter any issues and the gameplay was smooth. As far as I could see, the touch inputs were fast and accurate as the 180Hz touch sampling rate may have aided in my gaming experience.

As for heating, the Reno5 Pro 5G heated up to around 42 degrees celsius when I was gaming for half an hour to 45 minutes but it never reached a level where it affected my gaming experience. Without a cover, the phone feels a bit warm to touch but with a cover on the back, this shouldn’t bother your gameplay.

OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G Review: ColorsOS 11 UI

Over the past couple of years, ColorOS has evolved into a pretty good custom UI for Android. It’s been a while since I used ColorOS, so personally, the UI elements and design felt fresh and colorful.

OPPO Reno5 Pro Gamespace

Some of the interesting ColorOS 11 features I found on the Reno5 Pro include the quick startup feature for games (via gamespace), the three levels of dark mode (enhanced, medium, and gentle), a number of customization options including animations for AOD, and flexdrop for multitasking – which worked pretty well when it did (some apps may have compatibility issues though).

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There are certain aspects of the UI like bloatware that can’t be helped, but still, the OS offers enough customization options to keep everyone interested.

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OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G Review: Camera

The Reno5 Pro comes with the following camera setup.

64MP f/1.7 primary camera sensor
8MP f/2.2 Ultrawide 115˚ sensor
2MP f/2.4 Macro camera
2MP f/2.4 Portrait Camera

Reno5 Pro 5G has a quad camera setup

64MP Primary Camera

The samples from the 64MP primary camera were sharp and saturated. Most of you should be happy with the output from the main camera and if you are someone who likes images to be more saturated, you can turn on the AI Highlight algorithm for your photography.

One peculiar thing I noticed was that the primary camera slightly overexposed some images, especially when it came to landscapes. Apart from that, the images came out clean and sharp with a good amount of details and an excellent dynamic range.

When the lighting goes down, there is some visible noise. But if you turn on the AI Highlight mode in the camera, you can get a visibly cleaner photo with good colors. The night time images were pretty bright too.

Let’s take a look at a few samples.

As you can see in the sample above, the photo features a good dynamic range and has colors that are very close to real life. The image also has a lot of details, including the textures on the footpath and the bark of the trees. If the exposure was slightly tweaked, I feel the image would have looked cleaner.

Take another example of a photo shot at 8 AM. The image has a really good dynamic range and the real orangish shade of the early morning sun is retained along with a good amount of details.

Further, the AI Highlight feature boosts the saturation to pretty good levels (see the difference in the samples below) ensuring that your photos are social media ready right out of the gallery.

Images taken indoors under good lighting were very crisp and saturated. OPPO’s scene recognition (via AI Highlight) was always spot on in identifying the correct scene in focus and applying appropriate tweaks.

There are a bunch of filters and options to play around with as well which makes capturing photos from its 64MP camera quite fun.

Low Light Photography

As for low light images, I was pretty happy with the results. The noise levels were controlled and the 64MP camera still retained a good amount of details with real-life colors. Overall, it captures clean and saturated images, which most people will prefer.

Even when the lighting dims down significantly, the Reno5Pro impressed with the amount of details and range of colors it managed to capture. I found this to be consistent in all of the low light scenarios.

Some phones lose saturation when lighting goes down, but the Reno5 Pro did well to maintain the color and details.

Ultra-Wide Camera

The 8MP Ultra Wide Camera can capture decent wide angle shots with good colors. The AI Highlight feature further helps to boost the saturation levels, improving the quality of the samples.

But UW camera struggles in extremely low light situations which isn’t surprising given it’s an average 8MP sensor. Night mode does boost up the wide-angle image but with fewer details to spare, the images lose out their sharpness. However, I do have to mention that the noise control in these low light situations was impressive as I’ve seen phones with ultra-wide-angle sensors that take slightly brighter photos at the expense of additional noise, rendering the image useless.

So the UW mode is not really meant for night time photography. Stick to daylight conditions for your wide-angle shots and you should be satisfied with the experience.

It’s also worth adding that unless you are using an expensive flagship, the ultra-wide camera on your smartphone won’t likely perform well in extremely low light situations. So this result is in line with other phones in its price segment.

Night Mode

The 64MP camera in the standard mode was pretty good even when the lighting was extremely dim or nonexistent. Details were retained to a considerable extent and the image came out well balanced (not overexposed). The night mode can turn up the brightness to a considerable extent. However, as with other night modes, when u boost the brightness of an extremely low light image, some details are lost.

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Personally, I’d advise against using the night mode unless for scenarios when the scene is extremely dark as the standard mode is good enough for most low light situations.

Overall, I m pretty happy with the night time performance of the primary sensor without the night mode.

Portrait Camera

The front portrait is pretty good and you can get some good looking selfies. However, the rear portrait camera does not meet the expectations of a Rs. 35,000 smartphone. You can get decent shots if you try really hard but the amount of background blur was not very strong which didn’t allow the object in focus to get that special bokeh effect.

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Macro Camera

The Macro camera was even worse than the portrait camera. I couldn’t get a decent macro shot as the phone failed to focus when I was close to an object.

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So, in conclusion, the 64MP f/1.7 primary camera is impressive while the 8MP ultra-wide-angle shooter also does a pretty good job at capturing decent quality wide shots. However, don’t expect much from the portrait and macro cameras.

VIDEOS

FDF Portrait Video system was heavily marketed by OPPO so I was curious to see its real-life improvements. I have to agree that the videos do have an edge when the algorithms work properly. The noise is well controlled, the dynamic range is good, and the overall video has good details and saturation too. However, I feel this algorithm needs to be a bit more consistent at low light conditions to guarantee better results all the time.

When the lighting goes down significantly, the algorithm tries to aggressively increase the brightness and as a result, there’s visible noise in the video. Personally, I would have preferred a slightly less bright but cleaner video sample. You can check out a couple of video samples from here.

So if you are shooting videos in good lighting conditions on the Reno5 Pro, the FDF Portrait Video system will slightly boost the quality of your videos, giving it an edge over other devices. OPPO also offers a bunch of filters and features such as AI Color Highlight which works pretty well to make your videography experience a lot more fun and interesting.

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OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G Review: Battery

The Reno5 Pro 5G packs a dual-battery design with a total capacity of 4350mAh. The 65W charger is one of the fastest in the market and can juice up your battery at blazing fast speeds. You can go from 15% to 75% in just 15 minutes! Charge it for another 15 minutes and your battery is topped up to 100%. So charging your Reno phone will never be an issue.

As for the battery consumption, the 7nm Dimensity 1000+ is not a battery hogger and provides an all-day battery life on the device. With AOD turned on, the battery consumption increases slightly but with a 65W charger in your bag, you never really have to worry about battery life on the phone.

Note that in India, we don’t have a live 5G network so all the tests were conducted over 4G and Wi-Fi networks.

OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G Review: Verdict

As I mentioned in my review, there are clear strong points for the Reno5 Pro 5G. It has a killer design and display, with a super-fast 65W charging that ensures a 4350mAh battery is more than enough for most consumers.

Dimensity 1000+ was the big question mark about the device but so far, having used the phone for over a month, I have found no perceivable difference in performance over say a Snapdragon 865 powered smartphone like the OnePlus 8. Gaming has been smooth, ColorOS has been fluid and responsive, and overall, Dimensity 1000+ has delivered.

As for the cameras, the Reno5 Pro 5G has a pretty good setup for most of your needs. But portrait and macro cameras are practically useless. The wide-angle sensor turned out to be pretty decent despite its low resolution. That said, if you are a regular consumer, the 64MP primary camera will not disappoint. Just activate the AI Highlight algorithm to boost the saturation and your samples should be social media ready right out of the stock camera.

The FDF Portrait Video system with AI Highlight video is a feature that still needs work. It boosts the colors and reduces the noise in the video to a perceivable extent in most scenarios but it doesn’t really feel revolutionary. It’s more of an evolutionary upgrade to the Reno series this year but I’m excited to see how OPPO refines these complex algorithms to deliver a consistently improved videography experience on its phones.

For Rs. 35,990, the OPPO Reno5 Pro hits all the right notes for a smartphone in this price segment. So, if you are looking for a smartphone around this budget, you might want to check out the new Reno5 Pro model.

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