Oppo’s main highlight for most of its phones has been the design, the cameras, and the blazing-fast charging speeds that were better than rivals a year or two ago but most of them have now caught up.
This time we’re looking at Oppo Reno5 Pro 5G, a decidedly upper mid-range phone (going by its choice of cameras and chipset) but with a high-end price point. Is it any good? Should you buy it? Read on to find out.
Design-wise, the Oppo Reno 5 Pro 5G feels more evolutionary than revolutionary, and after playing with the new Oppo Reno phone, a lot of interesting stuff came to light.
On the surface, here are a few things you should know about the phone before going any further: The Reno 5 Pro comes with an impressive spec sheet. A few notable entries include a 90Hz display, 64MP quad rear cameras, 65W fast charging, MediaTek Dimensity 1000+ SoC, and more.
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One thing you should observe is the weight because Oppo makes a big deal out of it. It’s 173g and feels very light for a phone of this scale.
To put things in perspective, there’s a 6.5-inch AMOLED display on here, yet the phone feels so much smaller than the thickness, which is 7.6mm. There’s been a tremendous focus on taking a big 6.5-inch phone and not making it feel big, and honestly, the Reno 5 Pro doesn’t feel big at all.
The phone also packs a high refresh rate on the display, which comes enabled out of the box. There’s a dark mode, actually, there’s quite a variety of dark modes in here – enhanced, medium, gentle, depending on how dark you’re capable of going.
Note: Dark mode applies to third-party apps in the phone as well.
It runs ColorOS 11 based on Android 11 and a few minutes into the UI, we noticed it has changed for good. The little customizations and the added features call for good usage.
However, bloatware and not-so-smooth gesture navigation are some of its downsides, but things could get better with subsequent updates. Additionally, there are nice feature additions including a smart sidebar for shortcuts and a customizable always-on display.
In addition, the audio is clean, but the speakers tend to resonate sounds through the device, giving it that mid-range feeling you don’t get from a typical PKR 100,000 smartphone. This might come across as likable for some who fancy an immersive audio experience, but overall it feels annoying.
From the outset, the phone sports an aggressive screen-to-body ratio that offers a super slim design. We got the Starry Black version, and there’s a neat texture on the back which sort of comes off as matte, meaning that the back isn’t going to be a fingerprint magnet at all.
In fact, it’s gotten even harder for fingerprints to show up.
The battery is small, like 4350mAh small, but features Super VOOC 65W support which can give you a 70% recharge in 15 minutes. Battery life is exemplary, with the 4,350mAh cell lasting a day and a half with normal use.
Even with extended gaming sessions, the Reno 5 Pro should easily last a full day, unless you’re playing with 90Hz enabled. In that case, expect the battery life to last as much as 5 hours at best.
A feature that most excites users about the battery/charging attribute is how cool the animation looks. You can’t possibly miss it, even if you’re not getting the phone.
Note: Whenever you think about interacting with an Oppo device, pay attention to the Super VOOC animation. It never gets old! Do you see how the juice is coming in from below? You can watch it go up in real-time.
Unlike the previous Reno 4 Pro which packed a discouraging Snapdragon 720G SoC, the latest Reno lineup runs on a high-end MediaTek 5G chipset. That is, if you don’t compare it to the likes of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips used in high-end phones like the 865 or the latest 888. Dimensity 1000+ lags behind last year’s Snapdragon 865, so it’s safe to say it’s not quite up there in terms of flagship-level performance, but it’s close.
Oppo Reno 5 Pro is the brand’s first lineup to get a MediaTek Dimensity 1000+. To that effect, it’s also the first Oppo phone to sport a MediaTek SoC. The variant we received packs 12 gigs of RAM tossed with 256GB internal storage, and the performance feels okay-ish when compared with phones in the same price range. In line with what we mentioned about the performance comparison with Qualcomm Snapdragon chips.
The experience was seamless and smooth throughout the testing period, but a few dents along the way made us realize that Oppo could’ve done better. In this regard, we tested Call of Duty Mobile to see how the device holds up.
The gameplay works well with the standard 60Hz refresh rate, but a few grains appear when engaged with a big number of players at some point. Overall, the gaming experience was good but felt inferior to the standard Snapdragon 865 output as seen in Xiaomi’s Mi 10T.
The camera module is where you’re going to find some of the AI features that Oppo talked about in the days leading up to the phone’s launch. Here’s how the AI stuff works. For example, if you’re looking at a bright scene, then it will turn on the HDR mode in order to maintain those highlights to keep them in the frame. However, the AI mode tends to oversaturate the colors and artificially brightens up the shadows, giving the image an artificial look.
However, if it’s a dark frame, it will enable that highlight functionality for a night-mode effect. It doesn’t compare well to flagship phones within the same price range when it comes to night mode though, so don’t hold your breath.
Furthermore, it’s got these interesting portrait modes that offer a clever venue for rookie photographers to play with zero-spectrum colors.
To explain better, you can see here below that only the person is highlighted with color in the photo:
Now, this can be effective in environments where you have a lot of noise, like a lot of stuff going on and you’d want to focus onto one element of the photo – something like a straight-up natural selfie.
But that won’t work well with the secondary 32MP camera which, as seen in previous Reno lineups, has problems with beautification and high contrast – things that need to be toned down a bit.
Some other cool features include the high frame rate mode. It goes up to 960fps in 720p for slow motion, and 480fps for 1080p, nothing new or innovative, but fun to play around with.
Some extra features include a pro-mode in Expert control over certain camera elements.
There’s also a split mode, and an extra-HD option which helps take a super high-res photo that you can crop into – you have more flexibility for adding filters at a later point, and the detail won’t change much.
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It’s imperative to mention here that we tried everything in our power to find faults in the Oppo Reno 5 Pro. It does well with the hardware it sports, the 64MP quad cameras perform as well as they can but ultimately fall short of similarly priced phones like the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE. The night mode and the AI HDR don’t quite match up with rival phones.
The PKR 100,000 price-tag might hurt in some ways, but the phone makes up for it with its premium design, user interface, and high-end but not quite flagship chipset. The cameras aren’t quite up to mark for this price point but you win some you lose some going with an upper mid-range phone.
