Rarely do we see phone manufacturers battling out to flood the market with devices with features that are yet to be rolled out, yet 5G seems to be the buzzword in the smartphone market today. We don’t remember witnessing the same frenzy during 3G and 4G rollouts, but certainly, the smartphone landscape has changed considerably between then and now. Oppo Reno 5 Pro joins the crowd, promising powerful performance and power efficiency.
The Reno 5 Pro 5G has a beautiful design with what Oppo calls Reno Glow technique, which provides a textured glow to the phone’s back surface with better fingerprint resistance. The device is available in Starry Black and Astral Blue colours. The camera bump has a glossy finish. The volume rocker is on the left-hand side, with the power button on the right. The bottom accommodates the SIM tray, a microphone hole and the single speaker array. The device accepts two nano SIMs. Though the gradient and 3D curved glass design provide the device with a clean and beautiful appearance, it does not break any new ground in design. The device is light and comfortable to use, measuring 159.7 x 73.2 x 7.6mm and weighing 173g.
The phone uses a 3D borderless sense screen with curved corners and a punch-hole camera. The 16.6 cm Super AMOLED screen offers a 90Hz refresh rate and 180Hz touch sampling rate, which appears dated in a phone that competes with the latest devices optimised for gaming. However, the Color OS 11.1 OS and the interface felt smooth and responsive. Face unlock was quite fast, but fingerprint took a little longer to unlock the phone. The screen reproduces DCI-P3 colour gamut and the device carries HD and HDR certifications from Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
The Reno 5 Pro uses a MediaTek Dimensity 1000+, a high-end 7nm SoC for mid-priced devices supporting the latest features like 5G, Wi-Fi 6 and advanced AI performance. The chip uses four powerful ARM Cortex-A77 clocked at 2.6GHz and four high-efficiency 2GHz Cortex-A55 cores. The graphics is handled by a 9-core ARM Mali-G77 MP9 GPU, providing an above-average gaming performance. While gaming was smooth with great response, the position of the speaker disappointed in horizontal orientation. Most of the time, my right index finger obstructed the speaker grille and completely cut off the sound in the middle of the game, forcing me into an uncomfortable grip to let the sound out. The Game Centre offers a customisation option in the middle of a game if required.
One area where the Reno 5 Pro clearly excels is the 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 charging, which tops up the 4300mAh battery in just over half an hour. The device is available in a single configuration of 8GB RAM and 128GB ROM, which is not expandable.
The phone features a 64MP main, 8MP ultra-wide-angle and 2MP Macro cameras along with a 2MP monochrome camera. In most cases, the colours appeared natural. However, turning on AI scene enhancement rendered the images with too much saturation and sharpening. The wide-angle camera appeared less detailed than the main camera. 4K videos were largely fine, but the lack of optical zoom proved a spoiler. Night mode certainly lets you capture an image even in near-zero illumination, but the images cannot be compared with those captured under proper lighting. Dual view video employs both front and back camera simultaneously and is a welcome addition with various layout options to choose from.
The Oppo Reno 5 Pro is a fairly competitive device with a neat design and powerful hardware. The cameras do not disappoint either. We wish the device had stereo speakers and a bit of fine-tuning in image quality.
RATING
WE’RE IMPRESSED Clean design, Responsive interface, Sure-fast charging
WE’D IMPROVE Speaker, Image quality
THE LAST WORD Oppo Reno 5 Pro 5G is a powerful device at the mid-price segment, supporting the latest network standards. However, there is no unique feature in this device that we can point out to potential buyers.