by Oppo Reno 8 Pro: Key features
Chipset: MediaTek Size 8100-Max
DATA STORAGE: 8GB (12GB version available)
To store: 256GB
OS: Android 12, ColorOS 12.1
Screen: AMOLED, 6.7 inches, 1080 x 2412 pixels
cameras: 50 MP, f/1.8, 23mm (main); 8 MP, f/2.2, 16mm (ultrawide); 2 MP, f/2.4, (macro); 32 MP, f/2.4, 22mm (front)
Connection: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, USB Type-C
Dimensions: 161.2 x 74.2 x 7.3 mm (6.35 x 2.92 x 0.29 inches)
Weight: 183 g (6.46 ounces)
Manufacturers are constantly launching new phones like the Oppo Reno 8 Pro into the ‘around £600’ price segment with obvious glee. This is generally fine as it leads to too many options for users and also leads to a lot of confusion and feature comparisons. Everyone wants the best bang for their buck, but what do you do in a world where you can get a Google Pixel or iPhone SE for similar money? We call these mid-range phones, but a few years ago they were powerful enough to melt faces.
The Oppo Reno 8 Pro clearly wants to get your custom. It has a stunning appearance, has a good chipset in the MediaTek Dimensity 8100-MAX, and has excellent ability to capture 50MP images or shoot stabilized 4K video. But it risks being too expensive to be considered one of the best budget camera phones at this price point. (opens in new tab)and also not ‘premium’ enough to rank among the best camera phones (opens in new tab) comprehensive. So which side of the fence does the Oppo Reno 8 Pro fall on?
Oppo Reno 8 Pro review: Design
What is immediately striking about the Oppo Pro 8 is how reflective it is. If you have a habit of retouching your makeup on the train, maybe you don’t need to carry a mirror anymore. The back of the phone is silver plated and glass plated as well as an absolute smudge and fingerprint magnet. However, it’s great for taking selfies or asking for help when stranded on top of a mountain in the desert.
Taking the look of the suddenly popular flat-edged iPhone 4 again, the phone’s camera bump makes it as clear as its glossy back. Featuring four circles that extend more than halfway across the back of the handset and two of which are the camera lens (much smaller than the black disc surrounding the actual glass), this is an imposing addition to an already important phone. Fortunately, the results are better than good.
However, these sheet edges do cause a minor issue with the phone. Like many handsets that boast an enthusiastic approach to their rectangular shape, it can be uncomfortable to hold. If you do get a mirrored phone, you might not want to put it in a case and turn off all that shine so the sharp angles of the edges get stuck in your hand. Plus, it’s definitely worth a try first to see if it’s max sized for one-handed use and if holding it on your ear for half an hour while talking to your mom won’t be unbearable.
There’s no headphone socket, just a USB-C port and a small speaker grille to break the smooth edge of the phone, a SIM tray at the bottom, a volume rocker on the left, and a lock button on the right. This lock button glows green even when the phone is turned off – something that can be tricky to do as by default holding the button for any amount of time calls up Google Assistant. You will be able to turn the phone off again when you change it quickly in the Settings app.
Oppo 8 Pro review: Features
Running Android 12 8 Pro comes with Oppo’s ColorOS 12.1; this is an overall pleasant setting for doing phone work, with a bright and bold color scheme and some larger-than-normal icons. We also particularly liked the way the lock screen image changes every time we turn on the phone, which caused us to lock and unlock multiple times to catch it. We never did, but that definitely adds to the data the phone downloads and affects battery life.
The fingerprint reader is under the screen, which is 6.7 inches, 1080 x 2412 pixels, 120 Hz, 20:9 ratio, 394 PPI density AMOLED covered with Gorilla Glass, and has the highest brightness figure of up to 950 nits. It looks good and we found finger unlocking to be fast and accurate.
You get 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage, which is plenty these days when everything is streaming, and the CPU comes with octa-cores: four 2.85GHz Cortex-A78s and four 2.0GHz Cortex-A55s. The GPU is a Mali G610. While this combination doesn’t quite top the tops of some Snapdragon options, it’s totally respectable and enough to keep the phone responsive.
Most interesting is the presence of an NPU, a neural processing unit, MariSilicon X, which provides video and real-time processing in 4K night mode, and noise reduction of the camera feed with its frightening approach to algorithms. It was first spotted on the best-in-class Oppo Find X5 earlier this year, and as we’ll see, low-light shots from the phone’s camera look excellent. Not on the standard Oppo Reno 8, only in the Pro version.
Oppo Reno 8 Pro review: Camera
The Sony IMX766 sensor on the back of the main camera contains 50.3 million pixels, a resolution (from 12.6 MP binned) that you can change with a simple tap of a button at the top of the camera app. It was considered a good low-light sensor even before Oppo slapped its NPU on the back, but now it’s even better. Even shots taken at sunset or at ISOs above 4000 don’t show much mottling due to noise, and the 24mm equivalent lens is wide enough for everyday use.
It is by no means a magic wand and cannot recover images that have been distorted by camera shake (this is the job of image stabilization also found in the main camera) or motion blur. However, it helps both by enabling higher ISOs and thus shutter speeds without too much fear of noise, and photos taken at night look great considering they’re from a mid-range Android smartphone.
The other 8MP ultra-wide camera with 16mm equivalent vision and f/2.2 maximum aperture is a bit disappointing in terms of contrast. It’s good, especially in daylight, but doesn’t offer anything of the same quality. There’s a 2MP macro camera that’s not even worth mentioning, and a 32MP selfie camera on the front that’s better than it should be, it’s very small and looks like a single hole in the screen. It has autofocus, which many don’t have, and takes smooth shots without too much smudging. There’s also a telephoto setting, but it crops the feed from the main camera instead of switching to a custom lens.
It’s a similar story with video, which makes great use of the NPU, especially if you want to record in less-than-perfect lighting. While the resolution peaks at 4K/30, if you reduce it to 720p it can reach a very fast 960fps for great slow motion effects.
Oppo Reno 8 Pro review: Performance
The Dimensity chipset inside the 8 Pro doesn’t match the Snapdragon 8s of this world or anything recently produced by Apple, but it really isn’t too bad. It’s definitely powerful enough to play games, run apps, shoot 4K video, and pretty much anything else you’d want to do with a smartphone. The main thing that will slow down the phone is the amount of bloatware that comes with it. Take a few moments to get rid of apps and many games like the rest app from Joom and Oppo, a Latvian fashion company, and you’ll find the app drawer less cluttered. It’s also the first time we’ve seen a phone ship with TikTok pre-installed, possibly a clue to the expected user demographic.
In the Geekbench 5 benchmark application, the phone scored 891 for single-core performance and 3695 for multi-core. This places it above the OnePlus Nord 2 5G, but slightly below the Google Pixel 6 in single-core. Multi-core is a different story, with the Reno 8 Pro beating the Pixel 6 and topping the list with Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 devices.
The 4,500 mAh battery can last for about a day and a half of mixed use before you reach for the charger. Longer if you leave it in standby mode. It offers 80W fast charging, which can fill the battery in about half an hour, and Oppo is kind enough to include a charger in the box.
Should I buy the Oppo Reno 8 Pro?
If you don’t mind a big, fingerprint-covered phone and low-light photos are important to you, you definitely should. It’s powerful, has good features, has decent battery life, and charges extremely fast. A few minor details aside, it’s disappointing that the ultra-wide camera doesn’t match the capacity of the main camera, and you have a reasonably priced phone that does a lot of things right. The main problem is that you can say that for many phones in this sector of the market.
