OPPO Reno5 Pro 5G – Review | Pretty, Powerful, And Packed With Features
The “Mid-Range” Flagship is a peculiar segment, Some manufacturers give you a stripped-down flagship-like we saw the Samsung S20 Fan Edition (Review) last year, The phone was pretty good minus the Exynos powerplant. Then there was the Oneplus 8T a solid performer let down by the camera setup. Oppo Mobiles has joined this fight with The Oppo Reno 5 Pro 5G promising a lot of bang for your buck. Let us share our experience with the Reno 5 Pro 5G.
In-box Contents
Since smartphone makers are hell-bent on removing almost everything except the actual phone from the box, this section becomes important. Inside the box of the Reno 5 Pro 5G you get
Design – Slim yet Curvy
Now Oppo has been making some of the slimmest phones, And the Reno 5 Pro 5G is no different. But it is not a small thing, the slim form factor (7.6 mm) and lightweight design doesn’t make the device feel cheap. Au contraire, Reno 5 Pro feels light yet quite dense. The competition Samsung S20 FE, Oneplus 8T, and even the Oneplus Nord feel thicc in comparison.
Coming to the Curvy bit, The Reno 5 Pro comes with a display that is curved on the edges, the rear of the phone has curved edges as well, more on the screen later. The Reno 5 Pro comes with a Dual Sim Card tray, USB Type-C, and a speaker grille at the bottom, while the volume rockers are placed on the left side, the power button gets its place on the right. The Top edge of the phone has a “Designed for Reno” written on it. We received the “Astral Blue” unit, which has a matte glittery blue gradient color at the back. The color looks quite bling and yet it is not over the top. The other color that is available it’s “Starry Black”. The Camera housing at the back is a very 2021 design, three large camera lenses stand out and the camera housing slightly protrudes out.
Display and Internals
Apart from the design, The Reno 5 Pro boasts of a high screen rate display as well, The Curved Edge panel on the Reno 5 Pro gets a Full HD+ resolution with a 90hz refresh rate. This panel is one of the better ones you’d see in this price range, with about 800nits of brightness and good color accuracy. The panel on the Reno 5 Pro can go very low in brightness when required without any issues. Consuming content on social media and streaming content over OTT platforms was a pleasurable exercise on this screen. The Reno 5 Pro had zero problems with screen visibility in the bright winter sun of Delhi.
The Reno 5 Pro 5G comes with Dimensity 1000plus SoC, This is the new 7nm based 5G capable SOC from Mediatek. The Dimensity 1000plus has a lot of horsepower to run HDR10+ content, 144hz Display, Hardware-based AV1 decoding, a dedicated AI processor, and Wifi 6. This SoC has more horsepower than the Snapdragon 765G for sure, comparisons with the Snapdragon 865 is wrong though.
Coming back to the Reno 5 Pro, The Dimensity 1000Plus is supported by 8GB of Ram and 128GB of UFS2.1 storage. The battery capacity here is at 4350 mAh but there is a 65watt Super VOOC 2.0 charging support and you get the charger inside the box.
Performance
With the New Dimensity 1000Plus SoC getting rave reviews, we had some high expectations. The Reno 5 Pro did not disappoint in the day-to-day usage scenarios with multiple apps running in the background, music streaming over BT, streaming videos, and editing social media content – photos and videos. We did try gaming a bit on the Reno 5 Pro and the phone did warm up a bit and eventually, the processor throttled at higher loads. Overall the performance of the Reno 5 Pro 5G is good unless you are going to be using it only for gaming all day long.
Wifi 6
The Reno 5 Pro 5G supports Wifi-6 and if you have a Wifi 6 Capable router you are going to get some lightning-fast wifi speeds. Wifi 6 also offers much more reliable connections. We are using Wifi 6 and The Reno 5 Pro had amazing and reliable connections all over the house.
Audio Quality
Partly because this is the new trend that we have been seeing and partly because of the super slim design, The Reno 5 Pro does not have a 3.5mm jack. As mentioned above, Oppo does supply a USB-C headphone inside the box. The audio quality through the headphones is good, while audio over Bluetooth is good as well. Call quality over WhatsApp and mobile networks, the earpiece offers loud and clear audio quality, the callers on the other end also reported distortion-free voice quality. While talking about the audio, we must mention the Reno 5 Pro lacks stereo speakers, something which is getting common nowadays.
User Interface – Color OS 11
The Reno 5 Pro ships with Android 11 and ColorOS 11.1. The ColorOS 11 is one of the better OEM android skins out there. There are tons of customizations available, AOD, Fonts, Icons, etc. ColorOS 11 also handled the RAM very well and seems well optimized for the Dimensity 1000plus with smooth animations and no lag or stutter anywhere.
Cameras with AI and Processing
Click to Read about Oppo's FDF System
Oppo has worked a lot on the camera of the Reno 5 Pro, Apart from the 64 MP primary camera there is a lot of software wizardry going on behind the scene when capturing photographs and video to offer some amazing results. Daylight photography is no problem, Auto HDR makes sure you get properly exposed pictures, but most phones can do good daylight photography. It’s the low light photography where the Reno 5 Pro’s camera shines.
Fancy shooting a picture of the Coffee you are having late evening? Low light shot of the Car? The Camera just captures everything with nice detail, good sharpness, and low noise. This even when the Reno 5 Pro lack OIS, there is a Gyro based EIS for video and it works well. The front camera is 32MP and offers crisp selfies even during low light scenarios.
On the Video side of the things, Reno 5 Pro can shoot at a max resolution of 4k / 30fps but there is more. The Reno 5 Pro can shoot Portrait Video and it is really something. The Portrait Video System works really well most of the times, occasionally you will see the edges not being detected properly but that’s ok! The whole portrait video effect is thoroughly enjoyable and more importantly, it is very nicely implemented.
The Camera System and its implementation using AI and Algorithms really produce some good results. Then there are the Dual-Video, Extra HD and Night mode, and Ultra Night mode options also available. Overall, we found the Reno 5 Pro’s Camera system to be very reliable, producing good pictures and videos regardless of the light.
Battery Life
With moderate to light usage, the 4350 mAh battery of the Reno 5 Pro could last a full day, While on heavy usage the Reno 5 Pro ended the day on the charger. The 65W Super-VOOC 2.0 charger supercharges the Reno 5 Pro from 0-100 in under an hour and that is impressive for a device this slim
Verdict
New Dimensity 1000Plus 5G SoC, The Camera System with AI Features, the beautiful screen, the lightweight and slim form factor: the Reno 5 Pro has a lot going for it. Adding Super Fast Charging times the Reno 5 Pro makes a sold case for itself. At the Price of Rs 35,990, the Reno 5 Pro gets a big thumbs up from Team BW
