Oppo Reno 8 Pro — striking design and stunning performance for a mid-ranger
Oppo Reno8 Pro 5G is available in black or green glazed colours. Picture: Noel Campion.
The Oppo Reno 8 Pro features a lot of what makes the Oppo Find X5 Pro so good including a premium finish, excellent cameras, a stunning display and stellar performance.
The Reno8 Pro 5G is 7.34mm thick and feels light and comfortable in the hand at 183g. My review unit arrived in the striking glazed black colourway — it’s also available in glazed green. I love the unique elegant squared-off camera bump in the top left on the rear and the mirror-like finish. This does show up fingerprints and smudges so if that’s something you care about, just get the green one.
The side rails are a contrast to the back with a textured finish that provides much-needed grip to what would otherwise be a slippery phone to hold. The sides are flat, unlike the Find X5 Pro's curved sides, which is consistent with the design language throughout the rest of the phone. On the left side is the power button and on the right are the volume up and down buttons. The bottom edge has a USB-C port and a SIM tray as well as a bottom-firing speaker that combines with the top speakerphone for an excellent stereo sound.
The display is flat unlike its more expensive sibling and that’s not a bad thing. The tiny punch-hole cutout for the 32MP front selfie camera is top and centre is unobtrusive. The front comes with a pre-installed screen protector but you don’t get a free case as I’ve seen with other Oppo models.
The under-display fingerprint scanner is too low for my liking which makes it a little harder to reach one-handed but more importantly, it is reliable and quick to unlock the screen.
The Reno8 Pro doesn’t come with any official waterproof rating, but I did notice a rubber seal around the SIM tray.
The 6.7-inch AMOLED display is top-notch for a mid-range handset and although it doesn’t have the LTPO tech found in more expensive handsets, it does support a 120Hz refresh rate. You can set this to either 60Hz or 120Hz for silky smooth scrolling.
It can get relatively bright and I had no major problems seeing it outdoors. It’s also compatible with HDR10 in apps that support it.
One of the things I like about this display is the smaller curves on the corners — too many phones have massive curves here. I also love the really small bezels that are even all the way around.
The Reno8 Pro features Oppo’s MariSilicon X imaging NPU (neural imaging processor), which was first introduced in their flagship the Find X5 Pro. This offers many benefits to camera performance and computational photography. It boasts performance in 4K Ultra Night Video, as well as 4K Ultra HDR video to keep details in both highlights and shadows.
The Reno8 Pro is not a flagship and therefore corners have to be cut to keep the price down. One of the places it does this is the mid-range 8MP ultrawide and 2MP macro cameras.
The ultrawide is decent when the light is good but suffers from a lack of sharpness in the corners and isn’t great in low light or nighttime photos or videos. Instead of using the macro camera, I got better results from using the Extra HD mode and then cropping in afterwards.
However, the saving grace is the main camera which you’ll use to take most of your photos and videos. The main camera is the same as the one in the FindX5 Pro and has a 50MP, OIS primary sensor capable of capturing incredible detail, natural colours and stunning night photos.
Lowlight footage is when the MariSilicon X shines. Dark nighttime footage is processed in real-time, raising shadow details without looking overly murky.
The 32MP front-facing camera features autofocus and is great for both night and day times selfies. It has a wide field of view which is great for group selfies and you can control the level of background blur in portrait mode before you take the shot but not afterwards in post.
You also get a lot of additional camera modes including Pro, Extra HD, Pano, Macro, Film, Slo-mo up to 960fps (720p), Time-lapse and Dual-view video.
The 4,500mAh battery is able to sustain a full day's workload on a single charge but crucially, it comes with a massive 80W SuperVooc charger in the box which can charge the battery to 50% in close to 10 minutes and to 100% in around 30 minutes. Unfortunately, there’s no wireless charging option.
The Reno8 Pro is no slouch when it comes to raw power and uses the MediaTek Dimensity 8100-Max SoC that managed impressive scores in my benchmark testing. It performed well in the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme Stress test thanks to what Oppo calls the Ultra-Conductive Cooling System, so you can expect decent gaming performance.
It comes with a generous amount of UFS 3.1 storage (256GB) with 8GB of RAM, but there’s no SD card slot for additional storage.
The Oppo Reno8 Pro is a solid performer with a good camera system, large and fast storage and enough RAM to keep things running smoothly. It will stand out from the crowd of samey Android phones and you won’t be disappointed with its overall performance. While its price tag isn’t inexpensive, it feels more premium than its price suggests.
Oppo Reno8 Pro €679.99 on PrePay eir.ie
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