All the right moves: Oppo Reno13 Pro 5G nails the mid-tier sweet spot
Oppo Reno13 Pro 5G. Picture: Noel Campion.
After a brief hiatus from the European market, Oppo is firmly back in the game, first with the launch of the Find X8 Pro at the end of last year, and now with its mid-tier Reno13 range. I’ve been testing the Reno13 Pro 5G, the top model in this lineup.
The Oppo Reno13 Pro doesn’t just look high-end — it feels it. The aerospace-grade aluminium frame is impressively solid, and that one-piece “cold sculpted” glass back gives it a distinctive, almost silky texture in the hand.
The slightly raised rear camera module features two prominent circular bumps for the main and telephoto lenses, while the ultrawide camera and flash unit sit flush to the right of them.
The camera module is positioned in the top left corner, which causes a noticeable wobble when the phone is laid flat without a case.
At just 7.55mm thick and weighing 195g, it’s surprisingly svelte for a phone with a 5,800mAh battery inside. The back's matte and glossy dual-texture finish helps hide fingerprints, but the camera lens rings gather drifts of dust and lint.
My review unit in Graphite Grey is stylish, but the Plume Purple colour is incredibly eye-catching, with a unique butterfly shadow pattern that shimmers under light.
With IP66, IP68, and IP69 ratings, this phone is protected from just about anything — from accidental splashes to high-pressure water jets. It also features full-blown underwater photography support with physical shutter controls via the volume keys. As with all phone waterproof ratings, this is for fresh water, and while it would be great to take it snorkelling, take it in salt water at your own risk.
The 6.83-inch AMOLED panel is stunning with a micro-curved design that blends into the thin symmetrical bezels. Corning Gorilla Glass 7i protects the display, offering enhanced durability against everyday drops, scratches, and impacts. The 93.8% screen-to-body ratio is impressive, only interrupted by a small punch-hole cutout for the selfie camera.
It’s not just about the aesthetics, though. The 1.5K resolution is sharp, the 120Hz refresh rate makes everything feel responsive and smooth, and brightness peaks at a respectable 1,200 nits, so outdoor visibility is no problem. HDR10+ certification is the cherry on top for video.
Oppo also includes handy features like “Splash Touch,” allowing you to use the screen even when wet — a surprisingly practical addition, especially for the Irish weather.
Under the hood, the Reno13 Pro runs on a custom-tuned MediaTek Dimensity 8350 chip, co-developed with Oppo for performance and battery efficiency. Paired with 12GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage (UFS 3.1), it handled everything from social media multitasking to high-end mobile games like Wreckfest without breaking a sweat.
The massive vapour chamber does an excellent job of managing thermals during light gaming and shorter sessions. However, when pushed harder, particularly with performance mode enabled during the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme Stress Test, the device did need to thermal throttle to prevent overheating. In typical use, frame drops and noticeable heat build-up were still virtually non-existent.
Of course, you can’t expect the same level of performance as the latest flagships, such as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Elite found in the Oppo Find X8 Pro, where Geekbench 6 scores were around 50% higher.
With a 5,800mAh battery — an upgrade over the previous Reno generation — I was comfortably getting over a day and a half of use per charge. When you need to plug in, 80W SuperVooc charging gets you from 0 to 17% in just 5 minutes, and a full charge doesn’t take long either. Oppo claims the battery will retain 80% of its health after five years, which aligns nicely with its five-year OS update promise. As expected, there’s no charger in the box.
The Reno13 Pro includes a 50MP main sensor with OIS (f/1.8) and a 3.5x periscope telephoto lens extending to 120x digital zoom. The ultrawide camera is where compromises are most noticeable. While it can take decent shots in good lighting, its 8MP sensor is limited, and image clarity drops off, particularly around the edges, due to the lower resolution.
The telephoto camera is impressive, featuring a 50MP sensor, f/2.8 aperture, autofocus, and optical image stabilisation (OIS) for sharp, detailed zoomed-in shots. You’ll want to stick to lower zoom levels for clarity, but even 20x shots were surprisingly detailed thanks to Oppo’s clever AI remastering suite. The telephoto camera also has a short minimum focusing distance, allowing you to capture impressive close-up or macro shots without needing to get so close that the phone casts a shadow — a common issue with phones that rely on the ultrawide lens for macro photography.
There’s also a 50MP front camera (f/2.0) with autofocus, perfect for vlogging or video calls. Selfies are excellent with impressive clarity, colour, contrast and background separation.
Both front and rear cameras support 4K at 60fps, and with triple microphones and audio zoom, the phone does a solid job of isolating sound when recording.
AI Live Photo now captures 1.5 seconds before and after your shot, giving you a short video with stabilisation and high resolution that you can edit, set as a wallpaper, or share to Instagram.
Other useful features within AI Editor include AI Eraser 2.0 for removing people or objects with one tap, AI Reflection Remover for shooting through glass, Enhance clarity, and AI Unblur — great for shots of kids and pets in motion.
If you're the creative type, you'll enjoy AI Motion, which brings still photos to life by turning them into short animated clips, and AI Portrait, which cleverly combines multiple selfies into stylised group shots. It's a fun and polished set of tools that gives you more ways to get creative with your photos.
Like many other devices running Android 15, Oppo includes AI tools to boost productivity. AI Summary turns long texts or meeting notes into quick takeaways, while AI Writer helps create captions or posts when you're short on ideas. There's also Circular to Search, which lets you look up anything just by drawing a circle around it — easy, intuitive, and fast.
AI Studio is a lot of fun to play with. You can use it to generate fantastical images from portraits taken with the camera or ones in your camera roll. The results can have excellent likenesses, but more often, they don’t resemble the people of the real-life photos.
The Oppo Reno13 Pro 5G nails the fundamentals — design, display, battery. It then goes further with impressive AI-powered photography and practical features like waterproofing and ultra-fast charging. The MediaTek chip performs well in everyday use, and the creative and productivity tools add real value. While a few rivals may offer more raw power, the Reno13 Pro 5G stands out with its premium feel and unique personality.
€800 ​​www.oppo.com/ie/
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