Oppo Reno 8 Pro
MSRP $702.00
“The Oppo Reno 8 Pro’s cool design, solid performance, long battery life and fast charging make it great value for money. But using anything other than the main camera is disappointing.
Advantages
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Lightweight all-glass design
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Two-day battery life
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Quick charge
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The main camera takes great pictures
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Latest Android 13 software coming soon
The inconvenients
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No wireless charging
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The wide-angle camera disappoints
The Oppo Reno series has been around for a few years and has already broken new ground in the industry – a Reno was the first phone in the UK with 5G. The latest is the Reno 8 Pro, and it’s not what you’d call groundbreaking this time around.
Instead, the Reno 8 Pro is a competitor to the OnePlus 10T, trying to strike the same balance between price, design, performance and desirability. OnePlus got a lot of things wrong on this phone, so can Oppo (which, don’t forget, is OnePlus’ parent brand these days) get it right?
Oppo Reno 8 Pro: design
Table of Contents
The Reno 8 Pro is a superb smartphone that you will be proud to carry around. Oppo has mastered the look of the in-display camera module on its phones (and OnePlus’s now too), and while the camera module on the back of the Reno 8 Pro is large, the gentle curve around it minimizes its impact. It gives the phone a real identity.
It’s a good thing those curves are there because otherwise the Reno 8 Pro is very flat. The chassis has flat sides, the glass covering the display is flat, and the rest of the rear panel is also flat. It’s moderately comfortable to hold (the edges are a bit sharp), but the low weight of 186 grams really helps prevent a lot of fatigue. Although it’s all glass, it’s Gorilla Glass 5 on the front and back. The phone has an IP54 base water resistance rating for a decent degree of everyday protection.
The low weight and pleasant grip made the Reno 8 Pro wonderful to use. It happily slipped into my pocket without a fuss and has just the right style to grab attention when on display. The small bezels around the 6.7-inch AMOLED screen give it a very modern look from the front.
Two colors are available: an ordinary Glazed Black model and the Glazed Green seen in our photos. It’s hard to do the color justice, as the cool mint green looks great in real life. It’s definitely the one for you if you’re not afraid of a little flamboyance.
Oppo Reno 8 Pro: camera
The Reno 8 Pro uses the same primary camera as the Oppo Find X5 Pro, a Sony IMX766 50MP. But rather than using two, it sits alongside a fairly standard 8MP wide-angle camera and a positively disappointing 2MP camera. This makes it the same configuration found on the OnePlus Nord 2T and OnePlus 10T. On the front is a 32MP camera with autofocus, with new magic to catch 60% more light than previous Reno phones for nighttime selfie fun.
Oppo differentiates the Reno 8 Pro’s rear camera from OnePlus models by adding its MariSilicon X image processing unit, which apparently improves low-light performance in stills and video, among other things. The IMX766 main camera takes very attractive photos, with a wonderful natural color palette, lots of detail and a pleasing HDR effect in the right environment.
The wide-angle suffers from the same problems as the OnePlus 10T camera. The low resolution means photos have noticeable pixelation, there’s visible noise in nearly every frame, and the low contrast obscures detail. It’s really not very good at all. There is a 2x digital zoom shortcut, but use it at your own risk as it uses a huge amount of smoothing, which makes photos look unnatural.
What about the selfie camera? It’s not bad at all. There’s a good level of detail, autofocus helps portrait mode with precision, skin tones are warm and there’s a handy palm recognition gesture too. At night, when the ISP MariSilicon X is supposed to work its magic, the phone automatically uses the screen as a fill light, resulting in amazingly detailed selfies even in the dark. If you use it without the screen fill light, the results are useless
Low-light photos, in general, are good. However, I noticed that it is easy to introduce the blur, although the software only takes about a second to take a photo in the dark. You can see an example in the gallery above. The Reno 8 Pro’s camera is otherwise the same as the OnePlus 10T, where the main camera shines taking really eye-catching photos, but the other cameras don’t stand out due to low resolution and from a lack of detail.
Oppo Reno 8 Pro: performance and software
The main camera is good, the front camera takes nice selfies, and the phone has a nice design, but it’s the processor that I found intriguing. The Reno 8 Pro has MediaTek’s Dimensity 8100+ chip with 8GB of RAM inside, and it performed very well. It seems to be adept at sipping power when not working hard, so the relatively small 4,500mAh battery life was decent in general use situations. Playing Asphalt 9: Legends is not a problem, even during long and chaotic races. During those intense gaming sessions, there is almost no heat buildup on the back of the phone.
Oppo’s ColorOS 12.1 based on Android 12 is installed, and it’s the same experience you get on the Oppo Find X5 Pro, which you can read more about in our full Find X5 Pro review. It is also very similar to the software of the OnePlus 10 Pro. Although fast and reliable, ColorOS likes to interrupt with many system notifications and can be aggressive with power management, which means that many features such as the always-on screen are disabled by default and require configuration before use. .
It’s been a hassle-free time with the Reno 8 Pro, and that’s exactly what I want.
The 6.7-inch AMOLED display has masses of color and very strong contrast levels, so it’s still eye-catching, and that’s without Color Enhancement Mode enabled. Dig into the settings and there are ways to quiet the screen if you don’t like dynamic visuals. Video viewing is enhanced by the excellent stereo speakers, which may not have much bass, but make up for it with lovely clarity.
It’s been a hassle-free time with the Reno 8 Pro, and it’s exactly what I want from an everyday feature phone. The software is still annoying for the first few days, and it irritates me with its constant “this app is consuming power” reminders until I tell it to stop. But with luck, some of these issues will be resolved with ColorOS 13 based on Android 13, which is expected to arrive on the Reno 8 Pro in September.
Oppo Reno 8 Pro: battery and charging
After using social media, messages, a few apps and notifications, as well as taking photos and connecting to a smartwatch, the Reno 8 Pro’s battery easily lasted two days before needing a recharge. Work harder with the phone and you won’t make it. Expect about 10% of battery to disappear after 30 minutes of play.
The phone uses Oppo’s 80-watt SuperVOOC fast charging system, and in just 11 minutes the battery reaches 50% charge. In 30 minutes it’s completely full. Rather than camera or design being the primary reasons to buy – they’re excellent, but far from unique in the world of mid-range phones today – performance, battery life and fast charging are much more beneficial and relevant in everyday life. The results are in line with Oppo’s claims, which is excellent. The lack of wireless charging isn’t so good, though.
Even if you’re pushing the battery limits, the fast charging system means – provided you’re near a wall outlet and have the proprietary charger and cable – the phone should never be left without a charge at the end of the busiest days. Charging a phone in 30 minutes also means saying goodbye to overnight charging. If you’ve never tried a phone with such fast charging before, this could be life changing.
Oppo Reno 8 Pro: price and availability
The Oppo Reno 8 Pro is available in the UK from September 1 for £599, or around $702. You can buy it through Oppo’s own online store or at a variety of retail stores including Amazon, Argos and Currys, as well as networks such as EE, O2 and Vodafone.
If you’re tempted, it’s worth buying before September 28, as Oppo will send you an Oppo Pad Air tablet (worth £239) for free with your Reno 8 Pro purchase, making the phone a very good value.
Oppo doesn’t sell its smartphones in the US, so you’ll have to import the Reno 8 Pro if you really want to own one.
This one or the OnePlus 10T?
The Oppo Reno 8 Pro costs a little less than the OnePlus 10T, and the main difference between them is that the OnePlus phone has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor and slightly faster charging. While the OnePlus’ Snapdragon chip is undeniably excellent, I had no issues with the MediaTek 8100+ here, and unless you’re prepared to play intensive games for hours on end, I doubt most will notice a big difference from day to day.
If your only choice is between the Reno 8 Pro and the OnePlus 10T, then the Oppo phone is the one to buy. It’s a bit cheaper, the materials used are much better, the design is prettier, it loads almost as fast, and the software is basically the same. The difference is the processor, and given that the rest of the OnePlus 10T isn’t as desirable as the Reno 8 Pro, it’s not really worth it.
Expand your choices further, and the even cheaper Nothing Phone 1 should be considered alongside the Samsung Galaxy A53 5G. In the US, the new Motorola Edge (2022) is good value for money and features a MediaTek processor with mmWave 5G connection for longevity. The other phone to consider, if you’re somewhere where it’s available to buy, is the iQoo 9T, which manages to be even better than the OnePlus 10T. and the Reno 8 Pro.
I enjoyed using the Reno 8 Pro. It’s an attractive, capable and no-frills smartphone. The price isn’t crazy, but the phone manages to feel more expensive than it actually is. This is where the OnePlus 10T went wrong, as it managed to go in the opposite direction.
Editors’ Recommendations