Oppo’s Reno 10 Pro 5G: it’s all about its cameras

Oppo has been kicking around the NZ smartphone market for some time and has built a strong following. Now they’ve launched the Reno 10 Pro 5G. I got to spend some quality time with the phone and put it through its paces.

The Reno 10 Pro is a mid-ranger intended to deliver a decent level of performance without the usual crimp in your wallet or purse that you’d get from buying a top-tier flagship smartphone. That said, it sports a $1099 sticker price, which puts it squarely at the top of the mid-range price bracket.

From a design perspective, the Reno 10 Pro draws from Samsung’s playbook. Its design includes soft, organic, rounded edges, giving the look and feel of Samsung’s Galaxy S9. It’s a slick look that lends a hint of upmarket gee-wiz to things. Unfortunately, when spun around, the Reno 10 Pro+ reveals a back and chassis hewn out of plastic.

Going to Tupperware but delivering strong specs isn’t anything new. It’s been a successful formula for Samsung with their Galaxy FE devices, so who can blame Oppo for taking a punt? Plastic back and chassis aside, its layout is fairly conventional. Along its bottom is a speaker, USB-C port, and SIM slot. One particularly nice touch is the addition of an infrared (IR) blaster on its top, allowing the Reno 10 Pro to do double duty as a universal infrared remote. However, it’s missing a 3.5mm headphone socket for wired eargear.

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So, is the Reno 10 Pro a top-end device dressed up in more affordable clothing? Confusingly, the answer is both yes and no. Powering the show is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G. You also get 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The generous RAM makes for smoother multitasking. Demanding games ran fine, and the (many) pre-bundled apps had no problem snapping to attention when needed. While not exactly flagship specs, it still isn’t too shabby performance-wise.

As you’d expect at this price point, the Reno 10 Pro uses an FHD OLED display. Being OLED, colours pop and you get an excellent contrast range while brightness levels are more than ample for outdoor use. Another bonus is the 120hz refresh rate, which makes for smooth on-screen scrolling.

The Reno 10 Pro runs ColorOS 13 (Android 13 plus a custom Oppo overlay). Hopefully, this will be upgraded soon. ColorOS 13 is almost a year old and feels a bit long in the tooth. That said, ColorOS is a mature overlay with lots of well-executed features baked in, along with lots of customisation options. The only downside with ColorOS is the bloatware that it comes with. While Facebook, Spotify, Google and Netflix are logical inclusions, there are other apps you’re unlikely to ever use, hogging valuable storage capacity that could be used for far more useful things.

As with previous Reno devices, the Reno 10 Pro is all about its cameras, and it is here that you get top-tier specs on an otherwise mid-range device. The rear camera island is an oval-shaped body that annoyingly makes the Reno 10 Pro unstable when laid out on a flat surface. It is home to a 50MP main sensor, a 32MP telephoto shooter, a 6P FOV sensor, and an Ultra-wide-angle 8MP sensor. Around the front sits a 32MP sensor. Photos taken in a mixture of well-illuminated interiors and a murky grey outside saw the Reno 10 Pro capturing good levels of detail and reasonably accurate colour and exposure levels. Recorded 4k 30fps video with electronic image stabilisation did a reasonably decent job, too.

Being an Oppo widget, the Reno 10 Pro proved zippy when it comes to wired charging, thanks to   Super Vooc, which in just 20 minutes took the phone from zero to fully charged. If that’s the good news, the not-so-flash news is that there is no wireless charging. Given its $1000+ sticker price, this is an odd omission. The other missing spec was an IP rating. I can only assume that it’s neither waterproof nor splashproof. Again, at this price point, its absence is baffling.

Oppo positioned the Reno 10 Pro as a mid-ranger. While it has a reasonable spec and capable cameras, Samsung’s Galaxy S23 FE (with an IP rating and wireless charging) can be bought (if you shop around) for not much more money. If you’re an Oppo fan, the Reno 10 is a solid device, but buyers would be advised to shop around.

https://www.oppo.com/nz/smartphones/series-reno/reno10-pro/