The OPPO Reno10 series just made its Malaysian debut comprising three offerings in different price categories. At the top of the lineup is the OPPO Reno 10 Pro Plus, carrying near-flagship-level specs with a high-end price tag to match it.
I’ve had my hands on it for a few weeks and I was stunned by the phone’s abilities, especially its performance in photography.
Specifications
The OPPO Reno10 Pro Plus sports a 6.74-inch 120Hz AMOLED display. For protection, it has Gorilla Glass 5 on the back while up front, the screen uses AGC Dragontrail Star 2, which is quite an odd choice because I think it should have been the opposite. There’s no rating for dust or water resistance.
It runs on last year’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen1 chipset, so it’s not exactly bleeding edge but it’s definitely no slouch either. Unfortunately, there’s only a single configuration of 256GB of storage with no expansion slot. This should be more than enough for most people but some digital hoarders might have to look elsewhere for something in this price range with more storage.
Despite its price tag, it does not support wireless charging but it does have lightning-fast 100W charging. Connectivity-wise, it supports 5G, Wi-Fi 6, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3, and can even be used as a remote control using the IR blaster.
Looks & Functionality
The display of the OPPO Reno10 Pro Plus is very tall and is practically impossible to use one-handed unless you have freakishly ginormous hands, although the slim profile does make it easy to hold. To my chagrin, it has extremely curved edges — a design aesthetic that I’ve chastised many brands for doing — that sometimes makes it easy to accidentally tap on something else when you’re to tap on certain icons at the edge of the screen.
Putting those criticisms aside, it is an astonishingly beautiful display with vibrant and vivid colours that gets bright enough to easily use outdoors on a sunny day. The under-display fingerprint scanner is reasonably fast and surprisingly accurate even for someone like me who’s fingerprint-challenged (re: sweaty and/or flaky).
All three cameras sit flush in one big pill-shaped bump which does mean the phone is relatively stable if you’re using it on a flat surface. The back panel for the grey colour option is — chef’s kiss — both gorgeous and practical. It has a slightly grainy texture with a matte finish, making it completely resistant to fingerprint smudges, although you might have a different experience with the purple variant since it has a glossy finish.
The right-hand side houses the volume rocker and power button whereas the SIM card tray is situated at the bottom and the IR blaster can be found at the top. Of course, there are also speakers on the top and bottom and in my experience with them, they sound fantastic to watch videos on.
Performance & Battery
Seeing that it runs on a flagship Qualcomm SoC, it performs just as you would expect with any and every app being snappy and running smoothly. For synthetic benchmarks, it gets really high scores but there’s a caveat. Based on the extreme stress test on 3DMark, its stability isn’t great as it starts to thermal throttle after a continuous heavy load. This is something I’ve experienced with other phones running this chipset as well.
That being said, I’ve never felt the OPPO Reno10 Pro Plus heat up during real-world use, so thermal throttling was never much of a concern for me while daily driving it. On another note, if 12GB of RAM is somehow still not enough for you, you can extend it with virtual RAM for up to another 12GB, bringing the amount up to 24GB.
The battery life of the phone is much better than I expected given that its 4,700mAh capacity is slightly smaller than the current standard of 5,000mAh. It’s easily an all-day battery and if you’re a relatively light user who’s just browsing through social media apps, it could extend up to a second day of usage.
Wringing it through our usual YouTube streaming endurance test set at 25% brightness and volume, the Reno10 Pro Plus lasted close to 15 hours, which is mighty impressive. Moreover, OPPO makes no mention of reverse wired charging but we found that when you connect it to another phone via cable, it does charge it. At the time of writing, the company is not able to confirm the speed of the reverse charging.
Camera
The main focus of this phone is definitely the camera module, packed with a 50MP main shooter, a 64MP periscope telephoto lens, and an 8MP ultra-wide. Both the primary and telephoto cameras are fitted with optical image stabilisation. As for the selfie snapper, it has a 32MP sensor with autofocus.
Taking photos with the Reno10 Pro Plus is easily my favourite part of using this phone, with most images coming out with brilliant dynamic range, crisp sharpness that doesn’t look artificial, and beautiful bokeh. I’m admittedly not the best photographer but even I was able to take some pretty decent shots without much effort, which is a testament to how good the imaging software is.
The main camera is able to focus really quickly, requiring little manual intervention, and the telephoto lens is impressive, to say the least. Depending on the subject, I could sometimes increase the magnification by 30x with the photo turning out with a shocking amount of detail.
Night photos, while they aren’t perfect, are more than usable in most situations and with enough lighting, they are actually impressive. Like most phone cameras, however, OPPO still hasn’t resolved the issue of blooming from light sources in dark environments, but the Reno10 Pro Plus is definitely in the upper tier of low-light smartphone photography.
Camera Samples
Competition
OnePlus 11
The OnePlus 11 is a proper flagship with the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset from Qualcomm. It has a curved 6.7-inch 120Hz 1440p AMOLED display with LTPO technology, meaning the refresh rate can go all the way down to 1Hz when there’s no activity to save on battery life.
It has a bigger 5,000mAh battery with 100W charging and for the camera setup, it features a 50MP primary camera, a 48MP ultra-wide, and a 32MP telephoto lens. While the camera specs do sound better on paper than the Reno10 Pro Plus, I noted in my review of it that the telephoto lens is disappointing and that night photography isn’t great.
For pricing, the OnePlus 11 only costs RM3,299 for 8GB+128GB and RM3,599 for 16GB+256GB, putting it directly in competition with the newer Reno. That being said, while it has a better processor, IP64 protection, and even eSIM, you’ll have to sacrifice camera quality by choosing this over the OPPO phone.
Samsung Galaxy S23
The Samsung Galaxy S23 series is the top-tier offering in the Android world and OPPO might have made a mistake pricing the mid-range Reno just below the base model S23. It has a flat 6.1-inch 120Hz 1080p AMOLED display and runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
While the battery is significantly smaller at 3,900mAh, the battery life in my colleague’s review was found to be comparable with the Reno, although the S23’s charging speed is a fraction of OPPO’s at only 25W. One advantage the Samsung phone has in this aspect is wireless and reverse wireless charging.
The rear camera module is made up of a 50MP main sensor with OIS, a 10MP telephoto with OIS and 3x optical zoom, and a 12MP ultrawide. It also offers eSIM support and IP68 dust and water resistance.
The standard Galaxy S23 starts at RM3,899 for the 128GB variant while the 256GB model costs RM4,199. If you don’t need that much storage, then the Samsung flagship only costs RM400 more than the Reno, which is cutting it pretty close.
Conclusion
The OPPO Reno10 Pro Plus is an amazing device that is practically a flagship despite its slightly outdated chipset. Its camera performance can make just about anyone a decent photographer and the battery life is more than adequate. Even its design is both stylish and pragmatic.
My only gripe with the phone is that, as you can see from the examples above, the pricing puts it in the same arena as some of this year’s premium smartphones with newer and more powerful processors. Of course, if you’re not much of a power user and are more interested in good imaging for a lower price, then the Reno is a great choice.
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