Oppo Reno 5 Pro
Oppo Reno 5 Pro 5G ` 35,990
Oppo’s mid-range 5G phone packs some power
Rarely do we see phone manufacturers battling out to lood the market with devices with features that are yet to be rolled out, yet 5G seems to be the buzzword in smartphone market today. We don’t remember witnessing the same frenzy during 3G and 4G rollouts, but certainly the smartphone landscape has changed considerably between then and now. Oppo Reno 5 Pro joins the crowd, promising powerful performance and power ef iciency.
Design & Build Quality
The Reno 5 Pro 5G has a beautiful design with what Oppo calls Reno Glow technique, which provides a textured glow to the phone’s back surface with better ingerprint resistance. The device is available in Starry Black and Astral Blue colours. The camera bump has a glossy inish. The volume rocker is at the left-hand side, with the power button at the right. The bottom accommodates the SIM tray, microphone perforation and the single speaker array. The device accepts two nano SIMs. Though the gradient and 3D curved glass design provide the device with a clean and beautiful appearance, it does not break any new ground in design. The device is light and comfortable to use, measuring 159.7 x 73.2 x 7.6 mm and weighing 173 g.
Key Features
The phone uses a 3D borderless sense screen with curved corners and a punch hole camera. The 16.6 cm Super AMOLED screen offers 90Hz refresh rate and 180Hz touch sampling rate, which appears dated in a phone that competes with the latest devices optimised for gaming. The screen reproduces DCI-P3 colour gamut and the device carries HD and HDR certi ications from Net lix and Amazon Prime Video.
The Reno 5 Pro uses a MediaTek Dimensity 1000+, a high-end 7nm SoC for mid-priced devices supporting the latest features like 5G, Wi-Fi 6 and advanced AI performance. The chip uses four powerful ARM Cortex-A77 clocked at 2.6GHz and four high ef iciency 2GHz Cortex-A55 cores. The graphics is handled by a 9-core ARM Mali-G77 MP9 GP , providing an above-average gaming performance. The Game Centre offers customisation option in the middle of a game if required.
One area where the Reno 5 Pro clearly excels is the 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 charging, which tops up the 4300mAh battery in just over halfan-hour. The device is available in a single con iguration of 8GB RAM and 128GB internal memory, which is not expandable. The phone features 64MP main, 8MP ultra wide-angle and 2MP Macro cameras along with a 2MP monochrome camera.
Ergonomics
The phone was light and comfortable to use. Color OS 11.1 and the interface felt smooth and responsive. Face unlock was quite fast, but ingerprint took a little longer to unlock the phone. The textured back surface enhances grip and makes the device quite manageable.
Performance
The Reno 5 Pro has a powerful hardware and we never felt any lack in power while using the phone. The cameras performed reasonably well. In most cases, the colours appeared natural. However, turning on AI scene enhancement rendered the images with too much saturation and sharpening. The wide-angle camera appeared less detailed than the main camera. 4 videos were largely ine, but the lack of optical zoom proved a spoiler. Night
mode certainly lets you capture an image even in near-zero illumination, but the images cannot be compared with those captured under proper lighting. Dual view video employs both front and back camera simultaneously and is a welcome addition with various layout options to choose from. The Macro camera provided comparatively better sharpness, yet as photography enthusiasts, we would expect a slightly higher resolution sensor for this unit.
While gaming was smooth with excellent response, the position of the speaker disappointed in horizontal orientation. Most of the time, my right index inger obstructed the speaker grille and completely cut off sound in the middle of the game, forcing me into an uncomfortable grip to let the sound out.
Value for Money
The Reno 5 Pro retails at an MRP of Rs. 35,990. At this price, the device is certainly a good buy, with support to 5G and a clean OS.