Oppo Reno 10x Zoom
A big and beautiful smartphone with a decent collection of cameras and great battery life
SCORE
8GB/256GB SIM-free, £583 (£700 inc VAT)
Like all smartphones, the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom is essentially a bag of off-the-shelf bits bolted together, running mostly standardised software. That sounds boring, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Without this approach, our smartphones would almost certainly be less sleek, less exciting and a lot less capable.
The flipside is that, once you boil it down to the essentials, it makes it awfully tough for manufacturers to differentiate their hardware from that of their competitors’ phones. Which is why the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom’s specifications read like a boilerplate checklist of must-have flagship features.
For this is an Android handset that leaves no 2019 trend unturned: top-of-the-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset? Check. Huge edge-to-edge AMOLED display with no notch? Check. Motorised pop-up selfie camera? Check. Triple rear camera array with long-reach zoom and ultra-wide-angle lenses? Check. Available in a range of fancy colours with equally silly names? Why, naturally.
There aren’t many areas where the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom falls short. There’s even microSD expansion for those hungry for storage space beyond the base model’s 128GB. In fact, the only omissions that might concern you are that it lacks ratings for dust- and water-resistance, and it has no 3.5mm headphone jack.
Surprising price
It’s the price that proves the Reno 10x Zoom’s most attractive feature, however. Not only is the SIM-free price of £700 very reasonable for a heavyweight flagship, but it matches the £700 OnePlus 7 Pro and undercuts the Huawei P30 Pro by almost £200. We also like the Samsung Galaxy S10+ and the Sony Xperia 1, but both of those are around £150 more expensive and lack the long-range zoom of the Oppo. It’s also worth pointing out that none of Reno 10x Zoom’s rivals can quite match its looks. This is a phone of rare beauty, particularly finished in “ocean green” as my review sample is. It’s available in black and “mist pink” too, but green looks the nicest. It’s also finished in fingerprint-busting matte Gorilla Glass 5 on the rear with a silky sheen that shimmers in the light. A glossy stripe runs down the centre, neatly framing the logo and three cameras. The front is topped with Gorilla Glass 6, and soft curves ensure the phone slips into pockets without snagging. On the downside, this is a big phone – and it feels it. Not only is the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom heavier than an iPhone Xs Max, but it’s also taller by a couple of millimetres and has a larger 6.6in screen. In fact, it’s closest in size to the rather bulky OnePlus 7 Pro, measuring 77 x 9.3 x 162mm (WDH) and weighing 210g, which is
“The resolution doesn’t look all that high at 1,080 x 2,340, but you’re not going to be seeing any jaggies with a pixel density of 387ppi”
appropriate given how closely the two phones are matched on price.
They’re also pretty close when it comes to other physical features. Just like the OnePlus, the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom keeps its screen free of notches and holes by stowing the selfie camera in a motorised module. This one, unusually, rises up on a hinge like a shark fin. It appears automatically when unlocking the phone – if you have face unlocking set up – and it pops up whenever you switch it into selfie mode in the camera app. The phone is fitted with drop sensors, too, so the camera will retract if it falls from your grasp.
Otherwise, it’s all standard stuff. The power button sits on the right edge with the volume buttons on the left. The phone charges via a USB-C port, placed as usual on the bottom edge, and it’s equipped with stereo speakers – one on the bottom edge to the right of the USB port, the other positioned in a tiny slot between the top edge of the screen and the pop-up camera module.
The only remaining physical feature to cover is the existence of what can only be called a small, chrome nubbin in the centre of the rear of the phone, just beneath the camera array. It’s an odd adornment but one that serves a purpose: to protect the camera lenses from scratching when you place the phone on a desk. Clever thinking.
Pretty display
Measuring 6.6in from corner to corner, the Oppo’s screen is absolutely huge. The resolution doesn’t look all that high at 1,080 x 2,340,but you’re not going to see any jaggies with a pixel density of 387ppi.
As with all flagship phones in 2019, the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom has an AMOLED panel and, since Android and Android apps aren’t colour aware, there are different colour modes to choose from. On the Oppo you get only two (the OnePlus 7 Pro has a confusing five to pick
from): Gentle, which produces a colour space roughly equivalent to sRGB (93.2%); and Vivid, which covers 96.3% of the DCI-P3 colour space used in the HDR 10 standard.
Colour accuracy isn’t all that great, though, and neither is a peak brightness of 419cd/m2; phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S10 can go up beyond 900cd/m2 in auto mode. That means legibility in bright sunshine isn’t as good as it might be.
Still, the Reno 10x Zoom plays back Netflix HDR movies superbly. Colours are warmer and more saturated than on the iPhone Xs, which remains the benchmark for HDR performance, but I’m being picky: films look amazing.
The Oppo continues to impress when it comes to performance and battery life, but that’s not surprising given the components within. Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 855 chipset is in charge, with 6GB or 8GB of RAM to back it up depending on which model you choose. That’s good enough to keep pace with the fastest phones out there, with only the top-end iPhones proving quicker.
And, in line with most Snapdragon 855-powered phones, the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom excels when it comes to battery life. In our testing, with the phone in Flight mode and the display set to a brightness of 170cd/m2, it outlasted all of its rivals apart from one with a time of 22hrs 28mins. That lone phone was the Xiaomi Mi 9 with a time of 22hrs 54mins, beating the Reno by a piffling 26 minutes.
Smart camera
With design, display and performance nailed, the only thing that remains is for the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom to get the camera right and that’s exactly what it does. Let’s start with the specs. It has three rear cameras and one front-facing selfie camera. On the rear, those cameras are as follows:
Wide-angle primary: 48-megapixel, f/1.7 (26mm equivalent)
Ultra-wide: 8-megapixel, f/2.2 (16mm equivalent)
5x optical telephoto: 13-megapixel, f/3 (150mm equivalent)
Where’s the 10x camera? There isn’t one. The 10x is a “hybrid zoom”, which takes the image from the 5x optical telephoto, zooms it digitally and enhances it with details from the 48-megapixel primary camera to approximate a 10x optical zoom.
Confusingly, what these three cameras produce are, in fact, 12-megapixel images, whether you use the ultra-wide, wide or telephoto camera. This is odd, and especially so in the case of the 48-megapixel camera, with which it is only possible to capture 48-megapixel photographs if you go into settings, select “Photo ratio” and tap 48MP. Hardly intuitive. In this mode, annoyingly, there’s no option to quickly zoom in and out, either. Even weirder, in Expert mode where it’s possible to select each of the three cameras individually, you can’t select to shoot 48-megapixel images at all. All images from each camera are captured at 12 megapixels.
More importantly, quality is excellent. The Huawei P30 and P30 Pro are still the kings of smartphone photography, and the Google Pixel 3 and 3A produce the best quality stills from a single-camera smartphone, but the Oppo isn’t far behind.
Again, there isn’t much between it and the OnePlus 7 Pro but, in most instances, I preferred the photographs captured by the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom. Its colours are more natural across the board. Its ultra-wide-angle shots don’t look anywhere near as badly distorted and its telephoto camera allows you to get significantly closer to your subject. In low light, too, the Oppo beats the OnePlus 7 Pro, with images that may be a touch noisier but, conversely, are much less soft.
Overall, the Oppo’s cameras are strong. It’s just disappointing not to have the option to capture full 48-megapixel images.
Software flaws
Perhaps the most divisive aspect of modern smartphones is software and that’s what might put you off the Reno. The phone uses Oppo’s own ColorOS Android skin, which takes some getting used to.
There’s nothing about ColorOS that caused me to grind my teeth in frustration. However, it isn’t as elegant to look at as the best Android skins and it’s a long way behind Google’s own Pixel launcher when it comes to the integration of Google Assistant, Google Lens and so on.
Perhaps the worst sin committed by ColorOS, however, is the amount of rubbish it foists upon you when you set up the phone. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up installing unnecessary apps and games, and there appears to be no way to remove the folders of “Suggested” apps it plonks in the middle of your desktop.
I suggest you switch to the app-drawer UI layout and remove the folder from your Android desktop. It’s still there, lurking in the app drawer, but it will mostly be out of sight.
Zoom time
That’s a small blot, though, on what is otherwise an excellent all-round phone. It can’t compete head to head with the Huawei P30 Pro on outright camera quality, and its software installation is bloated with extras, but I still prefer the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom to the OnePlus 7 Pro.
The Oppo’s biggest issue is that the Xiaomi Mi 9 is so cheap and not an awful lot worse. Still, if you must have a phone with – very specifically – a 5x optical zoom and an ultra-wide-angle camera that also looks gorgeous, the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom ticks every box. SPECIFICATIONS Octa-core 2.84GHz/2.42GHz/1.8GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 6GB/8GB RAM
Adreno 640 graphics 6.6in AMOLED screen, 1,080 x 2,340 resolution 128GB/256GB storage triple 48MP/13MP/ 8MP rear camera 16MP front camera 802.11ac Wi-Fi Bluetooth 5 NFC USB-C connector microSD slot (shared with second SIM) 4,065mAh battery Android 9 77.2 x 9.3 x 162mm (WDH) 215g 1yr warranty
“The only thing that remains is for the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom to get the camera right and that’s exactly what it does”