Oppo Reno 8 Pro 5G | Unboxing & One Week Review

Oppo has just brought the Reno 8 Pro 5G to the UK and I, for one, am rather chuffed with that because this bright green bugger here boasts the same spoojorific camera tech as that excellent but crazy expensive Find X5 Pro, one of MediaTek’s freshest chipsets ideal for gaming, and lots of other clever stuff that’ll make you go “oh, that’s very clever indeed.” I’ve actually been using the Oppo Reno 8 Pro as my full-time smartphone for about a week now, but regardless I’m going to shove it back in the box for about a minute or so so I can call this an unboxing as well as a review. Hip-hip-bizarre!

What’s in the box?

You’ve got yourself one Oppo Reno 8 Pro 5G, one rather sizable 80 W SuperVOOC charger, a jolly wee USB-C cable, and that is basically your lot—no condom-case or other extra bits to speak of.

Design & first impressions

Let’s turn our attention to the Oppo Reno 8 Pro 5G—bit of a mouthful, could probably do without the 5G bit, but then every other smartphone in 2022 seems to be sticking with that. Speaking of 2022 trends, we’ve once again got a flat-edge design here and I’m not really sure why this design is all the rage because it’s not particularly comfortable to grip, especially when you’re dealing with a mighty 6.7-inch blower like the Reno 8 Pro. Definitely have to knock it down some marks for the general hand-feel.

I can certainly see Oppo’s unibody design here having a kind of Marmite effect on people; me, myself, I’m not particularly enamoured with it. From the moment I pulled it out the box I thought it looked rather chunky and certainly nowhere near as refined as those gorgeous Find X5 smartphones. It’s a proper big bugger as well, despite the fact that the bezels surrounding that flat display are reasonably skinny.

All that moaning aside, there are elements of Oppo’s design that I do rather like, such as the bit of green highlighting here on the power button and the way that camera chassis blends in nicely with the arse. You do have a bit of a bump there, but it is quite smooth. This right here is the Glazed Green model, but you can also grab the Reno 8 Pro 5G in Glazed Black if you hate colour and joy and happiness.

Up front you’ve got a Gorilla Glass 5-plated flat display and a pre-installed screen protector as well for extra hardiness, and it’s IP54 splash-resistant, so no worries if this smartphone gets a little bit moist.

Software & security

You have Oppo’s very own ColorOS version 12 on top of Android 12; however, the Reno 8 Pro should be getting that ColorOS 13 upgrade imminently. It’s a fairly stock version of Android: you’ve got your Google Discover feed dragged on, that notifications bar from anywhere, access to the control-centre toggles, all that good stuff. You’ve got plenty of customisation options to play around with as well, including full-on always-on display; you can mess around with the colours, the fonts, the animations.

My major bugbear with Oppo smartphones is the amount of crapware you get packed on by default—lots of stuff like Tile Master 3D, Roland Twins, whatever that is, something with some horrifically cute dinosaur. The only extra bits I actually like are the Phone Manager, which has got some nifty tools in with shortcuts to some very important features, good bit of diagnostics action, and because life as a full-time tech reviewer is rather stressful at times I do like a bit of O Relax.

For your security needs you’ve got an in-display optical fingerprint sensor—absolutely fine, nice and quick and responsive. I’ve had absolutely zero problems with it the past week despite the fact you’ve got that pre-installed screen protector covering the display, and you’ve got yourself a bit of face unlock on there as well.

Oppo has very kindly stuffed 256 GB of internal storage into the Reno 8 Pro, and just as well they’ve been generous because there’s bugger-all space for a microSD memory card in the double-sided SIM tray.

Display & audio

This is certainly one of the biggest smartphone screens of 2022: it’s a 6.7-inch AMOLED display with Full HD+ resolution, so even though it’s pretty spacious you still get some nice crisp visuals. This panel matches the competition when it comes to gorgeously sharp contrast; you’ve got full support for HDR streaming in the likes of Netflix. The colour mode is set to Vivid by default and I quite like those punchy, poppy colours, but you can dial things back if you want to. Nice wide viewing angles, and while the Reno 8 Pro’s panel isn’t the brightest display I’ve ever seen on a smartphone, it’s just about powerful enough so you can clearly see what’s going on when it is sunny outside.

You’ve got Oppo’s usual Ultra Vision Engine tools on board, including the image sharpener and the video colour boost. You can also play around with the refresh rate: this is set to High by default, which is 120 Hz, but you can bump that down to 60 Hz to preserve power.

For your audio you do have a stereo-speaker setup here on the Reno 8 Pro—pretty standard for this sort of price point. Not bad at all on that top volume: it’s reasonably loud, packs a bit of a punch, very bassy. No headphone jack, unfortunately, but you do have Bluetooth 5.3 wireless-streaming smarts and that comes with full support for LDAC, LHDC, aptX HD, all of the stuff you know and love.

Performance & gaming

The Reno 8 Pro 5G is powered by MediaTek’s Dimensity 8100-MAX, as also found in the OnePlus 10R, which provides more stable gaming performance compared with the regular 8100, and that’s backed here by either 8 or 12 GB of LPDDR5 RAM. I’ve been using this as my full-time blower for about a week now and I’ve got no complaints when it comes to the performance: that UI just feels really silky smooth, super fresh, helped along by the 120 Hz refresh display. No issues with the apps—they just load up fast, they tend to linger in the background for a while.

Pretty respectable benchmark scores overall, especially that multi-core score, which just goes to show multitasking on this thing is a dream. The gaming experience overall was pretty stable as well: even the likes of Genshin Impact, the most demanding Android fare you can find out there, tends to run well on the maxed-out graphics settings. I saw a handful of judders in the frame rate when I was blasting through Genshin Impact, especially after I’d been playing for more than 30 or 40 minutes, but thankfully you do have Oppo’s ultra-conductive coolant system packed inside—a multi-layer setup that does a fantastic job of dissipating heat.

At any point you can whip out those special gaming tools with a quick swipe from the top edge: this includes the usual performance settings, game-focus mode, touch optimisation, and plenty of other worthwhile bits.

Battery life

You’ve got a 4,500 mAh capacity cell crammed inside that chunky chassis and I’ve found so far, in my first few days of use, I’ve only been getting between four to five hours of screen-on time from a full charge, which ain’t as good as a lot of the competition. Basically by the end of every single day I’ve been on dregs at best; a couple of times it has died just before I finally stumbled into bed. Luckily you do have that 80 W SuperVOOC wired-charging support: 10 minutes charging should give you enough to see through the rest of the day. No wireless-charging support, however, on the Reno 8 Pro.

Camera tech

It’s a very similar hardware setup to the excellent but crazy-expensive Oppo Find X5 Pro. That primary sensor is once again Sony’s 50 MP IMX 766, as found on that Find X5 Pro, but the major difference is an unfortunate lack of optical image stabilisation here on the Reno 8 Pro. The focus works well to keep your subject as sharp as possible and it generally isn’t fazed by framing or anything like that. My sample photos were crisp and detail-packed with a natural finish for colours; you don’t get the same level of boost as rival such as Samsung.

Move indoors and you can still capture realistic-looking snapshots: those colours are slightly warmer but only a wee bit. The Reno 8 Pro isn’t done in by strong lighting or tricky contrast either, not until you hit the extremes like these freaking enormous super-bright screens.

Ultra-wide & macro

You’ve also got an ultra-wide-angle shooter which does the job when you do need a more pulled-back view—just don’t rely on it at night or when the lighting isn’t on your side because the results often aren’t pretty. You’ve also got a macro snapper as well, which you have to dive into the More section to actually utilize.

Portrait & night

There’s a portrait mode with adjustable bokeh and I finally got really good results with this, whether I was shooting human subjects or more fluffy stuff. There is a dedicated night mode as well, but to be honest you won’t even particularly need this because the Reno 8 Pro’s killer feature for low-light photography is Oppo’s very own MariSilicon X NPU. Good old Mazza was found in the Find X5 series of smartphones and it did a great job there and it does a sterling job here as well, just brightening up those low-light shots, making sure you get surprisingly crisp and detailed images without too much grain creeping in.

Pro mode & video

There’s a small selection of other modes you can piddle about with, including a dedicated Pro mode: this gives you full control over the shutter speed, the white balance, the whole works. If you slide the Reno 8 Pro on into video mode you can capture up to 4K Ultra HD resolution footage, which looks again particularly great at night thanks to our great mate Mazza. Respectable image stabilisation even at that max resolution; you can’t capture it at 60 frames per second unfortunately—it does max out at 30 fps—and that’ll bump you back down to Full HD res. Audio capture is fine.

Selfie cam

For your selfie needs you’ve got a 32 MP front-facing shooter with quite a wide viewing angle, and that uses Sony’s IMX 709 sensor. In ambient light the selfie cam does struggle, offering softer results and blur as well if anyone actually dares to move a muscle. Overall, if you are a big selfie fan you’ll want to look elsewhere. If you want to shoot video with that front-facing selfie cam it tops off at Full HD and results are a little bit soft and grainy, especially when you’re indoors, but the audio pickup is fine.

Verdict

That right there is my full, final, frank review of Oppo’s Reno 8 Pro 5G after using it as my full-time smartphone for a week, and I’ve gotta say I did get on with it rather well. Despite the fact it is a massive flat-edge 6.7-inch bugger, beyond the Mazza NPU it doesn’t really do much to differentiate itself from the crowd, but you know what: you’ve got strong, dependable performance on there for everything up to and including intensive gaming; media chops are good as well. It’s just a shame the design wasn’t a bit more alluring. Anyway, that’s what I reckon—what do you reckon of the Oppo Reno 8 Pro 5G? It’s a stupid freaking name, but the phone itself is all right.