Oppo Reno 10 Pro 5G Review : Appealing design, impressive cameras, but heavy on the pocket

Oppo's Reno series of smartphones is usually the company's high-end offering for every year. Smartphones in the Oppo Reno series have, over the past couple of years, been centered towards the premium look and feel and the cameras. This year, with the Oppo Reno 10 series, the BBK Electronics-owned brand has continued the trend of offering a premium look and feel with a certain focus on the cameras. 

The Oppo Reno 10 Pro being the middle child. The smartphone was lauched in India at a price of ₹39,999 onwards on July 10, and after using the smartphone for a good couple of weeks, I found this to be a bit overpriced in terms of what you get against what you pay. This, after using the smartphone for my daily average tasks, gaming, using the camera extensively, and doing other stuff over two weeks. In my review, I will talk about all aspects of the smartphone, which will answer the question as to why the Oppo Reno 10 Pro is overpriced in my opinion. 

DESIGN

Starting with the design. This is where the Oppo Reno 10 Pro 5G justifies the steep price tag the most. The smartphone looks stunning. We get a nice curved OLED display up front with the hole-punch camera cutout. At the back, we get a nice curved glass back with an oval-shaped camera module. As usual, the speaker grille and USB type-C port are on the bottom of the frame, with the volume rockers and power button on the right side of the frame. 

The in-hand feel of the Oppo Reno 10 Pro, with the glass back and the curved display is very premium, and you feel that from the moment you first hold the smartphone. Only the oval-shaped camera module is where we got mixed reactions, where some people liked it, and some didn't. I personally like it since it gives the Oppo Reno 10 devices their own distinct look. We got the Glossy Purple colour for our review, which also looks quite pretty.

DISPLAY

The display of the Oppo Reno 10 Pro is also very good. The smartphone comes with a nice 6.7-inch FHD+ curved OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. The display resolution is 2412 x 1080p, which comes around to a pixel density of 394ppi, meaning the display is sharp enough for all kinds of users and you won't feel any lack of detail or rough edges on this display. 

Coming to colour accuracy, here also the Oppo Reno 10 Pro showed very good results, but wasn't the best we have seen in this segment. In the colour checker analysis using the Calman SpectraCal tool, the Oppo Reno 10 Pro showed an average DeltaE of 2.0 in the sRGB colour profile. This means that the colours you see on the smartphone are very close to the actual colours, and the margin of error is very low. 

In the greyscale test, the Oppo Reno 10 Pro showed super impressive colours. The smartphone showed very consistent results across the board, with a very even RGB balance. There was no colour that was overflowing or overpowering any other, giving us one of the most impressive results in the sRGB colour profile. 

Coming to brightness, the Oppo Reno 10 Pro has a claimed peak brightness of 800 nits under the sun and up to 950 nits for HDR photos and HDR10+ videos. We put this to test using a Lux Meter, and the smartphone showed a maximum brightness of 934 nits on a plain white screen, which is brilliant, since it is exactly around the numbers claimed by the company. 

Furthermore, the 120Hz refresh rate makes the display very responsive and super smooth. Scrolling through menus and apps is butter, given the 120Hz refresh rate. We don't get LTPO technology with this display, but that is probably nitpicking at this point, since everything else on this display is very good. 

PERFORMANCE

Now the performance is where I think the Oppo Rneo 10 Pro doesn't justify its value at all. The smartphone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G chipset, which is more than two years old at this point. Now, this wouldn't have been too bad since the Snapdragon 778G is a very nice and balanced chip, but there are devices in this range like the OnePlus 11R and the iQOO Neo 7 Pro that offer a proper flagship chip (Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1) from less than a year ago. 

As expected, the performance numbers look miniscule as compared to some of the competing devices. On AnTuTu, for example, the Oppo Reno 10 Pro put out a score of 584215 points, which is almost half of what similarly-priced OnePlus 11R gave us and less than half of what the ₹5,000 cheaper iQOO Neo 7 Pro puts out. In fact, on AnTuTu, the smartphone's numbers were closer to the budget smartphones of today as compared to its competitors in the market. Disappointing.

In other CPU-based benchmarks like Geekbench and PCMark also, the Oppo Reno 10 Pro gives a rather disappointing result, making the smartphone's performance numbers appear miniscule as compared to competition. 

In GPU-based tests also, the Oppo Reno 10 Pro didn't perform well. In 3DMark Wildlife Extreme, the smartphone scored lower than most devices, but came ahead of the Google Pixel 7a. In GFXBench, the device struggled to keep up with the competition across the tests we ran on the device. 

BATTERY

The battery on the Oppo Reno 10 Pro is good. The smartphone uses many techniques to offer a good battery backup like Oppo's Battery Health Engine or the SuperVOOC S power management chip that facilitates an enhanced discharge efficiency, leading to better standby times and safer charging.

The battery backup, however, is just decent. We get a 4,600mAh battery with support for 80W SuperVOOC charging. The Oppo Reno 10 Pro doesn't drain battery as such. The smartphone, in fact, offered a very good battery consumption while playing games or watching content or even during GPS navigation. For example, playing Call of Duty: Mobile on the smartphone for 15 minutes drained only 3 percent of the battery. Watching HDR content on YouTube for 30 minutes, drained only 4 percent. Finally, GPS navigation for 1 hours straight drained only 8 percent of the smartphone's battery, which is great. 

In our video loop test, however, due to the smaller battery unit, the Oppo Reno 10 Pro only lasted 742 minutes. Now, while this number sounds a bit less if we pit it against some other smartphones in this segment, but 742 minutes make for 12 hours and 22 minutes, which is pretty decent. 

While the battery backup may not be the best, this is probably the fastest 80W charging I have experienced on any smartphone. The Oppo Reno 10 Pro charged from 0 percent to 100 percent in just 28 minutes! This is not only super fast for 80W fast charging, but even beats some 100W fast charging smartphones (mainly because of the smaller battery size)! Superb stuff.

CAMERA

Now this is where the Oppo Reno 10 Pro tries best to justify its price-tag. The smartphone has a very good triple rear camera setup that consists of a 50-megapixel primary shooter, a 32-megapixel telephoto lens, and an 8-megapixel ultra wide angle shooter. 

The camera performance out of the primary shooter is decent, just the images don't seem very sharp and detailed in the normal photo mode. The smartphone takes nice photos with a very good dynamic range, even in low light or in confusing lighting conditions. 90 percent of the time, the Oppo Reno 10 Pro's camera does a good job in getting things right. The shadows, the colours, and the detail is spot-on most of the times. However, at times, I found the photos to lack a certain level of sharpness and detail, but that was a problem I majorly faced in low light conditions. 

The 32MP telephoto lens is my favourite. Photos from the telephoto lens also offer great quality. The telephoto lens facilitates up to 5X optical zoom and in proper light, the images in 5X are also sharp and don't lose any details. The colours are well represented in images taken from the telephoto lens. Here also, the 5X zoom doesn't seem as impressive in low light.

Given the presence of a telephoto camera, the portraits on the Oppo Reno 10 Pro weren't as good as I expected them to be. The edge detection isn't the best out there and at times, the focus on the subjects is a bit soft.

It is the ultra-wide angle shooter which is disappointing. The images from the ultra-wide aren't very good. They lack sharpness, the colours are all dull and washed out, and there is a weird blur on the extreme corners of all wide-angle images. 

VERDICT

So that was the Oppo Reno 10 Pro. The smartphone is priced high, starting at ₹39,999 in India. In some cases, the smartphone does justify the value. We get a nice premium in-hand feel with a striking design and colour. The display is super accurate and responsive, offering an immersive experience every time users set their eyes on it, and the camera performance is also good, just the portraits and wide-angle lens can use a bit fine-tuning. 

It is the performance where the Oppo Reno 10 Pro lags way behind competition. The smartphone runs on a more than two years-old mid-range chipset from Qualcomm and the performance numbers show how far behind the smartphone is. So the answer is clear, if you are a power user who wants the best performance and battery experience from your device, there are better options available at a lower price. But if you are someone who wants a premium look and feel with a very good camera and display, the Oppo Reno 10 Pro may justify the steep price-tag for you.