Is this the real glowing success device from Oppo in the market?
The Oppo Reno series has always brought one of the most innovative design philosophies whether it is the pop-up camera or the shark fin camera module. The things that make the Reno series are the slimmer and more eye-catching design, the cameras get a good upgrade with each generation and the curved display grabs the attention of every individual.
Last year the Oppo Reno 6 (Review) and the Reno 6 Pro were launched which provided some very good specifications and just like them, Oppo bought in some very good upgrades with both the Reno 7 and the Reno 7 Pro. The Oppo Reno 7 Pro is out to set a new benchmark as it brings an eyecatching design, an upgraded camera setup from the Oppo Reno 6 Pro, and much more.
So how good is this new Oppo Reno 7 Pro in the market as we have many competitors from OnePlus, Xiaomi, Samsung, etc.? Is it worth considering? Let's find out in the full review.
Oppo Reno 7 Pro Design:
The Oppo Reno series has always excelled when it comes to build and design as they get a unique look and this year it continues with the Oppo Reno 7 Pro also. Like the Oppo Reno 6 launched last year, the Oppo Reno 7 Pro carries the same flat back design with aluminum frames around the sides that gives it a premium look. Both the front as well as the back have Gorilla Glass 5 for protection.
The back of the smartphone has a frosted finish as Oppo has used a laser for creating 1.2 million micro lines which are present at different angles when you look at it. This design Oppo likes to call aircraft-based Shooting Star design. The back also has different hues which are seen when light strikes at the back. The back has an interesting camera module that does protrude a little.
There is a strip of light around the camera module which Oppo likes to call the Orbit breathing light which makes it look unique and interesting. This light is only present in blue color and lights up when the smartphone is charging or when you receive any new notification. There is a triple camera setup at the back with an LED flashlight and this camera module looks good with the dual-tone finish.
The sides are made of aluminum where the power button is located on the right side whereas the left side has the volume buttons. The bottom has the USB Type-C port, a primary microphone, a loudspeaker grille, and a dual SIM card slot that accepts two SIM cards there is no slot for a microSD card and also no 3.5mm headphone jack.
The back does not get any sort of IP rating as such but has a P2i coating as it can survive under rain or some splashes of water. The top has a secondary noise-canceling microphone only. On the front, there is a single punch-hole display located in the top left corner. Overall, the build and design feel refreshing and premium.
Oppo Reno 7 Pro Display:
On the front, this time around Oppo has gone for a flat display panel instead of the curved one which we saw on the previous iterations of the Oppo Reno series. There is a 6.55-inches Full HD+(1080x2400 pixels) AMOLED display which supports a 90Hz refresh rate that makes things work smoother. The bezels around are much slimmer and provide a good look at the front.
And since this is an AMOLED display, the colors look punchier, especially blues and blacks. Talking about the refresh rate, you do get the standard refresh rate instead of the adaptive one where the refresh rate scales automatically depending on the application in usage so here the Oppo Reno 7 Pro can either scale between standard 60Hz or higher 90Hz, and things do feel faster at 90Hz.
It does feel lacking compared to the competition as other manufacturers are providing at least 120 or 144Hz refresh rate. Combined with the 90Hz refresh rate, there is a 180Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses during gaming. The display has support for HDR10+ so you can stream Youtube at HDR and also there is Widevine L1 so streaming HDR content on OTT platforms is a breeze.
In terms of display brightness, the display panel can go as high as 1000nits which is not the brightest but still good, and under direct sunlight, there is no visibility issue. You can also calibrate the color temperature of the display. There is an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that works fast and accurately. Overall, this display is great for media consumption.
Oppo Reno 7 Pro Performance:
In terms of performance, there is not much different than last year's Oppo Reno 6 Pro and this smartphone. Both are powered by the Mediatek Dimensity 1200 chipset which is a powerful chipset but this year with the Oppo Reno 7 Pro, Oppo came up with a slightly better version of the Mediatek Dimensity 1200 chipset called the Mediatek Dimensity 1200 Max chipset.
The Mediatek Dimensity 1200 Max chipset is similar to that of the Mediatek Dimensity 1200 chipset but here Oppo and Mediatek have worked together to provide some improvements in terms of cameras. There are some new features like AI-PQ which uses AI to optimize the HDR contents on the display and also set the color tone, sharpness levels, and display effects for a great HDR watching experience.
The AI-Deblur helps with good stable selfies and also in terms of portraits. In many of the portraits, there is blur noticed on the face of human subjects with some smartphone cameras, so this feature helps in correcting the blur on the face of human subjects and removes the blur by using certain algorithms resulting in stable images both selfies and portraits.
This chipset also brings faster 5G speeds and there is a Mediatek 5G UltraSave feature that provides power-saving techniques for both 5G as well as other networks. Other than this, this chipset also has Mediatek HyperEngine Technology 3.0 which provides an excellent gaming experience with faster frame rates during gaming and also adds lightning effects during gaming.
With this chipset, the general activities like scrolling through webpages, playing games, switching between applications, etc all felt smooth without breaking a sweat. All games like Call Of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc. ran smoothly and you can easily play BGMI at Ultra frame rate with HDR graphics there is support for 60fps gameplay on BGMI without any drops or stutters.
After long hours of gaming, the back of the smartphone does not feel warmer as such as there is a dedicated liquid cooling system to dissipate heat faster. In terms of benchmarks, the scores are slightly better than that of the Mediatek Dimensity 1200 chipset and in the CPU throttling test, the smartphone could hold the sustained performance better without much throttling.
There is only one variant available i.e. the 12GB LPDDR5 RAM with 128GB UFS 3.1 storage and other than this there is 7GB virtual RAM for enhanced multitasking. In terms of 5G support, there is support for 11 bands of 5G and you get good carrier aggregation also. Overall, the performance and gaming do feel excellent but Oppo could have provided a better and newer chipset here which would have been better.
Oppo Reno 7 Pro Software:
The Oppo Reno 7 Pro runs on the latest ColorOS 12 but this ships with Android 11 out of the box instead of Android 12. As we all know ColorOS is feature-rich and provides a lot of customizations. However, you do get a lot of bloatware from third-party applications and constant notifications from the browser are annoying. However, you can uninstall almost all unwanted applications.
The look and feel is almost like Stock Android and with each ColorOS iterations there are some new features like now you get a High Performance Mode which when turned on yields better performance and the icons shapes can be set to 3D grahics type like now. There are some newer wallpapers that look cool but still the ColorOS is still not as good as OxygenOS which do not have any bloatware.
Other than that there are a lot of interesting this as you can customize the icon shape and size, look, and feel of Always-On Display and this time you get a new feature called 3D Omoji which is similar to Apple's Memoji where you can set your cartoonish emoji in the Always-On display or set it as homescreen wallpaper also.
Other than this there are a lot of shortcuts and gestures which come in handy. In terms of software updates, the Oppo Reno 7 Pro is claimed to get another two years of Android OS updates and three years of security updates which is good but Samsung is still the best as it now provides four years of Android OS updates and five years of security patches.
Oppo Reno 7 Pro Cameras:
The Oppo Reno 7 Pro sports a triple camera setup which consists of a 50MP f/1.8 Sony IMX766 sensor for the main camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, and a 2MP macro camera. The front has a 32MP f/2.4 camera. The images from the main camera come out with good dynamic range and the color looks natural without any noise or oversharpening in the background.
The details look sharper and the color remains on the slightly cooler side. During the night, the images have good sharper-looking details but there is a considerable amount of noise present but the dynamic range is good. However, turning on the dedicated night mode does change things to a larger extent as the dynamic range improves to a larger extent, the noise gets reduced, and oversharpening is no more present.
The 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera does provide a decent dynamic range but colors look natural and do not have oversharpening present. There is a considerable amount of noise as you get distortion around the edges and when you zoom into the images, the details look slightly softer. The same is the situation during the night where there is a larger amount of noise and the dynamic range is just average.
The 2MP macro camera is a fixed focus camera that is just present to make up for the numbers as the macro images come out with a lot of noise and colors look washed out with just average dynamic range. It is always better to use the main camera for macro images by applying a 2x digital zoom when going closer to an object.
The portraits come out with good dynamic range and the edge detection is also perfect with proper background blur. The skin tones look natural without any oversharpening. The selfies from the newer 32MP f/2.5 Sony IMX709 camera come out with a good dynamic range and you get a larger field of view. The skin tones look natural without any oversharpening and less noise was present.
Oppo does provide some beauty filters and this camera does switch to a wider frame when it detects more people in the frame. For selfies during the night, there is a dedicated night mode which does improve the dynamic range and also removes noise in the background. The portrait selfies come out with good edge detection and dynamic range with less noise and proper background blur.
In terms of videos, the rear main camera can record 4K videos at 30fps and the videos have good dynamic range and colors look natural without any oversharpening but the videos have a lot of shakiness and suffer from noise as you do miss out on OIS. However, if you switch to 1080p at 60fps, the videos come out with excellent dynamic range and the details look sharper with less noise.
The ultrawide camera can record 1080p videos at 30fps with a decent dynamic range and colors look natural but the details look softer with a larger amount of noise. However, using the Ultra Stable Mode, the noise gets reduced but the videos do crop in a little bit to provide slightly stable videos. The front camera has EIS support and the dynamic range comes out good and the details look sharper with very little noise.
Oppo Reno 7 Pro Battery Life:
The Oppo Reno 7 Pro sports a larger 4500mAh battery which can easily last for two days with normal usage the display is set to standard 60Hz and if set at 90Hz, you can get one and half-day usage. With heavy usage, the smartphone can easily last a day but still at the end of the day, you may need the charger. However, ColorOS 12 needs some improvements regarding battery optimizations.
The standard screen-on time was around 6-6.5 hours which is good. However, you do get a 65W fast charger which is bundled inside the box charges the smartphone from 0 to 100 percent under 35 minutes which is quite fast.
Oppo Reno 7 Pro Audio Quality:
The presence of stereo speakers is one of the biggest upgrades that the Oppo Reno 7 Pro gets over the Oppo Reno 6 Pro's single speaker located at the bottom. The stereo speakers sound louder and clearer, with clear bass and there is also Dolby Atmos for enhanced sound. However, like all other smartphones, you do miss out on a 3.5mm headphone jack which is not a big problem.
Verdict:
The Oppo Reno 7 Pro combines the best of everything for a budget flagship like you get a beautiful build and eye catching design, a nice 90Hz AMOLED display for media consumption, a powerful chipset which aides in good performance as well as gaming and combined with it the battery life is good with support for faster charging. The software experience is good as you get a lot of features and customizations.
However, there are some areas where the Oppo Reno 7 Pro does fall short like the chipset though being powerful is not as good as some of the competitors like the OnePlus 9RT (Review), Xiaomi 11T Pro, etc. that offer better and powerful Snapdragon 888 chipset, then ColorOS has bloatware present which takes some of the premium software experience, the refresh rate could have been 120 or 144Hz which the competition do offer, and cameras are not so great but gets the job done.
So on an overall basis, this seems to be a minor upgrade over the Oppo Reno 6 Pro but if you want a smartphone which has one of the best build and design, a good display for multimedia consumption, powerful performance and good battery life, then the Oppo Reno 7 Pro is an excellent buy. But if you are someone who is looking for better performance, cameras and display then there is also the OnePlus 9RT and even the Xiaomi 11T Pro.
The Oppo Reno 7 Pro is worth considering as it fulfils almost all the requirements for a budget flagship.
This post first appeared on OnePlus 8 Pro Vs Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra: Which Is The Better Flagship Of The Two?, please read the originial post: here
