OPPO Reno3 Pro Review

Oppo Reno — A name that must be familiar to you in case you have been following smartphones known for their exceptional design language. Oppo launched the first Reno series in May 2019 and grabbed the attention of many, not just for how it looked on the outside, but also for what it packed inside that beautiful unibody design. 

The Reno series by Oppo was launched with the aim to attract consumers who wanted their smartphone to be a standout among the crowd of other handsets while offering exceptional camera capabilities.

Less than a year now and to date, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer has brought three generations of the Reno series in India, with the latest one being the Reno3 Pro.

With the Reno3 Pro, Oppo went ahead and made significant changes to the smartphone, mostly on the design. The Chinese smartphone manufacturer has also launched a different global variant in India with a MediaTek P95 processor, compared to China’s Snapdragon 765G processor. 

So how good is the Reno3 Pro? Does it have what it takes to still have what it takes to be called the ‘Jack of all trades and master of many’ like the Reno2?

Before we begin our Oppo Reno3 Pro review, let’s get the specifications out of the way.

Oppo Reno3 Pro specifications 

Display: 6.4-inch Super AMOLED Full HD+ (1080x2400 resolution) screen with a dual punch-hole cutout and an in-display fingerprint scanner

Rear camera: 64MP f/1.8 + 13MP f/2.4 telephoto lens with 20x digital zoom + 8MP 119.9-degree ultra-wide lens + 2MP monochrome sensor

Front camera: 44MP f/2.4 + 2MP f/2.4

Processor: MediaTek Helio P95

RAM/ Storage: 8GB + 128GB, 8GB + 256GB

Battery: 4, 025 mAh with 30W VOOC Flash Charge 4.0

Price: Rs 29,990 for 8GB + 128GB, Rs 32,990 for 8GB + 256GB.

Oppo Reno3 Pro review

Design & display 

As we have already mentioned earlier, the Reno family has been known to share an iconic design language that is stylish and looks classy at the same time. 

While the predecessors possessed an all-screen design, the Reno3 Pro sports a punch-hole cutout on its 6.4-inch screen to house the world’s first 44MP dual front camera setup. This also means that the shark-fin-style pop-up camera, which was a very innovative way to showcase the motorised selfie camera, has also bid goodbye with the Reno3 Pro. 

The absence of the pop-up camera has, in turn, made the Reno3 Pro light in weight. While smartphones these days weigh well over 200 grams, Reno3 Pro weighs in at just 175 grams.  This might not seem like a lot of difference, but it is something you will notice when using. Plus, since there’s no wait-time for the front camera to pop-up the face unlock works faster too.

Coming to the display, the Full HD+ panel brings a great level of contrast and vibrant colours. The saturation is not too aggressive, either. The default colour tone leans slightly on the warmer side, but this can be adjusted in the display settings. When it comes to viewing angles, we did not notice any significant colour shift either. And in case you are wondering, there is no high refresh rate support on the Reno3 Pro. Unlike many competitor smartphones, the Reno3 Pro comes with only a 60Hz refresh rate panel. 

The display comes wrapped around a glossy polycarbonate panel. We liked the Aurora Blue, which was also our review unit, among the three colour options being offered. The rear panel has a gradient finish, with the bottom half having more saturated blues than the upper half. Oppo has also tried to mimic the glass back and given its polycarbonate rear panel a shiny touch, which may look premium to many. Surprisingly, the back is not as much of a fingerprint magnet as we had expected, considering the glossy colour scheme it sports.

There’s also a huge camera bump on the back, which is something new to Reno devices. The previous generations had a flush rear panel wherein the camera module did not stick out. There was also a tiny circle positioned at the centre of the rear panel (Oppo calls it ‘O-Dot’) that ensured the camera module was not prone to scratches when kept on a flat surface. That ‘O-Dot’ is missing on the Reno3 Pro, which now results in the smartphone wobbling when kept on a table or any flat surface.

The power button on the right and the volume keys on the left are quite easy to reach. Add to it the curved rear panel that assists in providing a firm grip. The bottom edge has room for the USB Type-C port placed between the 3.5mm headphone jack and the single speaker-grille.

Overall, the Reno3 Pro’s design is good and is at par with most smartphones out there. However, we feel slightly disappointed because the Reno series, in general, was never just ‘at par.’ We had always felt that the previous Reno smartphones set gold standards when it came to a premium design that set them apart from the competition, and we hope that with the Reno4 (or whatever Oppo decides to brand the next-generation) brings back the rear panel’s design at least, if not the shark-fin pop-up camera. 

Camera 

Another USP of the Reno series has been the camera that offers a versatile set of focal lengths. The Reno3 Pro continues to feature a quad-camera setup on the back, but this time with a 64MP primary sensor. The 1/1.72-inch sensor that has an f/1.8 aperture is paired with an 8MP, 119.9-degree ultra-wide lens, a 13MP f/2.4 telephoto lens with 20x digital zoom, and a 2MP monochrome lens.

In the age where most smartphone cameras offer images with saturation slightly on the higher side, the Reno3 Pro’s 16MP pixel-binned image does offer close-to-real colours in most cases. There were some situations wherein the highlights were blown out where the subject was in line with direct sunlight, but that is a general complaint with most smartphone cameras. There’s also an Ultra HD mode in the ‘Expert’ mode, which upscales 64MP shots to 108MP images.

Chances are that you might use the 8MP ultra-wide only to fit a lot more in a tighter frame. In that case, you will get a warmer colour temperature picture as compared to the standard wide lens. The vibrance and saturation levels, though are at par with the primary lens. Also, like most ultra-wide smartphone sensors out there, Reno3 Pro suffers from the lack of details and dynamic range.

The USP of the USPs, however, is the 20x telephoto lens. If you are someone who uses their smartphone’s zoom camera, the Reno3 Pro does offer a variety of focal lengths. There’s 2x optical zoom, 5x hybrid zoom, and up to 10x digital zoom. Up to 2x optical zoom, you will get sharp details. The camera did struggle to focus a couple of times when we tried shooting some distant subject at 5x zoom but surprisingly offered sharp images whenever successful. At 10x, you will notice some loss of details despite the software trying to get the best out of the shot. 20x digital zoom might require the use of a tripod as even Electronic Image Stabilisation could not help our shaky hands get some decent shots in most cases. 

The Night Mode comes in handy in low-light conditions. There’s also an Ultra Dark mode that bumps up the exposure in extremely dark conditions but introduces a fair amount of noise. 

Check out the Flickr slideshow below to see how the Reno3 Pro camera performed overall.

For selfies, the dual punch-hole cutout houses the world’s first 44MP + 2MP front camera setup. The selfies that we clicked offered close-to-real skin tones. There is a slight amount of smoothening, even when you turn off the beauty mode. Portrait mode on Reno3 Pro was impressive as the edge detection was accurate and did not blur out the ears or hair. In short, if you love clicking selfies, Reno3 Pro will not disappoint you.

Performance & software

Oppo Reno3 Pro is powered by a MediaTek Helio P95 processor, the first in India. The SoC comes with marginal improvement over its predecessor, the Helio P90. The company claims that the P95 offers an enhanced GPU, AI ability, and connectivity with high resource savings.  While day-to-day tasks can be handled with a breeze, the Reno3 Pro breaks a sweat during intensive usage. We did notice some lag while playing graphic-intensive games such as PUBG Mobile. We did not make any adjustments and played the eSport in its default settings — HD graphics and High frame rate. We did have a better gaming experience while playing Asphalt 8 and did not come across any sort of lag. The smartphone also did not get warm during our 15 to 20 minutes of extended gameplay. 

In terms of battery life, Oppo Reno3 Pro survived a full day of moderate usage with its 4,025 mAh cell. Our typical usage covered WhatsApp, Netflix videos with brightness on the higher side, music the device connected to wireless headphones, scrolling through Twitter and Instagram, and camera usage via the inbuilt camera app and Snapchat. 

In case your smartphone dies out, you can refuel the battery within minutes. Oppo claims the Reno3 Pro can charge from zero to 50 minutes in 20 minutes. Our review unit on average managed to reach the targeted 50 percent battery within 21 minutes. It then trickled down the speed, completely charging the device up to 100 percent with a few minutes over an hour.

What we did not like about the Reno3 Pro’s performance is RAM management. Despite our review unit packing 8GB RAM and 128GB storage, we did notice graphics-heavy apps being suspended while in the background. However, Color OS 7’s ‘Lock’ app feature can come in handy during such situations. When in the multitasking window, tap on the two dots on the top of the app and select ‘Lock’. That way, even when you clear all the RAM, the smartphone will not close any of the locked apps, hence also avoiding suspension.

Another cool feature of Color OS 7 is icon styles. The new Oppo custom skin offers three different icon styles — default, rectangle, and pebble, which can be selected as per the user’s preference. You can also hit the settings and choose to customise the icon size.

Color OS 7 (based on Android 10) has a lot less bloatware compared to Color OS 6. However, there are some apps under the Hot apps and Hot Games, which, although we skipped installing while setting up the device, take up space in the app drawer. You can go to the settings and disable the toggle, which removes them from the app drawer. There are also some Oppo apps such as Soloop and Music Party that come pre-installed along with some third-party apps like Opera browser and DailyHunt, etc.

The bottom-firing mono speaker is loud and clear, and if we had to nit-pick, we wish if Oppo had doubled the earpiece as a secondary speaker. The in-display fingerprint scanner is also quick to detect but did not manage to beat the blazing-fast AI face unlock.

Verdict

We have mixed feelings when it comes to the Reno3 Pro. For Rs 29,990, it does not feel like the Reno3 Pro is ‘Pro’ enough as the performance unit sets the device back when you compare it with the competition. It feels like the Reno3 Pro is more of a Reno 2Z successor than the vanilla Reno2 (Review). 

With the change in design language, the Reno3 Pro no longer remains a showstopper. The design is fairly identical to the Realme X50 Pro 5G and a horde of other smartphones sporting a vertical camera array. This, by no means, suggests that Reno3 Pro is of poor design. If we were to explain it better, we would say that Oppo topped the design class consistently with its Reno2 and Reno10x Zoom (Review), but performed average with the Reno3 Pro. Maybe we expected a lot from the Reno3 Pro, but that is how high the standards were set.

Our review does make it clear that Reno3 Pro is not an ideal choice for someone who is into competitive gaming. For that, you could opt for the Realme X2 Pro (Review) or Redmi K20 Pro (Review), among others. The smartphone has its own niche and only suits users who want a smartphone that looks good and also makes them a good look when in front of its camera. Other positives include an excellent battery life coupled with super-fast charging and less-bloatware software experience. Color OS with some of its tweaks has come a long way and does feel like to be a step in the right direction for improved user experience.