Oppo Reno 12 Pro review: Smooth operator

Oppo Reno 12 Pro

Oppo’s Reno series has been around for a while now and has always caught the attention because of its design and reliable performance. The Reno 12 Pro is the latest phone from Oppo and takes on competition from OnePlus, iQoo, Vivo and others. Over the years, Oppo has always packed in a lot of features in the Reno series. This time around, there are quite a few AI-powered features in the Reno 12 Pro. But is that enough to beat rather tough competition? We used the Oppo Reno 12 Pro for a while and here’s what we think:

Oppo Reno 12 Pro review: Design, display

The Oppo Reno 12 Pro carries the design legacy of its predecessors. It is a sleek and stylish looking phone. Our review unit — Sunset Gold — has a very premium look and feel. Oppo has added a dual-tone finish with matte and gloss. While most of the phone’s back has a matte finish — shimmery — a small part at the bottom has a glossy look. There’s a metallic band which partition the two and it looks rather striking.

The Reno 12 Pro is also really thin and lightweight as it weighs around 180 grams and measures at 7.4mm. The in-hand feel is really nice and the phone is comfortable to hold.

Oppo has added an IP65 rating for water and dust resistance — something which the Reno 12 lacked. Also, there’s more more durability as the display is shielded with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2, a first for the Reno series.

The Oppo Reno 12 Pro boasts a premium-quality AMOLED display with a full HD+ resolution and a dynamic 120Hz refresh rate. The quad-curved screen delivers sharp colours and a vibrant viewing experience, enhancing content consumption.

With a peak brightness of 1500nits, the display remains easily readable even in bright sunlight. The viewing angles are impressive, and the colour reproduction is accurate, with deep blacks.

There are a lot of customisable display options like Vivid, Natural, Brilliant. The Adaptive Tone feature adjusts the display as per the ambient lighting. For the night owls, there’s a Bedtime Mode which adjusts the colour temperature to a warmer tone.

The in-display fingerprint sensor is conveniently located at the bottom and provides a reliable and responsive unlocking experience. Users can customise the fingerprint animation settings for a personalised touch.

Oppo Reno 12 Pro: Performance, AI features

Powering the Oppo Reno 12 is the Mediatek Dimensity 7300-Energy processor. Oppo says that it has been specially designed for the Reno series and is about 25% more efficient compared to the previous generation Reno phones.

It is certainly a capable processor as everyday performance is without any lags or stutters. Multitasking is also not a problem at all. We didn’t face any issues at any point with the Oppo Reno 12 Pro’s performance. It can handle gaming also quite well with titles like Shadow Fight 4 and Call of Duty: Mobile. The thermal management on the Oppo Reno 12 Pro is quite good as even after moderate gaming sessions, it never heated up.

The Oppo Reno 12 Pro runs on ColorOS 14, which offers a range of features and customisation options. Over the years, Oppo has refined the COlorOS experience and added nice features like the File Dock. It allows users to easily drag and drop items between different applications.

The Smooth Touch feature allows users to capture quick screenshots. Furthermore, it also makes it to easy to copy text or images from the screenshots. Like other custom UIs, ColorOS also has a plethora of customisation options for themes, fonts, icons and so on.

One thing that continues to plague ColorOS is the sheer number of pre-loaded apps that come with it. The moment you are ready to use the phone, there are quite a few apps that which may not be useful at all for many users. Some of them can mercifully be deleted whereas there are some — Hot Games, FinShell Pay — which can’t be deleted.

The Reno 12 Pro supports BeaconLink, which enhances Bluetooth uplink capabilities by up to 300%. This feature enables device-to-device voice calls over Bluetooth within a range of 30 meters, eliminating the need for wireless or cellular connections.

Packing in AI features in smartphones is the current trend and Oppo Reno 12 Pro is no different. Google’s Gemini AI powers quite a few features to help you become more productive and creative. For instance, there’s AI Writer which is ideal for social media posts and captions. It allows you to generate relevant hashtags as well as customises the tone of the post.

AI Summariser is another useful tool, which as the name suggests, can help summarise articles on Chrome. There’s also AI Recording Summary, which can summarise recorded voice notes in the Recording app. So if you have a meeting or an interview recorded, AI summarises it and stores in the notes app.

When it comes to battery life, on moderate usage you can easily go for a day without charging the phone. There’s 80W fast charging support which can charge the phone fully in about 40 minutes. The battery and fast-charging are one of the big plus points of the Oppo Reno 12 Pro.

Oppo Reno 12 Pro: Camera

Apart from design, Oppo has always touted the camera capabilities of the Reno series. The Oppo Reno 12’s camera delivers impressive images. The primary 50MP sensor can click detailed, sharp images. The dynamic range is balanced and the colours are consistent and not oversaturated at all.

The telephoto lens also clicks good images in daylight. The Reno 12 Pro comes with digital 5X zoom, which delivers reasonably good images but some details do get lost.

Low-light photography with the primary sensor is really impressive. The images we captured had a lot of details and sharpness is also retained. The Portrait mode works well and does a fine job at creating a bokeh effect.

The selfie camera performs admirably in both daylight and low-light environments. The video capabilities are suitable for sharing on social media.

In terms of camera-centric AI features, there’s AI Eraser 2.0 effectively removes background distractions using various tools like Smart Lasso, Paint Over, and Remove People. Then there’s AI Studio which uses generative AI to add characters and personal to images.

AI features are a nice touch to include in the camera setup but not something we ended up using a lot.

Oppo Reno 12 Pro: Verdict

The Oppo Reno 12 Pro starts Rs 36,999 and as mentioned at the start of the review, it faces stiff competition. But it has a lot going for it. The design of the Oppo Reno 12 Pro is bound to get a lot of attention. The slim form factor is another big plus. It offers reliable performance and the battery life is impressive. Not many people would complain about the camera either as it performs well within its capabilities.

If you are in the market for a premium looking phone and don’t want to spend a lot of money, the Oppo Reno 12 Pro is a good option to consider. Oppo has put in a lot of features in a phone that delivers steady and smooth performance.