Oppo Reno 10x Zoom review: hybrid zoom and a shark fin selfie camera to compete with the best

Oppo, OnePlus’s parent company, together with Vivo, are the subsidiaries of the Chinese BBK Electronics group, which is one of the five largest smartphone manufacturers in the world. With the Reno 10x Zoom (Check on Amazon.com), Oppo bets on smartphone photography to make a name for itself in the western markets.

Oppo Reno 10x Zoom – Design

Weighing 215 grams, the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom is a bit heavy, but feels pleasant in the hand. The design is very stylish: Oppo wraps the device in glass. The rear panel is almost completely flat since the triple camera module is fully embedded in the housing and thus doesn’t have a bump. There is slight circular protrusion underneath the cameras, but this is done explicitly to protect the cameras when you place the phone flat on a surface. Anyway, you should always use a case since the device is very slippery – you will find one in the package.

The front features an all-screen design. Only the bottom has a slightly larger bezel. There is no notch since the selfie is housed in a retractable pop-up mechanism with a characteristic shark fin design.

Oppo Reno 10x Zoom – Display

The Oppo Reno 10x Zoom sports a diagonal of 6.6 inches. Oppo uses an AMOLED display in the 19,5:9 format with a Full HD+ resolution (2,340×1,080 pixels). The pixel density is 388 PPI, thus if you look closely, you can see the individual pixels; a QHD resolution would probably be better suited for such a large display.

We measured the screen’s maximum brightness at 477 cd/m². However, when exposed to direct sunlight, it was difficult to read everything. Competitors from Apple and Samsung install significantly brighter panels.

Colors and contrast are almost perfect. The display covers around 141 percent of the standard RGB color space and the contrast value is also very good at 165:1. HDR content is simply stunning since the Reno 10x Zoom can also cover 100 percent of the relevant DCI P3 color space.

Oppo Reno 10x Zoom – Camera

Oppo installed three cameras on the back, one of which is a 13-megapixel prism lens. This is designed to help the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom justify its name: with the help of AI and special light refraction of the prism lens this device has a 5x optical and 10x hybrid zoom.

The main camera features a 48 megapixels sensor with an f/1.7 aperture, but the software combines four pixels into one. Thus, the effective resolution is twelve megapixels. This is designed to help you shoot bright images even under difficult lighting conditions. Both the main and zoom lenses are optically stabilized.

The Reno 10x zoom can capture video in 4K resolution at 60 frames per second. In addition, Oppo integrates its own night mode, “Ultra Night Mode 2.0″, where the AI, HDR and noise reduction work together to take good photos with as much light as possible during night time.

The front 16 megapixels camera has an aperture of f/2.0. It pops up automatically when selected. The selfies could be sharper, mainly due to the lack of autofocus. In addition, the camera draws faces very “softly” even when the Beauty mode is disabled.

The curious thing here is that Oppo incorporates the LED flash on the back of the selfie camera module. This has to be pulled out every time you want to take pictures with the rear camera and LED flash which seems to us an unnecessary hassle.

The photo quality is great. Shots in daylight and twilight are very sharp, with a lot of detail and seem very natural. Only in direct comparison side by side with the Huawei P30 Pro (Check on Amazon.com) was noticeable that the details were not quite as fine and some noise was present especially at the edges of some objects.

Zoomed images were stunning, but we observed more blurring, less sharpness, and text that was no longer visible when compared to the photos we got with the Huawei P30 Pro.

Oppo Reno 10x Zoom – Hardware

Inside the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom we find a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor. It is paired with six or eight gigabytes of RAM. The performance was excellent, on par with other flagships such as the Samsung Galaxy S10 (Check on Amazon.com) or the Huawei P30 Pro.

Read more: Samsung Galaxy S10 review: finally complete

The internal memory is either 128 or 256 gigabytes. In addition, it can be further expanded using a microSD card.

The device has spatial stereo sound, with the second speaker housed inside the earpiece. Sadly, as with many modern flagships, there is no headphone jack

Connectivity-wise the device has dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0 and NFC.

The Reno 10x Zoom uses a 4,065mAh battery, with good but not great autonomy. In our endurance test, the Reno 10x Zoom lasted for nine hours so it will easily last for a full day. It has fast charging technology but no wireless charging although it features a glass back.

The Oppo Reno 10x Zoom isn’t IP certified against dust and water. The reason for this could be, among other things, the pop-up mechanism at the top of the device.

Oppo Reno 10x Zoom – Software

The Oppo Reno 10x Zoom runs on Android 9 Pie with Oppo’s Color OS 6.0 skin on top. The system is very responsive and comes with beautiful animations, but it takes some time to get used to it.

Oppo Reno 10x Zoom – Verdict

The Oppo Reno 10x Zoom (Check on Amazon.com) convinced us with its high-end performance and a triple camera with a 10x hybrid zoom for top smartphone photography. The photo quality is very good. It also has a few weaknesses: battery life is average and there is no wireless charging. If you are not convinced opt for the equally excellent and cheaper OnePlus 7 Pro (Check on Amazon.com). If on the other hand, you want an even better camera phone then the Huawei P30 Pro (Check on Amazon.com) has unmatched zoom and versatility.

Read more:

• Huawei P30 Pro review: the TOP to beat for photos and autonomy
• OnePlus 7 Pro review: a contender for the best smartphone of the year