So, should you buy the Oppo Reno 6 Pro 5G? Well, the answer to that isn’t very difficult. If solid performance, above par camera capabilities and a gorgeous design are what you’re looking for from your next phone, then Oppo’s new mid-range flagship is definitely the device for you. It does more than enough in these departments and manages to stand out as a viable option in the segment. However, its price is a little on the higher side for the hardware it offers, and as such, is the only real gripe one could have with the device.
Oppo has been one of the biggest names in the smartphone industry for years, and the company has managed to remain one on the basis of some really interesting phones it's launched over the years. And now, a new phone has been added to the list, the Oppo Reno 6 Pro 5G. The latest upper mid-range flagship from Oppo offers a lot to like, including a gorgeous design, above par cameras and a powerful chipset under the hood.
We’ve had the device with us for a while, so in this review, we’ll not only talk about the specifications and features of the device but also everything else that makes this new phone from Oppo special. We'll also give you our take on the general performance of the phone, tell you if it's good for gaming, clicking photos and videos, and above all if it's worth your money.
As always, before giving our verdict on the device, we've run it through a battery of tests and benchmarks to give you an accurate understanding of what you would be signing up for if you eventually decide to buy the Oppo Reno 6 Pro 5G.
So without further ado, let’s get started.
Oppo Reno 6 Pro 5G: Design
As we mentioned above, the Reno 6 Pro 5G is Oppo's new upper mid-range flagship, and that fact is established the moment you lay eyes on the phone, and then some more, when you hold it in your palm. From its display to its back panel, the phone looks and feels premium, and impresses with its gorgeous, eye-catching design.
However, that's not really a surprise considering Oppo has a history of making some really beautiful and unique-looking phones. While a lot has changed since the days of the first Reno phones, and the design language has evolved to incorporate a more elegant approach, what still remains the same is Oppo's know-how to create devices that wow when you see them in the flesh.
The phone follows a minimalist approach, and at the back, there are only two main elements that cry out for attention. The first is the slightly protruded camera array with four lenses on it, and the other is the gradient pattern on the panel itself that's been brought to life using the company's Reno Glow design technology.
The Reno Glow design was first seen on the Reno 5 Pro 5G, and it brings a subtle sparkling finish to the anti-glare glass on the device thanks to a unique etching technique used by the company. As Oppo explained to us in an exclusive interview, the glass back cover on the Reno 6 Pro 5G has been created using an elaborate manufacturing process that involves around 50 complex steps, including glass cutting, 3D forming, ion exchange, and etching. As we can report, the result of this is a finish that is matte in texture but still has the glow of glossy glass.
Moving on, the back panel merges seamlessly into the metallic frame of the device which houses the volume buttons on the left, and the power buttons on the right of the frame. The Type-C port, along with the speaker grille is found at the bottom of the frame.
Overall, the Reno 6 Pro 5G is a very lightweight and manageable device as it is only 7.6mm thick and weighs 177g. Its sleek design ensures the phone is not only easy to carry around, but also fits perfectly in the user's hand.
Oppo Reno 6 Pro 5G: Display
Moving on to the front of the phone, we have an interesting 6.5-inch display that runs at a fixed FullHD+ resolution but offers a lot in terms of other features. To begin with, it features slight curves on the left and the right to give it an interesting and premium appeal. There is also very little in the way of bezels that take you away from enjoying an immersive visual experience on the phone. Interestingly, Oppo has also decided to go with a rather tiny punch-hole on the upper left corner of the display — a design decision that again helps ensure visual experiences are enhanced on the Oppo Reno 6 Pro 5G.
This 20:9 aspect ratio display also offers support for HDR10+ and Netflix HD certification, along with Amazon Prime Video HD & HDR Certifications. For those looking to play games on the phone, the Reno 6 Pro 5G offers support for a 180Hz touch sampling rate as well as up to 90Hz refresh rate. Being an AMOLED panel, we also get support for the Always-On-Display (AOD) feature, which Oppo has brought to life with the help of a number of screen designs.
The display is also one of the brightest we've seen on a phone in the recent past, and as such makes the Reno 6 Pro 5G a very good phone to watch movies on or play games indoors or even under harsh lighting conditions. During our review, we tested the phone's display on both the Vivid and Gentle colour profiles found within the display settings of the device. Of the two, the latter is calibrated for accuracy in the sRGB colour space, while the Vivid profile appears to be calibrated for covering a wider colour range by attempting to hit the DCI-P3 colour space.
In terms of performance, the display is quite good. It feels premium and works as well as any other panel fitted on an Oppo phone in the past. It definitely matched up to our expectations as it not only offered good brightness levels but also managed to reproduce vibrant and punchy colours. Apart from this, the display also offers good viewing angles and text legibility. Overall, the Reno 6 Pro 5G does well in the display department and ends up emerging as a good option if you're looking to buy a phone for playing games and watching videos and movies on it.
Oppo Reno 6 Pro 5G: Performance
Over the years, this is where we've seen Oppo phones typically start to lag behind the competition. However, that's not really the case with the Oppo Reno 6 Pro 5G. This new phone from Oppo gets powerful hardware, that by the looks of it, could help it compete with rival phones, not just its price band, but also a little higher up the retail chain.
For the core hardware, Oppo has used the MediaTek Dimensity 1200 SoC, a powerful chipset built for upper mid-range flagships, and has paired it with up to 12GB RAM and up to 256GB storage. Over and above this, the phone also offers the user the ability to allocate 3/5/7GB memory as VRAM to help improve the performance of the device. However, as we found out during our review, the use of this feature remains limited as the phone comes with more than enough RAM, to begin with.
Getting back to the chipset, this isn't the first time that we have seen the Dimensity 1200 SoC being used in India. In fact, we've recently seen it on the Realme X7 Max 5G. This MediaTek SoC is a 6nm chipset that features an octa-core CPU. At the heart of the chip is a prime Cortex-A78 core clocked at 3.0GHz and three Cortex-A78 performance cores running at 2.6GHz and four power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 2.0GHz.
MediaTek claims this processor is 22 per cent faster and 25 per cent more power-efficient than its previous generation processors. The GPU on this chipset is the Mali-G77, which offers pretty good results in games. The Dimensity 1200 SoC also promises some extra performance while playing games with its support for MediaTek HyperEngine 3.0 gaming technology. It also offers an enhanced smartphone gaming experience with improved wireless audio and Ray Traced graphics capabilities.
The presence of this hardware makes the Reno 6 Pro 5G a performance focussed device, one that can handle apps of daily use and power-hungry games equally well. As such, all our interactions with the device were as expected, and gaming was almost flawless on the phone. We ran Call of Duty Mobile and Asphalt 9 Legends at maxed-out settings to test the performance of the phone, and are happy to report that we did not notice any frame drops or stutters during our gaming session. As you can see, testing the phones using Gamebench backed our observations, as the phone ended up achieving a perfect score for Asphalt 9 Legends, while managing to achieve very good scores on Call of Duty Mobile as well.
Synthetic benchmarks, however, were not as kind to the Reno 6 Pro 5G, as most of them showed it lagging behind competing phones, including the Dimensity 1200 SoC totting, Realme X7 Max 5G. For example, on Antutu, the Reno 6 Pro scored considerably less than the Realme device, while also scoring marginally less than the OnePlus 9R. It was a similar case for Geekbench, where the phone again scored the least among the three phones. Graphics performance on benchmarks was better, with the Reno 6 Pro 5G closing the gap on the other two phones when tested using 3DMark Wildlife.
Apart from these tests, the Reno 6 Pro 5G clocked decent numbers in our other benchmark tests and crucially did well in the CPU Throttling Test where it showed the device's CPU managing the thermals well, and being throttled to only 82 per cent of its performance after about 20 minutes of use.
Oppo Reno 6 Pro 5G: Cameras
As is the case with most Oppo phones, the company has put a lot of effort into ensuring an above-par photography experience with its Reno 6 Pro 5G. Being an area of focus for the phone, we see the company equip the device with impressive cameras supplemented by a host of features to elevate its performance.
As we've mentioned before, the Oppo Reno 6 Pro 5G comes with a quad-camera set-up, of which, the primary is a 64-megapixel lens, sat next to an 8-megapixel wide-angle camera, 2-megapixel macro camera and 2-megapixel mono lens.
Of these, the primary lens is particularly of note, as it churns out crisp and vibrant shots when fed with a good amount of natural light. This lens captures detailed shots with rich and accurate colours. These shots also offer a good dynamic range. The lens also captures a good amount of detail which helps if you zoom or crop an image. Overall, the images captured using this lens come out with crisp detail and offer a good amount of sharpness.
However, the performance certainly deteriorates a little when the lens isn't fed enough natural light. As such, in low light conditions, the phone does not manage to capture very rich details, and also takes a little too long to lock on to focus. However, because of the fast shutter speed, pictures generally come out usable, and without any blur.
Apart from this, the phone's Night Mode is definitely a neat addition to the device and a quick way of filling up images with more light than actually exists in the frame. However, we found its results to not be the most accurate. The primary lens can also be used to click 108MP ultra-high resolution images by enabling the Extra HD mode found in the phone's camera software.
Moving on to the secondary lens, this one again manages to capture decent pictures in well-lit conditions, however, low light performance does leave much to be desired. The performance of the macro lens did not live up to our expectations in general, as the phone generally did not manage to click good macro shots, regardless of the lighting conditions.
But that's not all there is to the Reno 6 Pro 5G's cameras. The phone brings with itself some cool video-first features that promise to elevate the videography experience on the device. For example, Oppo's exclusive Bokeh Flare feature adds cinematic Bokeh effects in portrait videos. This mode essentially transforms background lights in a video into spheres, to make the subject in frame stand out. Another interesting video mode available on the phone is the AI Highlight Video. It enables the user to blur the background to increase focus on the subject in the frame. Both the modes are nice additions to the camera software, and will definitely be appreciated by those who want to use their phones to shoot videos with fancy cinematic effects in them.
Oppo Reno 6 Pro: Battery
Despite featuring a sleek frame, the Oppo Reno 6 Pro manages to pack a decent sized battery under the hood. The device offers a 4500mAh pack that may not be the biggest in the business but is certainly big enough to keep the phone running for at least a day without running for the charger.
While this is for moderate users, heavy users may find the phone's battery running out much before they can complete a day's use. However, when the phone does run out of charge, it can be quickly topped up using the device's 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 fast charger which can fill up the battery completely in about 40 minutes minutes.
The Reno 6 Pro 5G also comes with battery optimisation features such as Super-Power Saving Mode and Super Nighttime Standby. These also greatly help in maximizing the battery life of the device.
Verdict
So, should you buy the Oppo Reno 6 Pro 5G? Well, the answer to that isn’t very difficult. If solid performance, above par camera capabilities and a gorgeous design are what you’re looking for from your next phone, then Oppo’s new mid-range flagship is definitely the device for you. It does more than enough in these departments and manages to stand out as a viable option in the segment. However, its price is a little on the higher side for the hardware it offers, and as such, is the only real gripe one could have with the device.
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Sushant Talwar
Sushant Talwar is a full-time foodie who reviews cool gadgets and binges on TV shows when he is tired of playing video games. He is also in love with football and thinks Manchester United is a religion View Full Profile
