After rocking the budget segment, brands are now moving up the chain to capture the mid-range and upper mid-range segment. We recently saw the hype OnePlus created surrounding Nord.
What people missed is a product from Oppo that could prove to be quite a successful product overall. The product in question is the Oppo Reno 4 Pro, which saw its global launch right from India. Coming in at a sticker price of INR 34,990, the phone comes packed with some pretty cool features.
We spent a little over ten days with the Reno 4 Pro, and here’s our full review.
Oppo Reno 4 Pro Specifications
Before starting with the Oppo Reno 4 Pro review, let’s have a look at the phone’s specifications.
- Display: 6.5-inch FHD+ resolution, 90Hz refresh rate AMOLED display
- CPU: Octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G Processor
- GPU: Adreno 618
- RAM: 8GB
- Storage: 128GB internal storage, expandable up to 256GB
- Software: Android 10 (ColorOS)
- Main Camera: 48MP (PDAF) + 8MP ultra-wide-angle + 2MP depth sensor + 2MP macro
- Selfie Camera: 32MP (f/2.4)
- Connectivity: USB Type C, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth v5.0, GPS/ A-GPS, 3.5mm headphone jack, FM Radio
- Cellular: Dual SIM
- Fingerprint Scanner: Yes, in-display
- Battery: 4,000 mAh, Li-ion Polymer, 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 fast charging
Box Contents
Here’s a complete list of items you get inside the box:
-
- Oppo Reno 4 Pro smartphone
- 65W SuperVOOC fast Charger
- USB Type C Cable
- Earphones
- Sim Ejector Tool
- Documentation
Design
We saw the Reno 4 Pro launch in China a while back but the product is tweaked for the Indian market. The global version of the phone carries like 95% of the same design as the China variant with some tweaks done to the rear-quad camera module and overall material choice of the phone.
We get a plastic outer frame this time around to cut down on cost which people will hardly notice considering the paint job on it. There is gorilla glass on both the front and back. The overall layout of the phone is neat. There is a quad-rear camera module with all the sensors lined in vertically. They are flushed for the most part with the back frosted glass that gives the phone a bit more premium feel.
The phone in the Indian market is offered in two colour choices, ‘Starry Night’ and ‘Silky White’, and we have the ‘Starry Night’ variant with us for review. On flipping the phone around, we get to see the gorgeous curved AMOLED display that is one of the highlighting features of the phone.
Moving to the button and ports placement, the power button is on the right side while the volume rockers are placed on the left rail. The 3.5mm audio jack, speaker and the USB Type-C port sit on the bottom, while the earpiece is sandwiched between the display and the outer frame.
Display
The Oppo Reno 4 Pro is the second Oppo phone this year to come with a curved display that we are seeking popping on more and more upper-midrange phones. We get a fairly large 6.5-inch FHD+ AMOLED display with a single punch-hole for the selfie camera. The icing on the cake is the 90Hz refresh rate display here.
This is one area where Oppo seems to have gone all in, the display up there with the level of some past year flagship phones, for instance, the OnePlus 7T. There are multiple colour profiles available and the phone comes with the vibrant colour profile turned on. You can shift to something more natural by going into the display settings and choosing the right setting for you.
The 90Hz refresh rate makes the animations smooth and buttery smooth on the eyes. One area where the display excels is the brightness, at its highest expect the display to touch 800 nits mark which is more than enough for outdoor usage. What the brand didn’t advertise is HDR, and yes HDR kicks in certain apps like YouTube and PrimeVideo while you get 1080p support on Netflix.
To sum it up, the display gets plenty bright, has good colours and is ideal for content consumption.
Software
Catching up to the software, as we said in our previous reviews of Oppo products, ColorOS has improved quite a bit. The phone runs on Android 10 with ColorOS 7 out of the box. For those users who aren’t familiar with ColorOS, its basically a decked out skin on top of Android. You get a flair of customization options, from changing the themes to wallpapers, icons and more.
There are some nifty features like the Game Mode, Dark Mode, and the Oppo Relax that as the name suggests helps you to relax and focus by engaging the user in meditation and other peace-inducing exercises. Oppo has compiled with the governments latest mandate and removed certain banned apps, but you can still find a little bit of bloatware but thankfully those apps can be removed.
Since the phone packs an AMOLED panel, you get to see Dark mode here, Always On Display with a ton of presets and Edge lighting – the edge notification lighting we see on OnePlus and Samsung phones.
Performance
Coming to the performance, the Oppo Reno 4 Pro comes powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G SoC with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. When looking at the processor, yes it is a let down when compared to the competition and even the Chinese version of this phone that comes with Snapdragon 765G.
Keeping both the Snapdragon 720G and 765G side by side, you won’t actually notice much of difference when day-to-day tasks are in question. But the 720G certainly lags in the GPU department. Barring that, the phone performs pretty great when it comes to day to day tasks like watching videos, listening to music, surfing social media, browsing the web, and more.
The ColorOS7.2 here has better memory management, and we didn’t really have any problem switching between apps. We did do some gaming and games like PUBG, and Asphalt 9 ran fine on medium graphics settings. Apart from this, we have an in-display fingerprint scanner that works reliably well and detects the fingerprint in one go for the most part. Call quality too is great and audio from speakers as well as the headphone jack is loud and clear.
Camera
The Oppo Reno 4 Pro comes with a quad-rear camera module with the main camera being a 48-megapixel sensor with f/1.7 aperture, assisted with an 8-megapixel wide-angle shooter with f/2.2 aperture. There’s also a 2-megapixel unit for macro shots and another for Bokeh. As for the front, the phone boasts of a 32-megapixel shooter with a slightly wider lens.
Just like other Reno series phones, Oppo does puts in a lot of work when it comes to imaging. The main 48MP Sony IMX586 sensor performs really well, especially in broad daylight. The images taken by the main sensor are sharp, have lots of detail, and bear natural colours. The dynamic range is excellent, as well. However, the low-light performance is just average as the phone clicks only usable pictures with soft details and inaccurate colours.
For taking darker shots, we would recommend switching on the Night mode that helps in achieving good results. The wide-angle camera, while not as good as the primary sensor, produces decent results. The other two lenses are useless for some serious photography and in our opinion are placed on the phone just to validate the quad-rear camera notion.
The front camera impresses as well with the main 32-megapixel Sony IMX616 sensor pumping out consistently well selfies that have plenty of detail in them. The skin tones are on the richer side.
The camera app is similar to what we have seen on other Reno series and Realme phone. There’s an Expert mode where you get to tweak exposure, white balance, shutter speed and focus. Apart from this, you get access to standard shooting modes.
Battery
The Reno 4 Pro packs a 4,000mAh battery under the hood. During our testing, the phone lasted for a full working day with a screen on-time ranging from six to seven hours on medium to heavy usage. Our heavy usage included a bit of gaming, content consumption, usual texting, and high camera usage.
The thing to note here is the phone was on 90Hz refresh rate the whole time and when back to 60Hz we didn’t notice that much of a difference in the stats. While the battery capacity might be low or some, on the flip side, the Reno 4 Pro comes with Oppo’s proprietary SuperVOOC 65W fast charging tech which charges the phone to 50% in under 20 mins and a full top-up is done in 40 minutes.
Pros
- Great display
- Great Battery life
- 65W Fast Charging
Cons
- Average camera performance overall
- Chipset is not for hardcore gamers
Verdict – Should you buy it?
The Oppo Reno 4 Pro comes in at a sticker price of INR 34,990, which puts in an upper-mid-range category that is riddled with some good offerings already. What we did like about the phone are its functional design, gorgeous curved display and the 65W fast charging.
There are some shortcomings, like the overall average camera performance and the underpowered processor powering the phone. At this price point, you could get the OnePlus Nord, Realme X2 Pro, Vivo X50 Pro or the Redmi K20 Pro and still save some bucks.
In our opinion, the phone will face fierce competition online but will be a hit in the offline segment thanks to the robust OPPO dealer network.
