Oppo Reno 10x Zoom Edition review
Oppo Reno 10x Zoom Edition
Main concern
In case you're hoping to change to a more up to date very good quality Android cell phone to trade, this should figure high up there in your rundown of choices.
Road Price$ 999.00
Geniuses
ColorOS 6, the triple camera arrangement with a periscope zooming focal point having 5x zoom, mixture lossless 10x zoom, the Snapdragon 855 chipset, and a flawless notchless showcase.
CONS
Auto-brilliance glitching, similarly as with most Android 9.0 telephones, and the failure to record video with different focal points.
Oppo Reno's 10x Zoom release is out and follows the former ordinary mid-level Oppo Reno Edition, a stripped-down telephone with strong specs that don't run out of steam—on the off chance that you haven't read our audit yet, you can peruse it here, and enjoy some set of experiences of the organization continually attempting to discover better approaches to construct tech the world can discover energizing and idealistic for the business. Regardless of whether the telephone is superior to the standard adaptation doesn't generally make a difference; the two forms are made for two uncontrollably various business sectors and types.
A ton of the highlights of the telephone types that cross have been avoided with regard to the audit, and can be glanced through in our past survey of the spending version—the attention is on what's extraordinary, and whether it's for you.
(In the event that you truly need to know, however, yes. The 10x Zoom release is impartially the better telephone clearly, so how about we proceed onward.)
Specifications
If there’s anything that differentiates the standard edition from this massively beefed up smartphone version, it’s the chipset—the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 legitimately throws most other flagship Android phones’ performances out of the water. As a result, the 10x Zoom Edition is blazing fast, whether you’re using the phone as your daily smartphone doing daily smartphone things, or pushing it to its limits—using PUBG or Rockstar Games’ mobile ports of their many hits like Grand Theft Auto Vice City and Max Payne feels unreal, sans any lag, and pushes forth the further blurring of devices into one touchscreen gadget you can pocket and take with you.
Supporting the processor’s burden are the phone’s internal memory—on the fully spec-ed out device, you can get RAM as high as 8 gigabytes, with some models also offering 6—and the storage—between 128GB and 256GB, you get to take your pick. Going hand-in-hand with the hardware is the intuitively crafted ColorOS 6, which, as previously mentioned, is a solid skinned Android, with very little bloatware, and a whole lot of user-friendliness. It’s an extremely underrated Android mod, and on further daily use, stands out on its on amongst the OneUI and OxygenOS generations we’ve seen this year.
There’s still a rather nagging problem of the inaccuracy of auto-brightness on the display, but it seems to be a problem with most Android Pie versions anyway (including the Nokia 9 PureView, which at the moment, offers the most stripped down of all Android versions in any third party phone on the market.)
Display
Speaking of displays, there isn’t a lot of difference. Both the standard and 10x Zoom editions are packed with displays in their jaw-dropping AMOLED glory, and support an equally fast refresh rate, but the result feels a whole lot more apparent in the 10x Zoom, and that probably has a lot to do with the fact that it’s a touch larger—0.2 inches, if we’re being exact—than the no-frills version. On paper, that may not sound like much, but as someone who’s used both phones, to this writer, it’s been a whole lot more obvious that the user experience putting various everyday visual elements to task has been a joy. The fact that the design of both smartphones in the lineup are built on the foundation of a sans-notch-display experience makes it even more obvious.
Camera
Perhaps the phone’s biggest trump card differentiating it from the standard edition is its range of cameras. While both versions seem to pack in the standard 48-megapixel 26mm wide lens on paper, if you look closely, you’ll find that the 10x Zoom has OIS built into the wide lens, leaving it out, as with most other cameras having similar specs, of the 8MP 16mm ultra-wide (which you won’t find in the no-frills version).
The most amazing aspect of the camera setup though is its OIS-enabled telephoto lens, which, along with any image info from the wide and super-wide lenses, creates a hybrid lossless zoom that goes up to 10 times its original distance, and up to 60 times if you’re looking for digital zoom. If you want to stick with the 5-times optical, that’s fine too. Bar the 60 (because of the usual drawbacks with digital zoom) they’re all strong, if only softer—the closer you get to a subject, the less sharper your image gets.
(It needs to be noted though, that the softness doesn’t equal degradation of image quality. A lot of filmmakers and photographers usually hunt for vintage, older lenses to cut out any sharpness. If you’re into a sharper aesthetic, however, you’ll be better off grabbing yourself a camera, or an iPhone with a lens case and a tele-lens adapter. The fact that a phone can do it all within its form factor is—in and of itself—a feat.)
Video capabilities on the camera are similarly stunning. You can get up to 4K UHD (at 3840x2160) at either 30 or 60 frames per seconds, so you can shoot great slow-motion shots in ultra high-def, no sweat broken. If you’d like to stick with HD though, your frame rate options get slightly wider, with 120 frames per second added into the mix. Throw in some gyro EIS, and you’ll have super steady, super smooth shots, without the need to step down on resolution or frame rate. And if you’re even more ambitious, you can grab yourself a gimbal and actually go nuts with shots that are stability-checked thrice. Again, as is a limitation with a lot of phones having similar, if not the same setup, the phone can only shoot video on the main 48MP lens—a shame, considering adding video capabilities to the zoom functionality would have been a massive achievement.
Other features include AI, that helps detect information around your vicinity to know what kind of environment you’re in—from macro-friendly shots to faces, indoor and outdoor settings, text, et al., you have it all—and adjusts exposure and white balance accordingly, and dazzle color, which adds a dash of vibrance to the shots you take without making it look like an oversaturated, overwhelming mess. The shark-fin pop up selfie camera doesn’t really have any difference from the budget version, but it’s still the same solid camera offering HDR, (limited) HD video recording, and decent portrait-shooting computational-imaging capabilities.
A pertinent question one could see asking is that why would one choose the Reno 10x Zoom when we’ve already been graced with the P30 Pro earlier this year. Now, if your allegiance to Huawei’s brand identity and comfort level with the EMUI has already been established, there’s really no reason to change—also, the P30 lineup’s acclaim speaks for itself. But if you’re a lot more flexible, or simply just leaning toward tech that’s a tad refined, the Oppo’s latest is frankly a no-brainer. Image stabilization when in the zoom function is powerful enough that you don’t have to worry about “holding your camera stable,” as warnings in its competitor app would have you see. Additionally, the camera app is easy to navigate, and—thanks to the ColorOS—is just an overall pleasant and easy experience.
Overall
A few glitches aside, the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom Edition is the dark-horse candidate of Android smartphones in 2019. It has its niggling issues, but none of those really affect the overall user-experience when on your phone. It’s this writer’s personal favorite, and ranks right up there with the spec-ed to the gills edition of Samsung Galaxy S10+. Its photography capabilities are comparable only to Huwaei’s flagship competitor P30 Pro, but it transcends the competing phone’s strengths with powerful image stabilization and an operating system that feels like such a pleasure to work with. If you’re looking to change to a newer high-end Android smartphone to swap, this should definitely figure high up there in your list of options.