The Oppo Reno 4 5G is a great-looking phone with a big, bright, zingy screen and a fast-charging battery. The camera is not the best out there but is still good for everyday shots and does not have an optical zoom. What’s more, the screen’s a traditional 60Hz panel, so there’s no silky smooth scrolling as found on the more affordable OnePlus Nord. Despite those points though, with a smooth interface and plenty of battery, RAM, and storage, the Oppo Reno 4 5G impresses overall with its unbeatable performance.
Despite the Oppo Reno 4 5G’s punchy £499 / AU$799 (approximately $665) price tag, since launching its price has dipped as low as £349 in the UK (approximately $465) and AU$699 in Australia. With that in mind, what might have once been a pricey mid-ranger has in a short space of time turned into a fine-looking option for anyone in need of an across-the-board good Android upgrade.
The Reno stands out in terms of its slim design and lightweight body but still boasts a roomy screen. With a 6.4″ screen and an AMOLED panel, the device has an instant feeling of luxury in its sleek, graphite body. It also has a 60Hz refresh rate though, which makes it noticeably less smooth than some of its rivals
Powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G and tons of RAM, this new upcoming device is still TBD and will be able to keep up with Apple’s pricey iPhones on all matters. Google just announced their new smartphone with three cameras on the back & two on the front. It’s almost double what they normally have and it takes pictures beautifully!
As for the imaging experience, it is powered out by a tried-and-tested Sony 48MP sensor that’s around the back, coupled with an 8MP ultra-wide one. Oppo could’ve created a smartphone with more sensors, but it falls short.
Photo quality is great provided you don’t need to zoom, though can be a touch blunt when shooting in darker scenes. Meanwhile, video is captured at up to 4K resolution.
With 5G data speeds and NFC, connectivity is where it needs to be for a phone of the Reno 4 5G’s price, and thanks to a well-managed 4,000mAh battery and an efficient chipset, getting a full day out of the phone shouldn’t be an issue. Even if you do fall slightly short, with lightning-fast 65W charging, it won’t take long to top it up.
While Oppo’s design may not wow you at £499, and its specs might not be the best across the board, the Reno 4 5G is still a reliable smartphone that performs like a dream day today. It also lasts a while on battery life and will keep you going until you find your perfect smartphone.
The Oppo Reno 4 5G is a smartphone that is a part of the Reno series. It has been released in 2018 and comes with a Snapdragon 855 processor, 12GB RAM, and 256GB internal storage.
The phone features a 6.3-inch AMOLED display with 1080 x 2340 pixels resolution and a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. It also has an in-display fingerprint sensor, under-display selfie camera, triple rear camera setup, and 24MP front-facing camera. The phone also has dual SIM card slots and supports Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, Wi-Fi 802.11ac (2×2 MIMO), 3D Face Unlock, and USB Type C port for data transfer/charging purposes
Design
- Smartphone by numbers design
- Glass front, plastic back, plastic frame
- Case included in the box
The Reno 4’s design is a very familiar story in 2019 with a 2020 twist: a flat Gorilla Glass 3 front combined with a flat plastic back, united by the solid, curvy plastic frame. The modern shift comes in the form of the dual-lens selfie camera cut-out.
Despite all that plastic, the back is amongst the most glass-a-like plastic we’ve seen, with our black version sporting an oil-slick-Esque shimmer in certain lighting. Meanwhile, the curvy frame is a solid offering feeling robust and secure in the hand.
If you’re looking for a new phone that isn’t too heavy or thin, the Reno 4 Pro should fit the bill. Its 6.4-inch screen is slightly bigger than an iPhone 12 Pro but smaller than an iPhone 12 Pro Max.
At the base is a USB-C port and a mono speaker, to the right, there’s a power button, while the volume buttons are on the left. The modest camera bump around the back is a good looker as far as camera bumps go, with its stepped design, and the front is almost all screen.
The Oppo Reno 4 5G ships with a case, which is handy for fending off fingerprints – something this phone’s shiny plastic back loves clinging onto. Given the fact, that there’s also a pre-fitted screen protector on the front, despite a lack of IP68 water resistance, at least the phone’s relatively well protected from all sides out of the box.
Display
- 6.4-inch, 1080 x 2400
- Punchy AMOLED display tech
- Under-display fingerprint scanner
The Reno 4 5G has a sleek design with an AMOLED screen for a crisp, clear immersive visual experience. It features an under-screen fingerprint scanner to make it hacker-proof, and the quality is better than ever!
Oppo is great when it comes to loading up its phones with screen options. Eye-saving blue light filters, color temperature controls, screen color mode customizations (with options including Vivid or Gentle) – all these options and more lie in the display settings.
Fundamentally, rich settings wouldn’t amount to much without a quality display, so it’s lucky that’s exactly what the Oppo Reno 4 5G delivers. While there’s a humble 60Hz refresh rate, instantly putting the phone behind more affordable LCD alternatives including the Reno 4Z, the pure quality of the picture makes up for it.
Inky blacks, zingy colors, and max brightness that are easy to see make for an enjoyable movie experience.
Despite a few drawbacks, the Reno 4 has some pros for being such an affordable phone. Most notably, it has a high contrast ratio of 800,000:1 that competes with other top-enders like the Find X2 Pro at just USD 429.00 or less.
The screen showcases broad viewing angles, there’s a welcome, responsive under-display fingerprint scanner that combines with a snappy touchscreen in general, and everything from movies to games looks impressive on it.
Camera
- 48MP primary camera + 8MP ultra-wide
- 32MP selfie camera with a 2MP depth sensor
- Good but not best-in-class
The Reno 4 5G has a wide-angle and ultra-wide lens setup on the front. This Sony sensor, the IMX586, is pretty standard in terms of quality. It’s been powering smartphone camera sensors for a while now.
The detail captured on the Reno 4 5G’s main camera impresses. Oppo’s image processing isn’t abrasively zingy and over-processed, and if you feed the camera good lighting the results can be stunning. Even indoor lighting isn’t too tall an order for the Reno 4, even though the camera lacks optical image stabilization.
A few days ago, Google threw a surprise curveball with their latest device. The Pixel 4a 5G has a superior night mode. So the competition will have to catch up in the next few years before this trend changes completely
It’s a shame the Reno 4 5G doesn’t sport an optical zoom camera, like pinching and zooming into a scene or cropping a photo leaves less room for maneuver than some of the competition. Phones like the Realme X3 SuperZoom, which boasts a 5x optical zoom on its camera, may not include 5G on its spec sheet but it’s still very versatile.
As for the ultra-wide 8MP f/2.2 camera, while it’s a welcome addition to the mix, its lower detail, and poor low-light performance means it’s one for well-lit landscapes and group shots primarily.
It’s no surprise that the portrait mode on this camera is pretty good. It has a total of three sensors, which means that it should produce balanced shots, with subjects in focus and a clear foreground and background separation. For more challenging bokeh such as glass or transparent objects, it falls behind Apple’s finest and – naturally – larger format cameras with organic depth.
The Oppo Reno 4 5G captures videos of different resolutions, up to 4K resolution or 1080p resolution at 60fps. It’s more common for other smartphones to have less than these fantastic settings. However, low light video isn’t as crisp on this phone and doesn’t look very good.
Just before you start your next outdoor filming day, you should be aware of the ultra-wide lens and hold it in the indoor scenes. Avoiding it may make the footage quite shaky.
Specs and performance
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G
- 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage
- Running Android 10
The Snapdragon 765G Chipset is powering a few pricey but innovative new phones like the Motorola Razr 2020 and the Google Pixel 5. However, it’s not the most powerful chipset around, but it has proven to be at least good enough to keep your day-to-day experience.
Despite its mediocre Geekbench benchmark scores (605 single-core, 1,762 multi-core), the Reno 4 5G is still a casual phone that packs a lot of punch. You’ll have no problems playing casual games on this fantastic device without any glitches whatsoever.
App support is pretty impressive with the Android 10 OS and customizable UI of Oppo Color OS. This smartphone also has a snappy design and an optimized day-to-day experience.
“Reno” by Oppo is a mid-range phone with 128GB of internal storage that doesn’t have a microSD card slot. It’s perfect for anyone who normally uses their phone for multimedia & gaming, but if you need to store lots of files, this might not be the best option.