Over the last few years, the OPPO Reno smartphone series has been a great example of excellent mid-range devices with impressive camera capabilities. The latest to join the family for Indian customers is the Reno6 series, which consists of two devices – the Reno6 and the Reno6 Pro.
At Rs. 39990, the Reno6 Pro does demand a premium price for a mid-range device, and for that it promises to be a smartphone with a great design, reasonable specs and impressive camera capabilities. Does OPPO deliver on these promises, though? Read on to find out in my review of the Reno6 Pro.
OPPO Reno6 Pro Box contents:
- OPPO Reno6 Pro 5G smartphone (12GB+ 256GB variant) in Aurora Blue colour.
- 2-pin 65W charger (10v-6.5A)
- USB Type-A to USB Type-C cable
- USB Type-C earphones
- SIM ejector tool
- Protective clear case
- Quick guide and Safety guide
Design, hardware and display
Over the years, OPPO has refined the design of the Reno series smartphones and the Reno6 series has some of the best designs in my opinion. For the Reno6 Pro, OPPO has adopted a curved screen display which looks beautiful in the hand and is very reminiscent of the Samsung Galaxy S9, which was another beautifully designed smartphone. The curved design language is followed for the back panel too, making the phone very comfortable to hold in the hand. The phone is sleek, measuring in at 7.6mm, and it weighs 177gms.
Enhancing the premium feeling is the choice of materials for the smartphone, with metal railings on the sides and glass for the back. The back panel in particular has a really nice finish that OPPO calls “Reno Glow design”. It feels phenomenal to the touch, with a smooth, shimmery feel, and it is incredibly resistant to fingerprints. The Aurora Blue constantly shifts colours under different lighting, making the Reno6 Pro a very unique phone to look at.
The rear camera housing holds the 4 sensors along with the flash, and it only adds a small amount of thickness to the device.
The front camera is housed within a punch-hole in the top-left corner of the display, and it is small and unobtrusive.
The power button can be found on the right edge, the volume rocker on the left edge and on the bottom edge, there is a speaker grill, USB Type-C port and SIM card tray. The top edge is mostly bare with a single microphone port, and the SIM card tray does not feature a dedicated MicroSD slot.
It has the typical set of sensors including a geomagnetic sensor, color temperature sensor, proximity sensor, optical sensor, accelerometer and a gyroscope. Another thing of note is that the vibration motor on the OPPO Reno6 Pro is strong and feels tight when activated, thanks to its X-axis Linear motor.
The display on the Reno6 Pro is a 6.55-inch OLED 3D curved panel with a FHD+ resolution of 2400 × 1080 pixels, a maximum refresh rate of 90Hz and a touch sampling rate of up to 180Hz. Bezels are thin on all edges, giving the phone a screen-to-body ratio of 92.1%. The display is rated to have a contrast ratio of 5000000:1, and it covers 100% of the DCI-P3 colour space.
So how does the display fare? Simply put, the display is a great panel. It is plenty sharp for its size and smooth, thanks to its higher refresh rate. Colours look vibrant and having 800-nit peak brightness is great for HDR content. Sunlight readability was not an issue either, thanks to its 500-nits typical brightness. If I had to pick on a problem, it would be the contrast levels, which were a bit too high for my taste. I prefer having a more natural reproduction for my content, but for most users, it will be an enjoyable and delightful experience. Of course, ColorOS 11.3 offers display customization options, where the user can choose more muted colours if they wish to do so.
The phone does feature support for an Always-on-display, with tons of customizations offered. Users can choose between turning on the display all day, or during a scheduled time period, or in power saving mode which will turn off the display if the phone has been stationary for too long. Other customization options include the ability to set the type of clock, text, images and custom patterns.
Camera
For the rear camera, the OPPO Reno6 Pro has quite a comprehensive setup. It has a 64MP main camera with f/1.7 aperture, an 8MP ultra wide-angle camera with f/2.2 aperture and a fov of 120°, a 2MP macro camera with an f/2.4 aperture and 2MP mono camera with an f/2.4 aperture. The front camera is a 32MP sensor with an f/2.4 aperture.
The camera UI is quite simple to use, with easy access to toggles for HDR, flash, AI and filters, along with quick shortcuts to settings such as aspect ratio, timer, 64MP mode and more. Access to other camera modes, including portrait mode, video, macro, night mode and pro mode are a simple swipe away.
OPPO made a big deal with the Reno6 Pro’s computational photography capabilities and in my opinion, they have done a pretty good job. Starting with the 64MP main shooter, the photos it produced were quite pleasing, with a healthy amount of contrast, nice colours and good amount of detail in most conditions. The white balance impressively was almost always on point, thanks to the dedicated sensors in the rear camera module, and with HDR turned on, the dynamic range was great. It is quite clear that OPPO adds a bit of drama into the photo when post-processing, but it does not feel overdone, and I like it.
The real highlight feature of the Reno6 Pro is its AI capabilities when it comes to portrait videos and photos. When it works well, the phone does an excellent job of separating the subject and applying a bokeh effect that isn’t too unnatural. The interesting bit is the ability to apply this effect in video too, and the results are quite impressive. OPPO calls this as their ‘Bokeh Flare Portrait Video’ and it is easily one of the best features of the camera.
The ultrawide sensor does offer extra shooting angles, however the quality of the photo does suffer when compared to the main shooter. It is nice to have the option though. The Macro camera on the other hand is a complete hit or miss when it comes to the quality. Sometimes it can click some really interesting photos, as you can see in the camera samples, but other times it is just plain bad, with focusing issues and low quality.
The video shooting capabilities in general are slightly weak on the Reno6 Pro. It does not feature OIS, so the videos can get a little shaky in the hand, and turning on EIS introduces a weird jelly effect which I disliked, so I turned it off. The video quality itself was only acceptable, with a decent amount of dynamic range, but sharpness felt a bit lacking and overall I wish it was better.
The phone supports up to 4K 30fps or 1080p 60fps, and does not support 4K 60fps. Another thing to note is that to turn on AI enhancement, the phone will be limited to 1080p at 30fps, which is slightly disappointing. The front camera on the other hand is also limited to 1080p 30fps.
Software and UI
The Reno6 Pro runs Android 11 out of the box with ColorOS 11.3 on top and with the June, 2021 Android security patch. When OPPO first released ColorOS 11, the software was overhauled with tons of new features, customizations options, improved animations and overall performance improvements. To read about these upgrades, check out our article on ColorOS 11.
With ColorOS 11.3, OPPO has introduced features such as Freeform Screenshot, Private System, O-Relax app, Quick Start up and Game Focus Mode. The phone also supports OPPO’s RAM expansion technology, which uses a portion of the ROM as RAM. When turned on, users can choose to expand the RAM by either 3GB, 5GB or 7GB, and during my review, I never faced slow downs from my RAM getting filled up.
There are no ads shown in ColorOS 11, however there were a lot of pre-installed apps once the phone was set up, including DailyHunt, Snapchat, Moj, SoLoop, etc. Most of these, except OPPO’s first party apps, can be uninstalled. Besides this, there were a few occasional bugs but mostly, there aren’t any major pain points in ColorOS.
Fingerprint Sensor and Biometrics
For biometrics, the Reno6 Pro has an under-display fingerprint sensor, and it supports face unlock too. The fingerprint sensor’s position is a little lower than I prefer, but it was easy to get used to and the unlocking speed, while not the fastest I’ve experienced, is good enough.
The phone also supports face unlock via its front-facing camera, however since it only uses an RGB sensor, I didn’t feel very secure when using it.
Music Player and Multimedia
There is a default Music app pre-installed with ColorOS 11.3, with the typical set of features, however it does not come with an FM Radio app. The phone does only come with a bottom firing mono-speaker, and it can get reasonably loud with little distortion at the highest volume. It is slightly disappointing to not see stereo speakers at this price range, though.
The phone also supports Dolby Atmos, which is starting to become quite common in smartphones these days, and it is great to see it on the Reno6 Pro. Within the Dolby Atmos setting, there are options for selecting certain profiles with respect to the environment or the type of media being consumed.
It does feature Widewive L1 support, Netflix HD certification and Amazon Prime Video HD certification, which enables HD playback in popular streaming apps. However, it only features HDR certification for Amazon Prime Video and not for Netflix.
Dual SIM and connectivity
The phone does come with dual nano SIM card slots, of which the first slot has 5G SA/NSA capabilities, while the second slot supports up to 4G LTE. It also supports VoLTE, and during my review, I faced no issues with calls. It does support carrier aggregation too, which is indicated by the little ‘+’ symbol when next to the 4G mark.
It has support for Wi-Fi 6 with 2 × 2 MIMO and MU-MIMO capabilities, along with Bluetooth 5.2. The SAR value for the Reno6 Pro was reported as – Head SAR: 1.17W/Kg, Body SAR: 1.03W/Kg. This is a little higher than usual, but definitely well below the limit specified in India.
Performance and Benchmarks
Powering the Reno6 Pro is the MediaTek Dimensity 1200 SoC, which has proven to be a great choice for mid-range smartphones. The octa-core chip can clock up to a maximum of 3.0GHz on its fastest Cortex A78 core. For the GPU, it comes with a Mali-G77 MC9 and complimenting the SoC are the 12GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB of storage.
During my review, the Reno6 Pro was a great phone to use, with no animation drops or stutters. ColorOS 11.3 appears to be well optimized for the Dimensity 1200, performing smoothly throughout my usage, and this was further helped with by the display’s 90Hz refresh rate.
The phone is also very capable when it comes to gaming, performing well during graphics intensive games such as COD, Dead Trigger and Asphalt 9. The faster refresh rate is especially great in games that support 90Hz such as Dead Trigger 2, Real Racing 3 and more. During extended sessions, it definitely gets warm to touch, however it was never uncomfortable. When it comes to the benchmarks, the OPPO Reno6 Pro scores a bit below other similarly priced smartphones, which may look bad, but honestly the phone is plenty powerful for most users for daily use.
Check out some benchmarks below:
Battery life
This is another major area of strength for the Reno6 Pro. It comes with 2 × 2250mAh series connected cells for a total capacity of 4500mAh, and the reason for having two cells is to enable its superfast 65W charging speeds. OPPO has made some real optimizations with ColorOS 11.3, as I was comfortably getting nearly 8 hours of screen-on-time with medium to heavy usage, easily lasting a full day. With light to medium usage, I was able to cross well into two days of usage, which is great considering that the phone was set to 90Hz refresh rate and the Always-on-display was turned on.
The cherry on top for the Reno 6 Pro is the 65W included charger, which can take the phone from nearly dead to 100% in about 35 mins. This is an amazing feature when you need to top up your smartphone quickly and get multiple hours of usage from a short period of charging.
Conclusion
The OPPO Reno6 Pro is a prime example of what true mid-range devices can offer, with its brilliant design, amazing display, best-in-class camera, and stellar battery life. The phone is plenty powerful for most tasks, with smooth performance during most everyday tasks, and the camera offers many interesting features. Battery life is excellent and the 0-100% in 35 minutes charging speeds are insanely useful. The only drawbacks that I could pick on are the weak performance when shooting videos and poor output from the macro sensor.
At Rs. 39990, the Reno6 Pro is dangerously close to some of the flagship smartphones from OnePlus and Vivo. It has many positives and a few negatives, but so does the OnePlus 9R, which is similar in price, has a better processor and display.
If you like having the many customization features of ColorOS and if the camera experience is super important to you, such as the Bokeh Flare Portrait video feature, then I can recommend the OPPO Reno6 Pro.
The phone is available from Flipkart, OPPO India online store and offline stores for Rs. 39,990.
Pros
- Beautiful design
- Very good display with a 90Hz refresh rate
- Excellent battery life and fast charging
- Impressive camera with AI capabilities like Bokeh Flare Portrait video
Cons
- Sub-par video performance overall and useless macro camera
- No stereo speakers
- Occasional bugs in ColorOS