OPPO’s Reno series is one of their most premium ones in the Indian market, and the Reno 5 series had quite a lot to offer, except for some thermal management issues for users who were into the core performance. But, Reno 6 Pro is now available in the market, has a lot more to offer, and it isn’t an upgrade for only the performance but for almost every aspect. The sleek design, the in-hand feel, the chipset upgrade, and the camera offering here makes the phone a complete package that one would easily get attracted to, but is the Reno 6 Pro worthy of the price it is being sold at, especially when one of the major components of the device is offered on some other good phones for a lesser price? Let’s find out in the review below.
Design and Form Factor
To begin with the design, OPPO easily makes the best designs for smartphones and there is hardly any device beating the Reno 6 Pro with the design. There are two color options, Stellar Black, and Aurora, and the Aurora that we had in for review carries on from its predecessor with that glow design that Reno series is known for. The phone not just looks good, but also feels great, with that glass back that is not glossy, not reflective, doesn’t retain fingerprints because the gradient shining back panel is super good with the feel in hand.
The camera module is a little raised on the back, but each of the camera sensors has a raised ring around itself so that when the phone is placed on a flat surface, it doesn’t scratch the camera glass. The device has a metallic side frame, and despite the combination of glass and metal on the exterior, the phone doesn’t seem heavy, and the weight distribution is good too. But while all is good, the Reno 6 Pro is not easy to use with a single hand, and also could slip off the hand easily, thanks to the device being too slim and soft. One could always use a cover on the phone to make the grip firmer, but that hides away all the good looks of the phone.
Display – Top Notch, without a notch!
A 6.5-inch AMOLED display on the front caters to all the entertainment needs, and I got to tell you, this is such a colorful and beautiful display. The maximum brightness here is 800 nits and that makes it good for viewing content even under sunlight with ease. It is a Full HD+ display, which is no surprise and the display is quite sharp, but while the 90Hz refresh rate makes it smooth, I’d surely miss the 120Hz that some of the competitor devices are offering and the difference though might not be much, it still is noticeable in the interface.
I’ve watched movies, TV shows, content on YouTube, and played a lot of games on the phone, and the AMOLED display totally does justice to it with great color output. There’s no notch on the top, though, that isn’t anything special in the current market as we see a punch-hole selfie camera on the top left of the display, but one thing that makes the Reno 6 Pro different and better from the others, is the fact that it comes with a curved display and makes it a premium and better-looking phone from every angle you look at it.
Performance
The OPPO Reno 6 Pro is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 1200 processor that clocks at 3.0 GHz at its single peak performing core, but let’s not get into the technical aspect of it. Talking about the day-to-day usage, the phone doesn’t break a sweat in any of the actions you perform – switching between apps, have many of them running in the background, record high-res videos, or anything that actually puts up pressure on the device, everything happens with ease and smoothness.
For the enthusiasts, the device scores over 590000 on AnTuTu Benchmark v9.1.1, while Geekbench 5 results come out as 802 on the single-core test and 2582 on the multi-core test. For someone who is into gaming, you wouldn’t really want to get this phone only if gaming is a priority, but if you are buying a flagship and are expecting a good gaming performance, the Reno 6 Pro surely is a super good one, thanks to the Dimensity 1200 here. The phone performs very well with the high-end games including Battlegrounds Mobile India, COD Mobile, Free Fire, and some heavier ones including Genshin Impact easily makes the phone heated up in no time, but that thankfully doesn’t lead to any throttling or reduction in the performance.
The phone offers Smooth + 60FPS output by default in BGMI, and in that setting, the performance is very good – something that you’d expect from any phone with the same processor, but since there is no much throttling that we have noticed, this could be called a better deal than the POCO F3 GT.
As said, the device isn’t going to offer performance similar to the Snapdragon 888 or the Snapdragon 870 powered device, but it still isn’t going to be a phone that should be considered one only for gaming, but that factor added as an advantage to a full-fledged device is something worth taking note of.
User Interface – ColorOS with features
While the interface always is a personal choice, having features that would be helpful is something you would want to see in any UI. The ColorOS here is feature-filled, but it comes with some unnecessary bloatware apps. Some of these apps can be removed, but some come as a System app that you cannot remove, but that shouldn’t be a deal-breaker as the features you find in the settings are a lot and they help enhance the user experience.
Under a single Personalizations section in the Settings, you would find the options to change the Themes, Wallpapers, Always-on Display, Icon styles, App layout, Fingerprint style, colors, font & display size, notification drawer, and Edge lighting. This makes it easy for the users to find all of the customizable UI options in one place, rather than going into each sub-section separately and struggling to find them. The system-wide dark mode works well and sets itself even on the home screen to make things dark while having it subtle as to not make the experience bad.
As is the case with ColorOS always, the phone has a lot of gesture and motion features, and those include screen-off gestures, 3-finger screenshots, touch and hold for the screenshot, raise to wake, and a few others and you can actually add some gestures if you want to.
One of the major changes that we are seeing in the recent UI versions is the implementation of OxygenOS features into ColorOS. The gaming mode has features that OnePlus phones had, like the screen recording options, the live monitor that shows the CPU, GPU usage while playing games, and also the FPS information. This isn’t something that you would have seen on the previous OPPO devices, so a welcome change for those who are into gaming as well.
Camera Performance
OPPO has always been known to offer camera solutions that can easily beat the other smartphones in its price range, and there is no exception here. The Reno 6 Pro has a quad-camera setup with the primary 64MP sensor that comes with the F/1.7 aperture, and there is an 8MP camera that helps in taking those landscape shots with its 120-degree field-of-view. The other two cameras include a monochrome sensor and a macro sensor for the close-up shots.
While the camera specs are good, how well is the optimization done is the question one would always raise, and the phone is very good with both, the regular light conditions and also with the low-light captures. Even with the video recording, there is a possibility to record 4K videos at 30fps but the ultra steady videos can be captured only at 1080p resolution, even with the 60fps frame rate. There’s this blurring feature for the videos where you can actually blur the background and while it works well, there are times when if there are multiple people in the frame, the blurring isn’t constant and sometimes it rather looks awkward with the focus changing to other subjects.
With the photo quality, the camera does very well with the color reproduction with both, the regular 64MP and the wide-angle camera. In low light conditions, while it does well, the only requirement is for the user to hold on and not shake the phone when the capture is happening, for a few seconds. It does take a few seconds for the photo to be processed, and given how good the chipset is, the camera app should’ve done the processing quicker, and this caveat is only with the low-light conditions.
On the front, the Reno 6 Pro has a 32MP shooter for selfies, and you’d want to turn off the auto beautification that is turned on by default. With the natural captures, you would see the camera doing a fairly good job.
Battery Life and Charging
The Reno 6 Pro comes with a 4500 mAh battery, which, given the current market circumstances, is not a big number but the flagships that take care of almost everything including the form factor have to come with that compromise, but given how the chipset is well optimized with the battery, the phone can easily last for a day for regular users.
While the battery life is appreciable, the device also has a 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 charger in the box, and it takes not more than 45 minutes to charge the device fully from zero.
Final Verdict
The OPPO Reno 6 Pro is a complete package, made with a set of good cameras, a very-well performing chipset that also takes care of the battery life, and a fast-charging solution that makes you worry-free about leaving the phone for hours with the charger.
Some of the phones that can very well compete with the phone here include the OnePlus Nord 2, Realme GT Master Edition, and even the OnePlus 9R if we push the budget to match the Reno 6 Pro. In the same price range, the Reno 6 Pro offers a much better design, a good feature-filled interface, and even a great camera performance, but save some money and you could still not be disappointed with the OnePlus Nord 2 if you are looking at a good all-rounder device with no preference of a brand. If the budget can be extended and you have a budget of Rs. 40000, you could also take a look at something like the Mi 11x Pro that can easily compete (and beat the device in a few ways), but there’s no beating the premiumness in terms of design and display of the Reno 6 Pro.
