Oppo Reno4 Pro 5G review

Introduction

Headlining the Reno4 family, the Oppo Reno4 Pro 5G comes with a capable Snapdragon 765G chipset, a 90Hz AMOLED display, and a tri-set of cameras on its back. We reviewed the 4G-only version a while ago, and it’s now time for the 5G variant.

Reno4 Pro 5G (left) next to Reno4 Pro

It’s not just the next-gen connectivity that sets them apart, mind you. As part of the upgraded chipset, you’d also be getting a boost in performance over the Reno4 Pro, particularly in the graphics department. In a way, it’s a flagship-grade chip – if the Pixel 5 can pass for a flagship.

Additionally, the 5G version’s camera system is a marked upgrade over the plain Reno4 Pro’s setup, even though it’s one unit short and it’s using the same primary shooter. Here, you’re getting a 2x telephoto, which is missing on the other phone, and a nicer 13MP ultra-wide replaces the 8MP unit and doubles as a macro cam thanks to its autofocusing capability.

A few other differences can be spotted elsewhere, and it’s mostly a matter of things that are missing – there’s no microSD slot or headphone jack on this model, and an FM radio is nowhere to be found either. On a positive note, the 5G version comes with stereo speakers, and that’s twice as many as on the 4G variant.

Oppo Reno4 Pro 5G specs

• Body: 159.6×72.5×7.6mm, 172g; Glass front (Gorilla Glass 5), glass back (Gorilla Glass 5), aluminum frame; Colors: Galactic Blue, Space Black, White, Pink, Green.
• Display: 6.55″ AMOLED, 1080x2400px resolution, 20:9 aspect ratio, 402ppi; 90Hz refresh rate.
• Chipset: Qualcomm SDM765 Snapdragon 765G (7 nm): Octa-core (1×2.4 GHz Kryo 475 Prime & 1×2.2 GHz Kryo 475 Gold & 6×1.8 GHz Kryo 475 Silver); Adreno 620.
• Memory: 128GB 8GB RAM, 256GB 12GB RAM; UFS 2.1.
• OS/Software: Android 10, ColorOS 7.2.
• Rear camera: Wide (main): 48 MP, f/1.7, 26mm, 1/2.0″, 0.8µm, PDAF, Laser AF, OIS; Telephoto: 13 MP, f/2.4, 52mm, 1/3.4″, 1.0µm, PDAF, 2x optical zoom; Ultra wide angle: 12 MP, f/2.2, 120˚, 1/2.43″, 1.4µm, AF; LED flash, HDR, panorama.
• Front camera: 32 MP, f/2.4, 26mm (wide), 1/2.8″, 0.8µm; HDR.
• Video capture: Rear camera: 4K@30fps, 1080p@30/60/120fps; gyro-EIS, OIS, HDR; Front camera: 1080p@30fps, gyro-EIS.
• Battery: 4000mAh; Fast charging 65W, 60% in 15 min, 100% in 36 min (advertised), SuperVOOC 2.0.
• Misc: Fingerprint (under display, optical), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass; NFC.

Oppo Reno4 Pro 5G unboxing

The Reno4 Pro 5G arrives in much the same package that we got the non-5G version. A teal sleeve with a dreamy soft Reno device holds the white cardboard box.

A full set of accessories can be found inside. The 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 charger is the most essential bit, and there’s a cable to go with it – as usual with proprietary charging systems, you better hold on to both the adapter and the cable if you want the 30-something minute charging capability.

A set of earphones is included too, and they look pretty neat – the Oppo-green meshes against the white of the buds serve as a nice accent. A clear silicone protective case for the handset completes the bundle.

Design

The Reno4 Pro 5G falls in a particular upmarket niche of the midrange, and it’s got the look and feel to show for it. A dual-glass sandwich held together by an aluminum midframe is the go-to design for a premium handset, and the Reno takes that approach, too.

Best as we can tell, the Reno4 Pro 5G uses Gorilla Glass 5 front and back – that’s according to Corning for the physically identical Chinese variant of the phone. The back isn’t glossy – instead, it has a fine frosted finish with a gentle sheen to it.

Our review unit is in the Galactic Blue colorway, and that’s a two-tone double gradient between different shades of blue. Global markets also get Green Glitter with a similar finish to our blue one, and a glossy Space Black with a pattern of Os and Ps scattered about (you know, for OPPO). China, meanwhile, also gets a pink gradient and a white-only variant.

We can speak of the blue one we have here, and that experience likely extends to the green one, but it’s really slippery. Glossy panels tend to provide some grip against fingertips; this one doesn’t. On a positive note, it doesn’t pick up fingerprints nearly as much as a glossy back would, and that’s no small advantage.

The camera cluster has three modules stacked vertically, each with its own oversized glass element surrounded by a metal ring. The cameras stick out a bit from an already slightly protruding camera bump that also houses the flash and the laser focusing bits. The assembly is offset to the side and raised enough to make the phone prone to wobbling on a flat surface if you tap on it.

On the front, you’re greeted by the 6.55″ AMOLED display with curved side edges and relatively thin bezels. The curved edges are a signature premium touch, and on the Reno4 Pro 5G, they’re very gentle, making for a negligible color shift and posing no issues for usability.

The selfie camera is in a punch-hole cutout in the top left corner. The curves get somewhat in the way of placing the module at the very corner, so it’s been nudged a bit inwards wasting some screen area, though we reckon that hardly bothers anyone at this point.

The earpiece is behind a grille etched equal parts into the frame and the display glass. It also doubles as a loudspeaker in a stereo pair.

The physical controls on the Reno are in a classic setup that you rarely see anymore – the power button is on the right, the volume buttons (two separate ones as opposed to a rocker) are on the left.

 
Power button on the right • Volume controls on the left

The flat bottom is home to a USB-C port, the main loudspeaker, primary mic, and SIM card tray. It’s a SIM-only tray, sadly – no microSD slot on this one.

Up on the top, there’s another mic for the noise-cancelling in phone calls and stereo audio recording in video capture.

 
The Reno takes two nano SIMs back to back • Secondary mic up top

The Reno4 Pro 5G measures 159.6×72.5×7.6mm and weighs 172g. It feels very nicely slim in hand with the already minimal 7.6mm melting away towards the curved sides front and back. It’s also almost surprisingly lightweight – 172g is not a lot in today’s smartphone space, and the Reno is, indeed, less of a burden on your pocket than most.

Excellent 6.55-inch AMOLED display

The Reno4 Pro 5G is equipped with a 6.55-inch AMOLED display with a 1080x2400px resolution in a 20:9 ratio. For whatever reason, Oppo lists the diagonal at 0.05 inches more than the non-5G Reno4 Pro, but it may very well be the same panel. It supports a 90Hz refresh rate, while the touch sampling goes all the way up to 180Hz.

Much like the 4G version, the Reno4 Pro 5G claims a max brightness of 500nits in regular use, up to 800nits in bright ambient light, and a peak of 1100nits. That last number is for HDR applications, while the other two are for full-screen illumination. OLED displays can go brighter when they don’t have to power up the entire screen area. We always test at 75% average picture level, so this explains the difference between advertised numbers and the numbers we get.

We measured similar brightness on the Reno4 Pro 5G as we did on the 4G, as well as on the Reno3 Pro 5G. That’s both with manual slider adjustment and in auto-brightness under direct light – 515nits and 845nits, respectively. Both are great results and in line with what you can get on top-tier handsets (save for the Note20 Ultra that can push beyond 1000nits in our testing setup).

The Reno4 Pro has two color presets – Vivid (the default one) and Gentle. There’s an additional Cool-to-Warm slider offering stepless adjustments in either mode. In our testing, Vivid mode returned an average dE2000 of 3.9 for the standard set of DCI-P3 test swatches with excellent sub-2 results on the primaries, but way off in terms of white and grayscale rendition – purplish whites some 10 units off the mark. Move the slider all the way to the Warm right, and you’d get an average dE2000 of 2.9 and somewhat better whites and grays (dE2000 ~7, now pinkish).

Gentle mode is where you’d go for sRGB-tuned colors, though things aren’t too peachy to start with. Again, we measured excellent results on the RGB CMY, but a poor white point rendition (dE2000 ~10, blue) and an average dE2000 of 3.8. Again, we got a better overall rendition with the temperature slider at the Warmest setting (2.9 average, white around 6). Overall, reasonably accurate colors from the Reno4 Pro 5G, nearly the same as on the 4G, but a noticeable blue/purple shift in the default state and no real option to fix that.

Much like on the Reno4 Pro non-5G, the HDR capability of this one isn’t a straightforward topic. Oppo doesn’t mention HDR in the promo materials, but the phone clearly supports some sort of HDR.

YouTube serves the Reno HDR versions of compatible videos, and you can clearly see the phone shift its colors and brightness. Amazon Prime, too, shows HDR icons next to supported titles. On the other hand, Netflix doesn’t want to play nicely, and while it does deliver 1080p resolution, it refuses to do so in HDR. This could be a temporary state, and a fix could technically be in the making. However, if our experience with the 4G version of the phone is any indication, such a development seems unlikely.

High refresh rate handling is also done in a way we’re familiar with from the 4G model. With the phone set to 90Hz, you’ll get 90Hz across the UI and in browsers too. However, it will switch to 60Hz for anything related to video playback – the native player and Netflix once you play something, YouTube (as soon as you open the app). That’s the same behavior you’ll get if you opt for the ‘Auto Select’ option in the display refresh rate settings menu.

The 60Hz option locks the display at 60Hz, simple as that.

Oppo Reno4 Pro 5G battery life

The Oppo Reno4 Pro 5G packs a 4,000mAh battery, which is relatively standard for the class. It’s the same capacity as what the non-5G version gets and a nominal downgrade from the odd 4,025mAh of the Reno3 Pro 5G.

Despite all the similarities in hardware between the 3 and 4 generations of Reno Pro 5Gs, the battery results turned out different in our testing. The Reno4 Pro 5G posted an 18:31h result in video playback, up from 16:11h on the older phone. In web browsing, however, we clocked a lower result – 11:16h on the 4 vs. 14:13 on the 3.

A little clarification is due here – the video playback test was carried out at 60Hz only since the phone will switch to that refresh rate when it detects a video is playing, regardless of what mode the display is set to. As for web browsing, the 11:16h result is measured with the screen at 90Hz (going for 60Hz got us precisely one extra hour to 12:16h).

The Reno4 Pro 5G is good for a full day of constant voice calls if you’re up for it.

The individual results add up to an Endurance rating of 91h – a small downgrade from the Reno3 Pro 5G’s nice and round 100h.

Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSer App. The endurance rating above denotes how long a single battery charge will last you if you use the Oppo Reno4 Pro 5G for an hour each of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. We’ve established this usage pattern so that our battery results are comparable across devices in the most common day-to-day tasks. The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you’re interested in the nitty-gritty. You can check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we’ve tested will compare under your own typical use.

Battery charging

The Reno4 Pro 5G comes with a 65-watt SuperVOOC 2.0 charging adapter inside the box. The system provides spectacular charging speeds.

In our testing, the Reno4 Pro 5G battery took 32 minutes to go from flat to full. The battery indicator showed 97% at the 30-minute mark (our standard testing duration). SuperVOOC is a true chart-topper when it comes to charging speeds.

30min charging test (from 0%)

• SORT BY LABEL
• SORT BY VALUE

• Oppo Reno4 Pro98%
• Oppo Reno4 Pro 5G97%
• OnePlus 869%
• Oppo Reno3 Pro67%
• Samsung Galaxy S20+62%
• OnePlus Nord60%
• vivo X50 Pro+60%
• Galaxy S20 FE (25W)57%
• Google Pixel 541%
• Motorola Edge37%
• Galaxy S20 FE (15W bundled)37%
• LG Velvet36%

Time to full charge (from 0%)

• SORT BY LABEL
• SORT BY VALUE

• Oppo Reno4 Pro0:31h
• Oppo Reno4 Pro 5G0:32h
• OnePlus 80:53h
• Samsung Galaxy S20+0:57h
• OnePlus Nord1:05h
• Galaxy S20 FE (25W)1:10h
• vivo X50 Pro+1:11h
• Oppo Reno3 Pro1:12h
• Galaxy S20 FE (15W bundled)1:35h
• LG Velvet1:52h
• Google Pixel 51:54h
• Motorola Edge2:32h

Speaker test

The Reno4 Pro 5G comes with a stereo speaker configuration – that’s the Reno3 Pro 5G’s setup, as opposed to the mono-only non-5G Reno4 Pro. It ranks in the ‘Very good’ category for loudness in our 7-track music test – same as the previous generation, notably better than the 4G model of the current one.

We found it somewhat lacking in the lower frequency region, but that aside, it’s a very well sounding phone for video watching and music playback alike.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal “0db” flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.

Audio output quality

We’ve recently discontinued our audio output quality test.

The reason for that is that most phones that arrived for testing were already excellent in this regard. Whatever difference there was, it was marginal and probably indistinguishable by anything but our lab equipment.

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