OPPO Reno10 review: Surprising mid-ranger with a telephoto camera

The OPPO Reno10 is an Android smartphone with a mid-range chipset and a good price, promising an elegant design, a beautiful display, fast charging, and an excellent camera setup that also includes a telephoto lens. I received it in testing a week ago, and after using it daily as my primary phone, I’m now ready to tell you all about it. If you’re curious to know more about OPPO Reno10, read this review to find out why this might be the Android smartphone for you:

OPPO Reno10: Who is it good for?

The OPPO Reno10 is an excellent choice if you:

• Want an Android smartphone that’s good for photography, especially portraits
• Are looking for a phone that has good fast charging
• Need a reasonably priced mid-range Android with good performance

Pros and cons

These are the things I like most about the OPPO Reno10 smartphone:

• Elegant design
• Good photography and video quality, plus a 2x telephoto camera
• 67W fast charging and good battery life
• Bright screen with a fast 120 Hz refresh rate
• Good performance in daily tasks and casual gaming
• Plenty of storage space, plus support for a microSD card
• Reasonable price

There are a few things that can be improved:

• The ultrawide camera is underwhelming
• Couldn’t find any mention of ingress protection against dust or water
• A lot of bloatware

Verdict

The OPPO Reno10 is an interesting Android smartphone. It has a sleek and stylish design, and it caught my eye in many aspects. The most impressive feature is its 2x telephoto camera, which does an excellent job in all situations, and especially when it comes to shooting portraits. Except for the ultrawide camera, the other cameras also deliver good quality both for photos and videos. Other notable features are the phone’s beautiful screen, the support for fast charging, and its large battery. And although its chipset is not a high-end one, it performs well in daily tasks. I think the OPPO Reno10 is an excellent mid-range Android smartphone that I gladly recommend to all our readers.

Unboxing the OPPO Reno10

The OPPO Reno10 is packaged in an average-sized box with a minimalist design. Made of cardboard painted in white and gray, the box seems sturdy enough to withstand the vicissitudes of courier transport. On the top cover, you can see the name of the smartphone, while on the bottom and one of its sides, you should find some stickers with more details about it. The box of the OPPO Reno10 5G Inside the box, you’ll find the smartphone together with a fast charger, a detachable USB Type-A to Type-C cable, a SIM card tray eject tool, the user manual, warranty details, and some safety information. The bundle doesn’t include a case, but the phone comes with a pre-applied screen protector. What's inside the box The OPPO Reno10 comes in a sleek and sturdy package. Unboxing it is a satisfying experience, and I appreciate the fact that OPPO also offers a fast charger with this phone.

Design and build quality

The OPPO Reno10 is a device that looks good and manages to stand out in the Android mid-range market of 2023. While I haven’t had the chance to test an OPPO smartphone for a long time, the Reno10 5G pleasantly surprised me with its design. The device has an appealing appearance with a nice and smooth back that feels simple, but only until you look at the camera setup. The rear cameras are placed inside a relatively large elliptical ring, with the main camera occupying the upper part and the telephoto and ultrawide sitting below the dividing flash.

The OPPO Reno10 5G looks good The Reno10 5G smartphone is available in two color variations: a Silvery Grey version that feels elegant and stylish, and an Ice Blue model that will certainly attract younger audiences. There are two color versions available The 6.7” screen dominates the front of the smartphone, with minimal bezels on every side. Although not too obvious in my photos, the phone’s display is covered by 3D glass (Asahi Glass AGC DT-Star2) that curves towards the edges. Also, a tiny notch at the top-center of the screen houses the front-facing camera. The screen of the OPPO Reno10 5G The body of the OPPO Reno10 is built upon a plastic frame with a glossy finish. While it looks nice, the edges are prone to gathering fingerprints quickly. The left side of the phone is plain, as the buttons, speakers, charging port, and so on are located on its other sides. The left side is void of buttons The right side of the phone has the volume rocker and power button. They are thin and smooth, but they stick out a bit, so you can feel and press each button without looking at the phone. Moreover, besides being much shorter than the volume rocker, the power button also has a thin green line cut in its middle which makes it even easier to identify it correctly. The right edge holds the power and volume buttons On the upper side of the OPPO Reno10, there are a couple of tiny holes used for the secondary microphone and the earpiece speaker. In addition to those, you’ll also find a small infrared emitter. The top margin includes an IR sensor The bottom edge of the smartphone holds the SIM tray, the primary microphone, the USB-C port, and the main loudspeaker. The bottom edge is home to the USB-C port and SIM tray Unfortunately, a drawback of the OPPO Reno10 is that it lacks any official rating for resistance to water or dust. The design of the OPPO Reno10 is not what I’d call innovative, but nonetheless, it manages to stand out from the crowd. It looks beautiful on both front and back, and what differentiates it from others is the camera setup on its rear, which looks pretty impressive.

Hardware specifications

Under the hood, the heart of the OPPO Reno10 is a MediaTek Dimensity 7050 chipset. This is a mid-range SoC (System on a Chip) built on a 6-nanometer process and featuring an octa-core CPU (two Cortex-A78 cores at 2.6 GHz and six Cortex-A55 cores at 2.0 GHz) and a Mali-G68 MC4 GPU. I’ve previously seen it on the realme 11 Pro and realme 11 Pro+ 5G, two smartphones that proved to offer solid performance in everyday tasks, as well as in casual gaming. Check the benchmarks section of this review to see how the OPPO Reno10 compares to them. The phone uses a MediaTek Dimensity 7050 chipset Depending on your needs, you can choose from two different versions of the OPPO Reno10 smartphone. Both options include 8 GB of RAM, but one has 128 GB of internal storage space, while the other has 256 GB (this is the one I’m reviewing). It’s also important to take note of the type of memory used for storage: UFS 2.2. While this is fast enough for most needs, it’s not the fastest available in the Android world, where many higher-end devices now use faster UFS 3.0 or UFS 3.1. In terms of actual free storage on this smartphone, you should know that the operating system, together with the preloaded apps, takes almost 27 GB. The smartphone has 8GB of RAM and 128 or 256 GB of storage The OPPO Reno10 can hold two nano-SIM cards simultaneously and use them both in dual stand-by mode. Instead of a second SIM, you can also insert a microSD card if you want to increase the storage space available on the phone. This is a Dual SIM smartphone The OPPO Reno10 has a large 6.7-inch AMOLED screen with an FHD+ resolution of 2412×1080 pixels and a high pixel density of 394 ppi (pixels per inch). Moreover, it also supports a high 120 Hz refresh rate and a 240 Hz touch sampling rate. It can display more than 1 billion colors (10-bit, 100% DCI-P3 wide color gamut), and it offers a typical maximum brightness of 500 nits that can increase to 800 nits under sunlight and even higher (up to 950 nits) when displaying HDR photos or HDR10+ content. Details about the hardware and screen refresh rate (120 Hz) The OPPO Reno10 features three cameras on the back and one on the front:

• The primary wide camera has a 64-megapixel sensor, an aperture of f/1.7, and phase-detection autofocus (PDAF).
• The second is a 2x telephoto camera based on a 32-megapixel sensor with an f/2.0 aperture and autofocus.
• The third is an ultrawide camera with an 8-megapixel sensor, f/2.2 aperture, and fixed focus.
• On the front, there’s a 32 MP selfie camera with an aperture of f/2.4 without autofocus.

Unfortunately, none of the cameras on the phone supports OIS (Optical Image Stabilization), though videos benefit from EIS (Electronic Image Stabilization). Also, regarding video capabilities, you should know that the smartphone’s rear camera system allows for recording clips in 4K resolution at 30 fps (frames per second), 1080p at 60 fps or 30 fps, and 720p at 60 fps or 30 fps. The front camera can record videos in resolutions up to 1080p at 30 frames per second. The rear camera setup has a wide, an ultrawide, and a telephoto lens Regarding connectivity, the OPPO Reno10 supports LTE and 5G mobile networks, and it also offers support for Bluetooth 5.3 and dual-band Wi-Fi 6 on the 2.4 and 5 GHz frequencies. Additionally, it features an NFC chip for contactless payments and data sharing, as well as other sensors, such as an in-display optical fingerprint reader, an accelerometer, a proximity sensor, a gyroscope, a compass, and an infrared sensor. The OPPO Reno10 5G supports Wi-Fi 6 A large 5000 mAh non-removable Li-Po battery provides the OPPO Reno10 with the electrical energy it needs to function. This capacity should allow the phone to operate for at least a full day before needing to be plugged in. The best part is that charging is quick. The smartphone supports 67W fast charging, and the required charger comes with it. The company claims that the OPPO Reno10 can reach 31% battery charge in just 10 minutes. This is a remarkable figure, but I’ll show you more about it in the following section of this review. The battery has a capacity of 5000 mAh For more information on the OPPO Reno10, including its features and technical specifications, you can visit its official webpage. OPPO Reno10 is a mid-range Android smartphone that offers a lot of excellent features. The chipset may not be the best in the market, but it can handle daily tasks with ease. The phone also boasts fast charging, a large battery, a beautiful display, and some promising cameras. How does the OPPO Reno10 fare in the real world? On the following page, I’ll explore its performance in everyday tasks, its camera capabilities, and its software features. Last, but not least, I’ll also show you its results in a series of benchmarks.

The smartphone experience on the OPPO Reno10

Besides offering plenty of performance in everyday usage, the OPPO Reno10 smartphone also has a design that I’ve come to like quite a bit. The back of the Silvery Grey model that I tested is smooth and comfortable to hold and somehow manages to give the phone a premium feel. However, if you’re like me - afraid of dropping the phone by accident - you’ll want to get a protective case for it. The Reno10 5G looks and feels great, but it doesn’t look like it could handle a drop without getting broken. The Silvery Grey model looks beautiful The screen of the OPPO Reno10 is one of the details I enjoyed most. The phone offers a large and bright display that is easy to read even in bright sunlight. The colors are also vibrant and make everything look lively. The smartphone’s size is also a good fit for me, as it’s not too wide to be uncomfortable to use with only one hand. However, it will not suit everyone: if you have small hands or short fingers, you may need to use both hands to navigate the phone’s large display. Display brightness is high The OPPO Reno10 delivers satisfactory performance when it comes to the primary function of a smartphone, which is making phone calls. I haven’t encountered issues with the sound quality or the signal reception. The voices of my family and friends were clear during our conversations, and they didn’t report any problems with hearing me either. Phone calls are of good quality In daily use, the OPPO Reno10 delivers good performance: whether it’s browsing, watching videos, or listening to music, the smartphone can handle it all without any lag or stutter. For gaming enthusiasts, I can say that the device can run most games smoothly, as long as you don’t mind lowering the graphics quality in more demanding titles. Playing a game on the OPPO Reno10 5G The sound quality of the stereo speakers is decent for a smartphone. They don’t distort, and the audio sounds nice. However, I’ve had the impression that the volume is not as high as what I’ve heard on other phones. Regarding the fingerprint reader, it seems to be quite reliable and fast. I think it’s better than many of the fingerprint sensors on the smartphones I’ve tried in recent years. The OPPO Reno10 hardly ever failed to recognize my fingerprint on the first try. The fingerprint reader is fast and accurate The OPPO Reno10 offers excellent battery performance and charging speed. I was able to use the phone for a whole day without worrying about running out of battery. And on top of that, the 67W fast charging feature is also quite impressive. It took me about 19 minutes to get the battery up to a 50% charge and 47 minutes to reach 100%. These are top-notch numbers for a mid-range smartphone like this one! Charging takes 47 minutes to go from 0 to 100% The OPPO Reno10 delivers a satisfying experience for its users. It handles everyday tasks smoothly and efficiently, plus it has a sleek design, a good-looking display, a long-lasting battery, and a rapid charging feature. In other words, I loved using it during my testing period.

The camera experience on the OPPO Reno10

On the front, you get a 32 MP selfie camera, while on its rear, the OPPO Reno10 offers a triple-camera setup with a 64 MP main camera, an 8 MP ultrawide camera with a 112˚ field of view, and a 32 MP telephoto camera with 2x optical zoom. The latter is a rare thing on a mid-range smartphone like this, and it’s something that adds a lot to its value, at least in my opinion. The rear cameras on the OPPO Reno10 5G The OPPO Reno10 has a simple and user-friendly Camera app that offers various modes and features to improve your photographs and videos. The modes can be accessed by swiping the screen or by tapping on their names on the side of the viewfinder. Other controls for things such as the flash, timer, or aspect resolution, as well as the options for HDR and the entry point to Settings, are also available from the opposite side of the viewfinder (top while in portrait mode, left in landscape mode). The Camera app on the phone Both the main camera and the telephoto cameras on the OPPO Reno10 deliver outstanding results in daylight. The images are sharp, well-exposed, and rich in detail. I didn’t notice any noise in the photos taken with good lighting, even when zooming. Furthermore, the photos I took in such conditions with the OPPO Reno10 have good dynamic range, the colors look natural, and I didn’t see any hue changes between the shots taken on the main camera versus the telephoto camera. The photo quality is excellent on the main and telephoto cameras The main, the selfie, but especially the telephoto camera manage to capture portraits with high quality. The phone renders the skin texture and colors realistically, the colors look natural, and the subject separation is effective, with the background blur enhancing the focus on the subject. The OPPO Reno10 5G captures high-quality portraits The OPPO Reno10 delivers good results in night or low-light photography. The photos have minimal detail loss, unlike most mid-range Android phones. Both the main camera and the telephoto camera avoid noise and maintain good exposure, which are crucial for capturing dark scenes. The only thing disappointing here is the quality of the photos shot with the ultrawide camera, which come out with a lot of noise. Night photography is very decent To get a complete perspective of the camera experience you get from the OPPO Reno10 smartphone, browse through the pictures embedded in the gallery below. The photos you’ve seen until now were resized for optimization purposes, but the ones in this gallery are the original samples I shot with this phone: It looks like the OPPO Reno10 is a great choice for photography lovers, especially for those who love taking portraits. But how does it perform in video recording? The device can capture 4K videos at 30 fps with its main camera. It can also record 1080p videos with all its other cameras. The main camera supports 60 fps in 1080p mode, which gives a more cinematic feel than the usual 30 fps. All the cameras have electronic image stabilization (EIS), but there’s no support for OIS (Optical Image Stabilization). The next clip demonstrates the quality of video recordings taken at 4K resolution and 30 frames per second. You can notice that the smartphone manages to capture a lot of details, there’s no noise, and the colors look natural. And here’s a sample video with more movement involved, which I recorded in 1080p (60 fps) with EIS turned on: In the next sample, you can see how the smartphone fares when recording video at 2x zoom with its telephoto camera. The result is similar to that on the main camera, with plenty of detail, no noise, and natural-looking colors. The OPPO Reno10 is a smartphone that impressed me with its photo and video capabilities. It exceeded my expectations in almost every aspect. The main, telephoto, and selfie cameras produce excellent results for a mid-range device. The phone’s only shortcoming is its ultrawide camera, which doesn’t match any of the others.

Android 13, ColorOS 13.1, and bundled apps

Reno10 runs on Android 13 but with OPPO’s ColorOS 13.1 user interface on top. According to company’s policy, the OPPO Reno10 should receive three Android operating system updates and four years of security patches. OPPO's Reno10 comes with Android 13 and ColorOS OPPO’s ColorOS 13.1 user interface offers a variety of features and enhancements to improve the user experience. For instance, it includes a smart assistant that gives you quick access to frequently used apps, contacts, and functions, or a game space that optimizes the performance, network, and battery of the device when gaming. In general, I found ColorOS to be fast and smooth in daily use and interaction, as well as filled with personalization options. However, I can’t say that I liked OPPO’s approach when it comes to bundled apps… The user interface of the OPPO Reno10 5G … though the company lets you choose (select or deselect) some of the bundled apps (mostly games) when you start your phone for the first time, those aren’t the only ones you’ll get. Additional apps offered during the setup wizard Unfortunately, the OPPO Reno10 will still install many apps that you didn’t ask for. Here’s the list of apps you’ll get besides all the regular ones from Google:

• Amazon Shopping: the app of the world’s largest online store.
• App Market: an alternative app store to Google’s Play.
• Booking: a useful app if you use Booking’s services to plan trips and make accommodations.
• Calculator: if math isn’t your friend, the Calculator will be.
• Clock: lets you know what time it is, and you can also use it to set alarms.
• Clone Phone: helps you move your data from your old phone to your new Reno10 5G.
• Compass: points you in the right direction, geographically, that is. 🙂
• Facebook: the place where you can find old friends and read old news, amongst others.
• Games: a hub where you can manage your games and optimize your smartphone for gaming.
• Genshin Impact: a free-to-play action role-playing game that can be played on various platforms, including Android, iOS, PlayStation, and Windows. The game offers an anime-style open-world environment where players can explore, fight, and interact with different elements and characters.
• Internet: a web browser that looks like a simpler version of Google Chrome.
• IR Remote: an app that uses the infrared sensor on your phone to let you control devices in your home.
• LinkedIn: where professionals show their CVs and networking skills. 🙂
• Lords Mobile: Kingdom Wars: a mobile strategy game set in a fantasy world where you can build and manage your own kingdom and army, as well as battle others.
• Music: a simple media player that lets you play your locally stored songs.
• My Files: can be useful for managing the files and folders on your smartphone.
• Netflix: the app that you need in order to watch movies and TV shows streamed by the Netflix service.
• Notes: a note-taking app that you can also use to create to-do lists.
• O relax: an app that gives you ambient sounds and calming music to relax or fall asleep more easily.
• Phone Manager: useful for keeping an eye on the health of your smartphone and making some optimizations.
• Photos: the default picture gallery app on the smartphone.
• Recorder: useful when you need to record sound using the phone’s microphones.
• Screen Lock: an app that’s a button, if I can say that - tapping it locks your phone.
• Spotify: the media player of the music streaming service bearing the same name.
• TikTok: where you go when you want to get rid of all that time you have in your life. 🙂
• Videos: a basic app that you can use to play locally stored videos.
• Weather: shows the weather forecast.
• Zen Space: an app designed to help you eliminate distractions and focus: its Deep Zen mode allows you to receive calls and make emergency calls only, while its Light Zen mode lets you use only some apps that you previously selected.

OPPO’s ColorOS has some positive aspects, such as its customization options, but it also has a major drawback: the amount of bloatware. The user can deselect some apps during the initial setup, but many others are preinstalled and cannot be removed. This makes the OPPO Reno10 feel like a cluttered Android phone, which isn’t something I like at all. The company should offer a cleaner software experience.

Performance in benchmarks

Now that you know what the OPPO Reno10 smartphone has to offer in terms of design, specs, camera quality, software, and overall user experience, let’s take a more in-depth look at its performance. Here’s what the benchmarks had to say about it: I began benchmarking the OPPO Reno10 with Geekbench. In the tests offered by this app, the smartphone got a Single-Core score of 946 points and a Multi-Core score of 2410 points. The GPU Compute scores were 2378 for OpenCL and 2403 for Vulkan. These results are almost identical to those of other mid-range smartphones: the realme 11 Pro and the realme 11 Pro+ 5G. On the other hand, the scores are slightly lower than what I got on the Samsung Galaxy A34 5G or what my colleague, Ciprian, had on the Motorola Edge 40 Neo. Benchmark results in Geekbench 6 The second app I used for benchmarking the OPPO Reno10 was 3DMark. In the Wild Life test, the smartphone scored 2285 points, while in Sling Shot, it got 5200 points. These scores are not impressive, but they indicate that casual games can run smoothly on this device. For more demanding games, you may need to lower the graphics quality settings to achieve decent framerates. Benchmark results in 3DMark Next, I evaluated the smartphone’s daily performance in realistic scenarios using PCMark for Android. The OPPO Reno10 scored a good 9524 points in the Work 3.0 performance test. Unfortunately, the Work 3.0 battery life test ended with an unknown error each time I attempted to run it (two times), so I didn’t get a number from it. However, I can tell you that the phone lasted for roughly 15 hours before the error triggered, which is an excellent running time before having to recharge the smartphone. Benchmark results in PCMark Last but not least, I also evaluated the wireless performance of the OPPO Reno10. While connected to my 1 Gbps Wi-Fi 6 network, the Speedtest app showed that the smartphone can achieve a download speed of 496 Mbps and an upload speed of 358 Mbps. These are excellent results for a mobile device and are also proof that the OPPO Reno10 can stream videos and movies in 4K resolution without any kind of issues. Benchmark results in SpeedTest OPPO Reno10 is an excellent smartphone for the mid-range segment, with strong performance in daily tasks. It can handle work-related apps and casual gaming smoothly, though it requires some adjustments for more intensive games. The battery life also appears to be outstanding and can last for a day or two with moderate usage.

What do you think of the OPPO Reno10?

I hope this review has given you some insights into the OPPO Reno10: its design, features, performance, and camera quality. Do you like this smartphone? Are you planning to get an OPPO Reno10? Share your thoughts with me in the comments section. And, if you’d like to read more of the reviews we publish here on Digital Citizen, don’t hesitate to subscribe to our newsletter.