Friday, August 6, 2021

OPPO Reno6 5G Review

One of OPPO’s most popular smartphone lineup is the Reno, and the company is constantly improving on it with the regular release of newer models. One of which is the OPPO Reno6 5G. It has 5G, a striking design, and good cameras. But are these enough to convince you to get one? Find out in our review.

Design and Construction

OPPO dubs this Reno6 5G design as an ultra-slim retro style that also features OPPO’s signature Reno Glow. It has a smooth matte finish with an iridescent glow that changes colors depending on the angle.

The phone is available in Stellar Black and Aurora colorway. The latter is what we have right now. What we love about this design is that the back panel is fingerprint resistant, which improves the overall appeal of the phone.

It has a flat-edge design that is reminiscent of the iPhone 12 series. Some may like it, some may not, but the phone feels well-built. It can even stand upright without support. The back also houses a triple camera setup together with an LED flash. The layout of the lenses reminds us of the Galaxy S21. You can say that OPPO took those nice design cues and implemented them here.

In the hands, despite the metal build, it feels very light at 182g and thin at 7.59mm. Do take note that the back panel is slightly slippery, so we suggest using the provided silicone case.

Flipping to its front, you will see the 6.43-inch flat display with slim bezels and a slightly thicker chin.

Located on the left is the volume rocker.

Meanwhile, on the right side we have the power/lock button. Generally, the buttons are tactile and are easy to reach.

Alone at the top is the secondary microphone, while at the bottom is the dual SIM card tray, main microphone, USB-C port, and loudspeaker. Unfortunately, there’s no microSD card slot for this device.

Display and Multimedia

Taking a closer look at the display, we get a 6.43-inch AMOLED display with Full HD+ resolution and 90Hz refresh rate support. The display is bright enough to use indoors and outdoors, has a crisp screen, colors are vibrant and offers good viewing angles. The panel also has a punch-hole cutout for the selfie camera on the top left side of the screen.

The display is heavily customizable, from your usual night mode and screen color mode, to dark mode settings that let you set how dark you want to go. The Enhanced style is more preferable to take advantage of the display panel in use. You also get an always-on display with edge lightning to let you know when notifications arrive.

The phone sports a single bottom-firing speaker that is more than capable of filling the surrounding with the sound from your phone, but as with speakers configured in this way, it’s easy to muffle the sound as you hold the phone when viewing multimedia in landscape mode. The sound profile is biased towards the mids, which is expected given that this setup will lean towards providing better voice calls.

Camera

The OPPO Reno6 5G lives up to the brand’s photography-centric reputation. It features the same triple rear setup as the OPPO Reno6 Z 5G, and that’s a 64MP main, an 8MP ultrawide, and a 2MP one for macro. Meanwhile, for selfies, you get a 32MP shooter.

The camera UI is typical of ColorOS. You’ll be able to swipe between portrait, night, video, and photo modes on the viewfinder. Under the ‘More’ section, you’ll find some more options including dual-view video, slo-mo, timelapse, extra HD, movie, pro, macro, and SOLOOP templates.

In daylight, images produced are detailed with vibrant colors and often a balanced dynamic range. With the portrait mode, the background separation is pretty good. It blurs out very well, and still, the details of the subject are present and are true to its colors.

The ultra-wide lens takes decent pictures with minimal distortion, although the color is nowhere as good as the primary sensor.

Low Light shots, on the other hand, look decent. Details are not that sharp, but they are present. Shots tend to look hazy, lights are overblown, well depending on the lighting, and take note that the phone takes a long time to focus on subjects in low light scenarios.

For selfies, it performs pretty well, especially in bright conditions. It can capture some sharp selfies with a natural-looking skin tone. It supports portrait shots as well and turns out to be fine too.

For videos, users can shoot up to 4K videos at 60fps, and the quality has good details and accurate colors, however, it can be a little shaky as it’s missing OIS and offers EIS only at 1080p.

OS, UI, and Apps

Running the software department is ColorOS 11.3 that’s based on Android 11. It is more like the same OS you see on any OPPO smartphone, which replicates the near-stock Android experience but with some extra functionalities.

There are tons of customization options here where you change icon styles, app layout, fingerprint style, change font and colors, and notification drawer. You can check it under the personalizations category in the settings.

And like previous ColorOS versions, it comes with a few bloatware and tons of pre-installed apps like Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Messenger, Lazada, and Agoda which can be removed after setup.

Storage-wise, out of the 128GB that we get, we’re left with 106GB out of the box, which is still more than enough for casual users.

Performance and Benchmarks

Under the hood, the OPPO Reno6 5G is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 900 5G chip, together with a Mali-G68 MC4 GPU, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of internal storage.

The day-to-day usage of the Reno6 5G is pretty impressive. It’s very responsive and multitasking isn’t a problem. Take a look at the benchmark scores we got:

AnTuTu v8 – 397,768
Geekbench 5 – 719 (Single-core), 2,090 (Multi-core), 2,577 (OpenCL)
PCMark – 8,370 (Work 3.0)
3DMark – 3,759 (OpenGL 3.1), 3,631 (Vulkan), 588 (WildLife Extreme)
AndroBench – 987.45 MB/s (Seq. Read), 707.3 MB/s (Seq. Write)

The gaming performance is comparable to most mid-range smartphones in 2021. The phone is capable of handling the most demanding games, with very minimal stutters.

When it comes to biometrics and security, you can unlock the device via facial recognition and the in-display fingerprint scanner. Both work as intended, but we highly recommend you use the fingerprint scanner instead for a higher level of security. The fingerprint scanner however is too low for our liking.

Connectivity and Battery Life

So the OPPO Reno6 5G has all the modern connectivity features such as WiFi, dual SIM support, Bluetooth 5.2, USB Type-C, NFC, and 5G, of course.

When it comes to battery, the device gets a 4,300mAh capacity with OPPO’s 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 Flash Charge. It takes no more than an hour to charge this up with the 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 included charger.

When we ran it through our standard video loop test which involves putting the phone at 50% brightness, 50% volume, Airplane mode turned on, and with headphones plugged in, the device provided 15 hours and 45 minutes of playback. Definitely, the Reno6 5G can last at least a day if you’re not a heavy user.

Conclusion

The OPPO Reno6 5G is priced at PHP 26,999, and in this price range, consumers can’t help but nitpick at its features or the lack of it. The absence of a stereo speaker setup and a lower quality gaming performance compared to other phones with similar price tags, like the OnePlus Nord 2, might convince you to skip this phone instead.

Price aside, the OPPO Reno6 5G offers great features that most users are looking for, like 5G connectivity, a stylish and premium design that will turn heads, an excellent display, and good cameras. That is if you’re willing to spend that much.

So, will you be getting this phone? Let us know in the comments.

OPPO Reno6 5G specs:
6.43-inch FHD+ (2400 x 1080) AMOLED display, 410PPI
90Hz refresh rate, 180Hz touch sampling rate
Corning Gorilla Glass
MediaTek Dimensity 900 5G SoC
ARM Mali-G68 MC4 GPU
8GB LPDDR4x RAM w/ RAM Expansion
128GB UFS 2.1 storage
Triple rear cameras:
• 64MP F1.7 (main)
• 8MP F2.2 (wide)
• 2MP F2.4 (macro)
32MP F2.4 front camera
5G, 4G LTE
Dual-SIM (nano)
WiFi 6
Bluetooth 5.2
NFC
GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, QZSS, Beidou
USB Type-C
Fingerprint scanner (in-display)
Face Unlock
ColorOS 11.3 (Android 11)
4,300mAh battery w/ 65W SuperVOOC 2.0
Z-Axis Linear motors
156.8 x 72.1 x 7.59mm
182g
Stellar Black, Aurora