Oppo R7 review: Changing course

Synthetic benchmarks

The Oppo R7 is equipped with a Snapdragon 615 chipset, a solution so popular, that Oppo itself has no less than 4 smartphones in its lineup, powered by Qualcomm's upper midrange chip.

Oppo likes to tinker with processor clock speed to adjust it to the specific device, and it's no different on the R7. The four "powerful" Cortex-A53 cores in the pseudo-big.LITTLE setup can go as high as 1.46GHz, while the other four are limited to 1.11GHz. Qualcomm quotes typical figures of 1.7GHz and 1.0GHz, respectively.

The R7 comes with a spacious 3GB of RAM, so multitasking should be a breeze. It's among the key improvements over the R5, and makes the R7 only the second Oppo smartphone with that amount after the now aging flagship Find 7.

We kick off the benchmark routine with Geekbench 3, which measures solely CPU performance. The R7 sits midway between the S615 equipped R5 and R1x. The R7 is also no match for last year's flagships, but is also bested by the Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615, again), which puts up a better fight.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• Lenovo Vibe X2
  3647
• Meizu MX4
  3556
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  3175
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  3120
• Huawei Honor 6
  3081
• vivo Xshot
  3048
• HTC One (M8) Lollipop
  2923
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  2880
• Sony Xperia Z2
  2856
• Oppo R5
  2806
• Oppo R7 (retail)
  2683
• Gionee Elife S5.5
  2581
• Oppo R1x
  2507
• Sony Xperia M4 Aqua
  2375
• Xiaomi Mi 4i
  2336
• ZTE Blade S6
  2086
• Huawei Ascend P7
  1895

Antutu has become more or less an industry standard for a quick overall benchmark and measures RAM and storage performance on top of CPU power. The Oppo R7 is trailing behind the S615 competition, and would have been last, if it weren't for the ZTE Blade S6, but that one is a little over half the R7's asking price.

In all fairness, the S615 crowd is pretty tightly spaced, and is lagging behind the 2014 top-end Snapdragon 801. The Mediatek MT6595 inside the Meizu MX4 and Lenovo Vibe X2 is the undisputed champ here.

AnTuTu 5

Higher is better

• Meizu MX4
  46922
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  46666
• HTC One (M8) Lollipop
  45530
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  45348
• vivo Xshot
  43318
• Huawei Honor 6
  42688
• Xiaomi Mi 4i
  34491
• Sony Xperia M4 Aqua
  32217
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  31436
• Oppo R5
  31417
• Oppo R1x
  30187
• Oppo R7 (retail)
  29452
• Huawei Ascend P7
  28758
• ZTE Blade S6
  27198

Another compound benchmark, Basemark OS II 2.0 paint a more favorable picture of the R7. It still trails behind the Sony M4 Aqua and the Galaxy A7, but leaves a few of the S615 competitors behind in the overall score. The the single- and multi-core CPU tests mostly mirror the results.

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• HTC One (M8) Lollipop
  1186
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  1160
• vivo Xshot
  1050
• Huawei Honor 6
  888
• Sony Xperia M4 Aqua
  858
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  813
• Oppo R7 (retail)
  757
• Oppo R1x
  753
• ZTE Blade S6
  751
• Oppo R5
  710
• Meizu MX4
  666
• Gionee Elife S5.5
  567
• Huawei Ascend P7
  552
• Xiaomi Mi 4i
  296

Basemark OS 2.0 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S5
  5557
• HTC One (M8) Lollipop
  5235
• vivo Xshot
  4856
• Huawei Honor 6
  4106
• Xiaomi Mi 4i
  3008
• Sony Xperia M4 Aqua
  2628
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  2480
• Oppo R7 (retail)
  2452
• ZTE Blade S6
  2446
• Oppo R5
  2437
• Gionee Elife S5.5
  2303
• Huawei Ascend P7
  2240
• Meizu MX4
  2219
• Oppo R1x
  2177

Basemark OS 2.0 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Huawei Honor 6
  21198
• HTC One (M8) Lollipop
  21140
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  19237
• Gionee Elife S5.5
  18019
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  16640
• vivo Xshot
  15206
• Xiaomi Mi 4i
  13521
• Sony Xperia M4 Aqua
  13167
• Meizu MX4
  12671
• Oppo R5
  12044
• Oppo R7 (retail)
  9755
• Huawei Ascend P7
  8737
• Oppo R1x
  8683
• ZTE Blade S6
  8229

The Snapdragon 615 comes bundled with an Adreno 405 GPU, which typically does a good job as long as you don't sweat it with the latest 3D games.

In Basemark X it clearly pulls ahead of all competitors with the same chipset. The Xperia M4 Aqua comes closest, followed by the Blade S6, while the Oppo R1x is a mile back, indicating a different setup there.

Basemark X

Higher is better

• HTC One (M8) Lollipop
  12257
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  11798
• vivo Xshot
  11621
• Meizu MX4
  8324
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  6512
• Oppo R7 (retail)
  5382
• Sony Xperia M4 Aqua
  5105
• ZTE Blade S6
  5039
• Xiaomi Mi 4i
  4875
• Huawei Honor 6
  4868
• Oppo R5
  4855
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  4802
• Oppo R1x
  4018

In the lighter T-Rex routine of GFXBench the R7 manages the same 15fps both onscreen and off, which shouldn't be a surprise, as both tests are carried out at 1080p resolution. The R1x, Blade S6 and Xperia M4 Aqua all pull ahead in the onscreen test, but they're favored by their 720p displays, which have a lot less pixels to render.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC One (M8) Lollipop
  28
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  27.6
• Sony Xperia Z2
  27.2
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  27
• vivo Xshot
  23
• Meizu MX4
  22.7
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  17.8
• Huawei Honor 6
  16
• Oppo R5
  15.1
• Oppo R7 (retail)
  15
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  15
• ZTE Blade S6
  15
• Sony Xperia M4 Aqua
  14.9
• Xiaomi Mi 4i
  14
• Huawei Ascend P7
  12.3
• Oppo R1x
  12
• Gionee Elife S5.5
  10.8

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC One (M8) Lollipop
  30
• Sony Xperia Z2
  28.7
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  28.2
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  28
• Sony Xperia M4 Aqua
  25.8
• ZTE Blade S6
  24
• vivo Xshot
  23
• Meizu MX4
  21.3
• Oppo R1x
  20
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  17
• Huawei Honor 6
  17
• Oppo R7 (retail)
  15
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  15
• Oppo R5
  14.8
• Xiaomi Mi 4i
  14
• Huawei Ascend P7
  12.4
• Gionee Elife S5.5
  10.6

The more demanding Manhattan test introduces an expected overall hit in frame rates. In the offscreen test the differences between the S615 packing smartphones are negligible, save for the trailing R1x. The onscreen test widens the gap between HD and FullHD displays, but the R7 still does an OK job, given its hardware.

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S5
  12
• HTC One (M8) Lollipop
  12
• Sony Xperia Z2
  11.7
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  11.6
• vivo Xshot
  9.5
• Huawei Honor 6
  8.1
• Meizu MX4
  7.9
• Xiaomi Mi 4i
  6.2
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  6.1
• Oppo R7 (retail)
  5.9
• Sony Xperia M4 Aqua
  5.84
• Oppo R5
  5.8
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  5.8
• ZTE Blade S6
  5.8
• Oppo R1x
  4.9

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC One (M8) Lollipop
  13
• Sony Xperia Z2
  12.2
• Sony Xperia M4 Aqua
  12.2
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  12
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  11.3
• ZTE Blade S6
  11
• Oppo R1x
  9.6
• vivo Xshot
  9.4
• Huawei Honor 6
  8.7
• Meizu MX4
  7.4
• Xiaomi Mi 4i
  6.2
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  6.1
• Oppo R7 (retail)
  5.9
• Oppo R5
  5.8
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  5.8

The Oppo R7 comes with a pair of browsers installed. We tested both and when it comes to JavaScrip, Kraken 1.1 says that neither is impressive, but Chrome is marginally faster than Oppo's browser.

Not so in Browsermark 2.1, where Chrome posted solid scores upwards of 1400, while the proprietary app was nowhere to be found, with numbers around 600. We therefore concluded that Chrome is the only logical choice and posted its results below.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• Lenovo Vibe X2
  4747
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  5968
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  6137
• Huawei Honor 6
  6937
• HTC One (M8) Lollipop
  7023
• Sony Xperia Z2
  7041
• vivo Xshot
  9114
• Meizu MX4
  9408
• Oppo R7 (retail)
  11257
• Xiaomi Mi 4i
  11439
• Oppo R5
  11656
• Gionee Elife S5.5
  12201
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  12266
• Oppo R1x
  12826
• ZTE Blade S6
  12865
• Sony Xperia M4 Aqua
  13609

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

• Lenovo Vibe X2
  2211
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  2066
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  1655
• HTC One (M8) Lollipop
  1460
• Oppo R7 (retail)
  1433
• Xiaomi Mi 4i
  1396
• Oppo R5
  1319
• ZTE Blade S6
  1271
• Sony Xperia Z2
  1224
• Sony Xperia M4 Aqua
  1171
• vivo Xshot
  1075
• Huawei Honor 6
  745
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  744
• Meizu MX4
  720
• Oppo R1x
  627
• Gionee Elife S5.5
  432

Altogether, the Oppo R7 is an average performer, given its internals. It is admittedly better optimized than the R1x, with Color OS 2.1 likely responsible. However, the 3GB of RAM fail to show any meaningful advantage in benchmarks, and the R7 is consistently outperformed by 2GB models.