Oppo R7 review: Changing course

Basic Oppo gallery

Oppo has come up with a custom Gallery for the R7, and it relies on simplicity. The default view is a grid of folders, with a name and number of images for each folder labeled underneath. You can't filter images by location, time, people or tags like you would in the stock app. Images inside folders are arranged on a rectangular grid and you have two options - image selection mode and start a slideshow. You can select multiple images (folders too) and then Share and Delete options become available.

Gallery

The available features when viewing a single image are pretty standard - set image as wallpaper/contact image, share it, delete it or get a menu with more functions.

The image editor has also fallen victim to the trend for simplicity and offers one-touch color filters and image frames. Editing goes as serious as sharpening, blurring and applying a mosaic effect, which get a slider to control the intensity. You also get to crop rotate and mirror, and that's all.

Viewing an individual image • Editing options

Video player

The Oppo R7 comes with a pretty simple-looking video player with extensive codec support - DivX, AVI, MKV, MP4 files played without a hitch, as did MOV videos. We had no issues playing files all the way up to 1080p resolution. AC3 sound was a no-go, but that's typically the case.

The interface for video selection is pretty basic too - a list of all available files. The player supports subtitles too, but there's only an on/off toggle here, you can't manually pick the subtitle file (so it would have to have the same name as the video file to work, and be in the same directory). Also, some foreign language subtitles didn't display all characters correctly.

Video player

While watching a video you get a timeline slider, play/pause along with forward/back controls, a lock option (which locks the display against accidental touches) and a pop up toggle.

A feature that seems lifted right off the Samsung/LG flagships is the pop-up player. It's a small floating window that lets you have other apps working underneath. You can move it around to get it out of the way, but there's no transparency option.

Music player with Dirac HD

Oppo's latest music player has quite a simplistic interface and is very easy to use and navigate. The music player UI is pretty straightforward - your music library is organized into a local list of all music, favorites, artists, albums and folders. There's also an option to add a playlist.

Music player

The Now playing interface is split into two - the current playlist and the album art/music controls screen. You can swipe between the two. By default the player will look for lyrics and display them under the album art, which imitates a vinyl record. You can add album art if it's not built inside the tracks (but the player won't look for it automatically).

There's a playback mode button (normal, shuffle, repeat track) and a toggle for audio enhancement. That cycles through Dirac HD on and off, but only works with headphones attached. Audiophiles should be happy to head that the music player successfully played 16 and 24-bit FLAC files.

Now playing • Music player on the lockscreen and in the notification shade

Audio output is a very good

The Oppo R7 audio output is a step forward from the R5, which is in part explained by the regular 3.5mm audio lack and the lack of need for converters. When connected to an active external amplifier, the R7 posted excellent scores top to bottom and garnished them with above average volume levels for a solid performance.

Plugging in a pair of headphones lead to a notable increase in stereo crosstalk and slight deviations in the frequency response. Some intermodulation distortion also appears but that’s hard to detect without dedicated equipment such as ours. Yet, since the volume levels also drop to only average, we can only rate the performance here as very good.

Oppo R7 frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.