Oppo Reno8 review

Standard triple camera setup with 50MP main shooter

Oppo didn't spare any cost when choosing the main camera for the Oppo Reno8. It's a 50MP Sony IMX766 sensor, which is fairly large - 1/1.56" with big 1.0µm pixels. The sensor also supports Omni-directional PDAF and is paired with an f/1.8 aperture, and the lens has the equivalent of 23mm focal length.

The ultrawide and the macro cameras, on the other hand, are quite basic and can be found in pretty much every low-end to upper mid-range phone on the market. The Reno8 uses the 8MP IMX355, 1/4.0", 1.12µm, f/2.4 camera for ultrawide and a 2MP 1/5.0", f/2.4 unit for macro photography.

Oppo paid special attention to the selfie camera. It's again made by Sony, but it's also an Oppo-exclusive sensor, at least for now. It's a 32MP Sony IMX709, 1/2.74", 0.8µm sensor, which is fairly big for a front-facing camera and is paired with an f/2.4 aperture. Unfortunately, it's still fixed-focus, but the Reno8 wants to make up for that with some additional features.

It has an RGBW filter instead of just RGB. The RGBW pixel arrangement allegedly allows for 60% better light gathering capabilities, thus reducing noise and supposedly capturing sharper images.

Camera menus

The default Camera app is almost indistinguishable from the one the latest Realme and OnePlus smartphones use. Swiping on the viewfinder or the scroller below switches between modes, while the additional ones can be found under the "More" sub-menu. There's an option to re-arrange them to your liking. The general Settings menu is found under the three-dot menu in the upper-right corner of the viewfinder.

Camera menus

In Video mode, Oppo provides all of the essential toggles, including the one that enables Portrait video mode. That's the shutter icon next to the three toggles. It seems like the Portrait video mode is supported only using the main camera. The 2x zoom mode still uses the main camera.

And although there's a dedicated Night mode, we found it to be working even when using the standard Photo mode. If the lighting conditions are met, the software automatically shoots in Night mode. It doesn't take more than a second or two at most to take a shot and stack all the frames. There's also a tripod mode within the Night mode that uses longer exposure for better results. The Night mode is supported on all three cameras.

Camera menus

Oppo has brought Pro mode support to the main camera only. When you have the main camera active, it will give you two toggles on the viewfinder - 1x and 2x zoom.

In any case, the Pro mode gives you control over the usual stuff like ISO, exposure, white balance, manual focus and shutter speed. There are also focus peaking and histogram to help you out.

Daylight samples

Main camera

It's no surprise that the main camera's performance is almost identical to the Realme GT2's and Oppo Find X5's since they all use the same Sony IMX766 sensor. And this, in turn, means that the Reno8's main camera ensures solid performance. The daylight samples are clean, sharp, have lively colors and dynamic range is good for the most part. There are those occasional moments in which the shadows could be crushed, but it strongly depends on the lighting conditions. Take a look at the indoor samples, for example. You can find some shadows darker than usual.

12.5MP daylight samples

Still, even in more challenging situations, the Reno8's samples lack noise and remain pretty sharp and detailed.

12.5MP daylight samples

Perhaps due to the fact that many of the Reno8's competitors use 108MP cameras, Oppo decided to include the so-called Extra HD mode, which captures 50MP images and upscales them to 108MP. It's needless to say that the results are unimpressive, to say the least. The jagged edges, the increased noise and the dramatic loss of sharpness and dynamic range don't really make up for the extra detail, which isn't improved by much, anyway.

Upscaled 108MP daylight samples

2x zoom

Even though there's no real telephoto camera to take the zoom shots, the 2x zoom crop samples from the main camera look pretty solid and almost indistinguishable from budget 2x telephoto shooters. As expected, the overall rendition is identical to that of the standard 1x samples, but the loss of sharpness is minimal, and there's no extra noise either. Even indoor scenes turn out pretty good.

2x zoom daylight samples

Ultrawide camera

The commonly used 8MP ultrawide camera performs just as expected for the price range. You get decent sharpness and dynamic range. Contrast and color reproduction is very good.

Ultrawide daylight samples

Macro camera

The 2MP macro camera with fixed focus is another common find on today's smartphones and produces subpar images. They are low-contrast, lack detail (it's a 2MP camera, after all) require the best possible lighting conditions, and colors look undersaturated. It's hard to recommend it unless you spend some time post-processing to make them look decent enough for social media purposes.

Macro camera samples

Low-light samples

Main camera

The nighttime behavior of the software is the same as on the Oppo Find X5 series. If the algorithm decides it's dark enough, it will opt for the Night mode automatically, and there's nothing you can do about it. It takes just a second or two to take all the needed frames and stack them, so you won't have to wait too long. More importantly, the nighttime performance is excellent.

The samples below are clean, have a wide dynamic range, resolve quite a bit of detail in the shadows, and the dynamic range is impressive. Noise is non-existent, contrast is good, and color accuracy is pretty close to natural. Surely, you can find some clipped highlights, but those are rare cases and are usually small parts of the image. Overall, light sources are well-processed. You can expect a solid performance after dusk.

Low-light main camera samples

In some rare instances, the software may decide that the scene is bright enough to use the standard Photo mode. That's why Oppo kept the Night mode as a separate mode so you can force it when needed. Take a look at the example below. Although the gain in sharpness and detail in the shadows is minimal, the overall clarity of the Night mode image is undeniable. That's why we suggest using the dedicated Night mode after dark at all times.

Low-light main camera: Normal • Night mode

2x zoom

Expectedly, cropping from the main camera in low-light situations isn't ideal. Overall quality deteriorates significantly as objects are softer and the noise becomes more visible in the shadows. Still, though, you can get some decent-looking pictures suitable for social media.

Low-light 2x zoom samples

Ultrawide camera

The ultrawide shots look somewhat decent only because of the automatic Night mode. They have a wide enough dynamic range, good contrast, punchy colors and a decent amount of detail.

Low-light ultrawide samples

Once you are done with the real-life examples, take a look at our Photo compare tool for some pixel-peeping and see how the Oppo Reno8 fares against the competition.

Oppo Reno8 vs. Realme GT2 and the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE in our Photo compare tool

Portraits

Portraits are pretty good with plenty of detail, wide dynamic range and are sharp-looking. However, the software tends to overexpose, and a bit more contrast won't hurt either. The third and fourth samples, in particular, are considerably brighter than they should be. Edge detection is pretty good, though, and the overall faux bokeh effect is convincing enough.

Portrait samples

Selfies

It seems like all the hype for the selfie camera isn't for nothing. The selfies below look pretty solid, no matter the lighting conditions. Even in poorly-lit scenarios or challenging lighting conditions where the sun shines directly behind the subject, the camera maintains excellent dynamic range, the subject's face is always well-exposed, there's plenty of detail, little to no noise, and sharpness is great as well.

Selfies

As expected, the portrait samples are not ideal as the edge detection can be rough around the edges sometimes, and the HDR is disabled, so you end up with an overexposed subject at times or clipped background.

Selfie portraits

Since Reno8 boasts advanced selfie capabilities, mainly thanks to its RGBW sensor, we tried out some low-light scenes with and without the dedicated Night mode for selfies. Understandably, there's a visible deterioration in overall quality in low-light conditions but not nearly as much as we expected. Even without resorting to Night mode, these selfies look decent at the very least. The Night mode improves upon sharpness, and dynamic range and is even capable of preserving some fine detail.

Low-light selfies: Normal • Night mode

Video recording

The handset can do 2160p videos at 30fps using its main camera, but the ultrawide is limited to just 1080p. Video stabilization is also at hand but only in 1080p resolution. The same resolution mode offers advanced stabilization capabilities mimicking action cameras with 60fps framerate.

Let's start with the standard 4K mode. The video below looks sharp and resolves quite a bit of detail, while the dynamic range is excellent. Colors, although a bit conservative for some, are really close to real-life. Contrast is good, and noise is non-existent. The only thing to complain about here is the shaky footage due to the lack of any video stabilization in 2160p.

Understandably, the ultrawide's quality is far from the main camera. Due to the nature of ultrawide lenses and the lower 1080p resolution, sharpness is unimpressive, to say the least. Colors are washed out, and the dynamic range is limited.

Here's the 4K footage without stabilization (since there isn't one) followed by a 1080p, action cam-like stabilization with a narrower field of view. It's called Ultra Steady mode, and it records at 60fps. The video is considerably softer than the 2160p footage, but stabilization seems stellar with no apparent jitter.

And since Oppo is really proud of the low-light videos the Reno8 can do, we couldn't miss trying it out ourselves. The result is quite impressive as the video's dynamic range is wide, there's plenty of detail, sharpness is good, and light sources are well-contained for the most part. Sure, there's some little noise left in the shadows, but that's to be expected. Colors are accurate, and contrast is good, too.

Turning on the AI video mode supposedly improves nighttime performance. However, we fail to see any difference at all, except that the AI video appears slightly softer with a narrower field of view. That's hardly a surprise, though, since the AI mode is limited to 1080p recording.

Once you are done with the real-life scenarios, take a look at our video compare tool to see how the Oppo Reno8 stacks against the other phones we've reviewed.

2160p: Oppo Reno8 vs. Realme GT2 and the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE in our Video compare tool