Oppo Reno3 Pro 5G / Find X2 Neo review

A quad-camera setup covering all essentials

The Reno3 Pro 5G comes with four cameras on its back - three usable ones covering the essential focal lengths and one black and white sensor, which probably works as a depth sensor for portraits. The main camera uses the common quad-bayer 48MP sensor measuring 1/2.0" and having 0.8µm pixels paired with f/1.7 aperture. The module also has OIS, which is nice to have in low-light scenarios and when shooting videos.

The telephoto camera is 13MP, 1/3.4" in size with 1.0µm pixels, and uses a f/2.4 aperture. The unit offers a 53mm equivalent focal length, or in other words - 2x optical zoom. The ultra-wide is just 8MP with f/2.2 aperture and the sensor itself is 1/3.2" big with fairly large 1.4µm pixels.

And the selfie camera uses a 1/2.8" big, 32MP unit with f/2.4 aperture and pixel size is 0.8µm. This one is also quad-bayered but behaves strangely. More on that further in this section.

Camera menus

The camera menu is pretty standard and straightforward. Swiping left and right will cycle between the different camera modes, while the so-called "hamburger menu" opens up the general settings menu where you will find additional camera tuning.

Camera settings

The so-called "Expert mode", a.k.a. "Pro mode" gives you the usual adjustments like ISO, shutter speed, white balance, autofocus, and exposure.

Daylight samples

Main camera

The stills from the main camera are generally looking nice. Most of what we found wrong with it can be seen only on a PC monitor and, in some cases, when you zoom in. For social media posting, the processing seems adequate enough. Anyway, under more critical assessment, the images have high contrast, punchy colors, dynamic range is okay, there's a high level of detail and objects look sharp.

Main camera daylight samples

Main camera daylight samples

Telephoto camera

Although there's a toggle for the 5x zoom, the camera's native optical zoom level is 2x. Photos by this camera have similar processing to the main camera in terms of exposure, color reproduction, and noise.

2x telephoto samples

The photos taken with the telephoto are sharp with plenty of detail without resorting to artificial sharpening. And the 5x shots were a pleasant surprise as they are quite usable. Surely, sharpness and resolved detail drop dramatically since it's a crop from the center of the 13MP telephoto camera, but still. Oh, and for some reason, the camera outputs 12MP images instead of 13MP as advertised but it's not something to obsess about.

Telephoto samples: 2x zoom • 5x zoom • 2x zoom • 5x zoom

Ultra-wide camera

The ultra-wide camera does things a bit differently. The colors on the ultra-wide shots look more saturated than on the main and telephoto (they produce more true to life colors) and surprisingly for an ultra-wide, the level of detail is adequate. We were delighted with the dynamic range and the lens correction algorithm as well. Still, the images are understandably softer, some parts of the image look grainy even outside during the day and color fringing is also possible in some areas.

Ultra-wide camera samples

Low-light samples

Main camera

To be frank, we weren't expecting a stellar nighttime performance from the phone's camera setup but we were pleasantly surprised by the main camera's night stills. Even without resorting to Night mode, the images look rather sharp considering the available light, with plenty of detail in the shadows and highlights. There's definitely some HDR at play here. Noise is kept to a minimum as well while color reproduction looks on point.

Low-light main camera samples

Low-light main camera samples

The Night mode is highly recommended. Upon closer inspection, some may argue that the additional sharpening and the halos around the straight lines make the photos look like they are rendered. However, for social media posting and when looking at the shots on the phone's screen, those flaws are hard to notice. Also, it's a small price to pay given that you get a sharper image with less noise and even better dynamic range with an impressive amount of detail in the shadows and in the highlights. Keep in mind that you'd have to wait quite a bit for the software to finish stacking those images. It's definitely one of the slow Night modes.

Night mode main camera samples

Telephoto camera

Another big surprise when reviewing the Reno3 Pro 5G's cameras is the fact that even in really dark environment, the software picks the telephoto unit over cropping from the center of the main camera. Kudos for that and the results aren't half bad either. There's obviously more noise in the darker parts of the image and sharpness isn't great but dynamic range is still impressive and if you aren't nitpicking like us, you will be delighted with the level of detail as well.

2x low-light: Normal • Night mode

Just like with the main camera, we recommend using the Night mode in pretty much all low-light situations. The Night mode will brighten up the shadows extracting even more detail and adding a much-needed sharpness. Light sources are handled even better. Hybrid zooming to 5x will bare inconsistent results but the images are definitely usable when shot with the Night mode.

Low-light telephoto: 2x normal • 2x Night mode • 5x normal • 5x Night mode

Ultra-wide camera

Given the class of the device and the low-resolution 8MP ultra-wide camera, the shots turned out to be decent enough. Sharpness isn't one of its strongest suits nor the artificial lights. There's also a lot more noise when compared to the main and telephoto cameras so we once again suggest you use the Night mode when snapping ultra wide-angle stills. The Night mode helps with resolving more detail, brightening the shadows and sharpness as a whole. With the Night mode on, we can say that the Reno3 Pro 5G takes one of the best low-light ultra-wide pictures in the price range.

Low-light ultra-wide: Normal • Night mode

And here's a comparison between the Oppo Reno3 Pro 5G and some of its rivals in our photo compare tool.

Oppo Reno3 Pro 5G vs Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro and the Realme X3 SuperZoom in our Photo compare tool

Selfies

The selfies come out with natural-looking colors and the front camera performs consistently across different scenarios. However, you can't shoot in 8MP, and you are locked at using the shooter with its full 32MP resolution. This results in a less than stellar sharpness. But in an unexpected turn of events, the portrait mode, the software shoots in quad-bayered 8MP resolution. You can see how crispier they look even in more challenging low-light conditions. The edge detection is doing a good job as well. We were also pleased with the dynamic range and skin color.

Selfies: Normal • Portrait mode

Portraits

The handset turned out to be a really good portrait shooter. The edge detection is pretty accurate even with more challenging background while the subject is sharp and with natural-looking skin color. Even indoors, the subject is still looking sharp while the HDR algorithm is doing an excellent job to balance things under direct sunlight.

Portrait samples

Video recording

The Reno3 Pro 5G can do 4K videos at 30fps while 1080p videos can go up to 60 frames. There's also an Ultra Steady stabilization mode which allows you to shoot gimbal-like videos in Full HD resolution. We assess the effectiveness of the EIS below.

But as per tradition, we start with the standard 2160p footage at 30fps. It looks sharp, with natural colors, no noise and impressive dynamic range. The shadows around the trees and some of the buildings are usually challenging for phones but the Reno3 Pro 5G does a great job of rendering those.

Of course, opting for the 1080p video will result in reduced sharpness but the overall processing seems identical. In fact, for a Full HD video, the footage isn't too shabby.

We did some stabilization testing in the standard 4K and 1080p modes as well as in Ultra Steady. To our surprise, the 4K footage had the best stabilization. The footsteps made it look a little bit less shaky but the Ultra Steady video fares better in panning probably because it's shot in 50 frames per second (strange, right?).

The default 1080p footage was the shakiest of them all.

When you are done looking at the sample videos, take some time to compare the Reno3 Pro 5G's video recording performance to some of the rivals.

2160p: Oppo Reno3 Pro 5G vs Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro and the Realme X3 SuperZoom in our Video compare tool