Oppo Reno7 Pro 5G hands-on review

Design and ergonomics

The Oppo Reno DNA is evident in the Reno7 Pro 5G. This has always been Oppo's most striking series, and this year Oppo has outdone itself. Before we get into the truly high-tech side of the Reno7 Pro 5G's exterior, a quick look at its flat frame, smart front, and shimmering rear and it's obvious this is a phone meant to be shown off.

The Reno7 Pro 5G is a slim and light phone, in fact, it's the slimmest Reno ever at just 7.45mm. And holding the phone, you'd be forgiven to think it's lighter than its 180g would suggest.

The phone is built well. It feels solid and of quality. The buttons are logically laid out and have fine mechanical feedback.

The flat edges will appeal to many buyers. The frame is metal, while the front and rear panels are made of lightly-curved 2.5d glass. The display is covered in Gorilla Glass 5, while the rear is Panda Glass.

Speaking of that rear panel, Oppo used LDI on it, which stands for Laser Direct Imaging (it's used to design PCBs in the aviation industry). There are 1.2 million micro-etchings with a width of 20 microns across the surface of the smartphone's rear panel.

This gives the phone's back cover a visual and textural illusion of shooting stars that Oppo calls "Aircraft-Grade Shooting Star Design." While the micron-scale etchings help achieve a matte, brushed finish on top of the Oppo Glow layer.

The first stage of the LDI process involves coating a layer of UV protective ink on the glass side that faces the phone to prevent it from being chemically etched during the later steps. This protective layer also helps improve the accuracy of the laser engraving due to its light-absorbing properties.

After this, the opposite surface of the glass is coated with a photoresist layer to create the desired star trails pattern on the Reno7 series, which gives a "dynamic optical effect" when you see the phone from different angles.

The camera frame uses a Twin Moon Camera Design. The upper half is decorated with metal, and the lower half is coated with ceramic" to provide a contrasting but premium experience." The frame has a breathing light around it, underneath a 1mm diameter fiber that's bent to frame the camera area. This fiber emits soft, pulsating lights when the smartphone is charging or receives a call or a message.

The frame is a nice design feature, but because of how it protrudes and its off-center position, the Reno7 Pro 5G wobbles on a table.

The subtle shimmer and glow of the panel is lovely. It reflects light in different ways and has a fingerprint-resistant and matte finish. The surface is textured, which helps with grip.

The upper part of the camera frame is metal, while the lower one is ceramic-coated. Because of this disparity, the top half is matte and resistant to fingerprints, while the lower, ceramic-coated part is glossy and can get smudged. Our unit even gathered a few micro scratches as well.

Oppo Reno7 Pro 5G ceramic coating on the camera frame

The controls are nicely laid out on the Oppo Reno7 Pro 5G. The power button on the right is placed right where it needs to be and has a little green-accented inlet that improves tactility. There are stereo speakers on the Oppo Reno7 Pro 5G, one in the earpiece and another on the bottom of the phone.

We found the flat frame a detriment to usability. It simply makes the Reno7 Pro 5G uncomfortable to hold for longer periods of time. However, thanks to its slimness and relatively compact size, the Reno7 Pro 5G remains a great overall package.

Controls and frame

The 6.5-inch AMOLED is bright and punchy with great viewing angles. It also has one of the slimmer bezels we've seen - Oppo claims they're 11.5% narrower than the previous Reno. There's an optical fingerprint scanner embedded into the display. It's accurate and works every time, but it's placed a bit lower than we'd prefer. Coupled with the slim bottom bezel, it's a bit of a chore to comfortably hit the scanner with your thumb.

Hardware

The Oppo Reno7 Pro 5G has a 6.5-inch 2400x1080px AMOLED display with a maximum refresh rate of 90Hz, and a touch sampling rate of 180Hz. The display is rated for up to 500 nits for regular use, 800 nits in direct sunlight, and up to 920 nits when viewing HDR content.

The chipset of choice is the 6nm Dimensity 1200-Max, exclusive to the Oppo Reno7 Pro 5G. Made in collaboration between Oppo and Mediatek, it has an octa-core processor with 4 performance and 4 efficiency cores - one of the performance cores is the Cortex-A78 Ultra. The processor is paired to 12GB of RAM, while storage is 256GB.

The Dimensity 1200-Max enables AI Deblur technology, which allows the selfie camera to snap blur-free images, and AI-PQ, which enables improvements in color and contrast when viewing HDR content.

Moving on to cameras. The main camera is a 50MP f/1.8 24mm in front of a 1/1.56-inch Sony IMX766 sensor. There's an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide and a 2MP f/2.4 macro sensor.

On the front sits a 32MP f/2.4 that uses a Sony IMX709 sensor, exclusive to the Oppo Reno7 Pro 5G. It's an RGBW sensor that Oppo claims to capture 60% more light than the Reno6 Pro's selfie sensor. Like the main camera, the selfie uses DOL-HDR, which snaps multiple exposures into a bright image with less noise. The front camera can detect the number of people in front of the camera and decide whether to crop in or use the full width of the lens.

The Oppo Reno7 Pro 5G has a 4,500mAh battery with 65W SUPERVOOC wired charging. Oppo claims the battery can charge from empty to 100% in only 31 minutes.

This is in line with our testing which saw the phone charge fully in 32 minutes.

Performance

The MediaTek Dimensity 1200-Max is a custom variation of 1200 that has a higher-clocked Ultra core. The processor is divided into 8 cores, which themselves are divided into three clusters. There are four Cortex-A78 - three working at up to 2.6GHz and one, Ultra Cortex-A78 core that ramps up to 3.1GHz. Finally, there are four Cortex-A55's that scale up to 2GHz.

The Reno7 Pro 5G comes with just one RAM configuration - 12GB, but those can be expanded up to 7 additional GB from the ROM memory.

Here are some performance benchmarks we ran with the Oppo Reno7 Pro 5G. These are not final scores, and we expect a more review-ready unit to perform better. In our tests, the Dimensity 1200-Max was even a bit slower than the non-Max in the vivo V23 Pro and the Xiaomi 11T.

GeekBench 4.4 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Oppo Reno7 Pro 5G
  13142
• Oppo Reno6 Pro 5G
  13057
• vivo V23 Pro
  12377
• vivo V23 5g
  8421

GeekBench 4.4 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Oppo Reno7 Pro 5G
  4319
• Oppo Reno6 Pro 5G
  4304
• vivo V23 Pro
  4238
• vivo V23 5g
  3463

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G
  3049
• vivo V23 Pro
  3021
• Xiaomi 11T
  2834
• Samsung Galaxy M52 5G
  2796
• Oppo Reno7 Pro 5G
  2691
• Oppo Reno6 Pro 5G
  2621
• vivo V23 5g
  2140
• Oppo Reno6 5G
  2131

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G
  1096
• vivo V23 Pro
  850
• Oppo Reno7 Pro 5G
  815
• Oppo Reno6 Pro 5G
  813
• Xiaomi 11T
  742
• vivo V23 5g
  739
• Oppo Reno6 5G
  722
• Samsung Galaxy M52 5G
  603

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• vivo V23 Pro
  635060
• Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G
  566529
• Oppo Reno7 Pro 5G
  550659
• Oppo Reno6 Pro 5G
  524692
• vivo V23 5g
  406498
• Oppo Reno6 5G
  362450