OPPO recently unveiled its latest midrange smartphone lineup, the OPPO Reno8 Series in the country. The new lineup brings much-needed upgrades over its predecessors like ultra-fast charging, faster processor, better camera sensors and more which we’ll delve into in this full review of the OPPO Reno8 5G.
UNBOXING
Before we begin, here’s what comes with the box: the safety guide, sim ejector tool, clear case, 80W charging brick, Type-C charging cable, and the phone itself with a pre-applied screen protector.
DESIGN
OPPO Reno8 5G brings with it a streamlined unibody and slim design. Our unit comes in shimmer black and you can get yours in Shimmer gold too. The frosted chassis blends the camera island with the back with a smooth curve. The dual sony sensors are covered by metal rings. OPPO keeps a boxy look with the Reno8 featuring sharp edges. It’s very thin and light coming in 7.6mm thickness weighing 179grams.
The bottom features the dual nano-sim card slot, microphone, type-c charging port, and speaker grille. At the top, we have a secondary microphone. On the right side is the power button with a green accent while the left has the volume buttons.
Coming to the front is a 6.44″ AMOLED screen with a 90Hz refresh rate slightly interrupted with a left-punchole cutout for the selfie camera. OPPO Reno8 5G has an optical under-display fingerprint scanner that’s much faster for quick unlocks. We also have face unlock for biometrics too. The screen is protected by Gorilla Glass 5.
The screen is bright at 800 nits peak brightness and is sufficient for consuming content like watching movies, scrolling social media, gaming and browsing the web.
PERFORMANCE
OPPO Reno8 5G upgrades the processor to the more robust Dimenstiy 1300 chipset and pairs it with Mali G77 MC9 GPU and 8GB of RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.1 onboard storage. You also get additional 5GB of virtual RAM.
OPPO Reno8 5G ships with Android 12 and ColorOS 12.1 straight out of the box upgradeable to Android 13 and ColorOS 13 when it rolls out later this year or early 2023.
ColorOS 12 is one of my favourite user interfaces and is highly customizable from app icons, accent colours, always-on-display presets and with other features like the Smart Sidebar and Flexible multitasking windows.
This hardware and software combination makes the phone handle your daily tasks and occasional gaming effortlessly. Synthetic benchmarks rank the Reno8 at 3284 on multi-core and 854 on single-core scores.
It also recorded 5G speeds of up to 270Mbps on Safaricom’s 5G network. It’s one of the fastest 5G smartphones in the country so far.
Overall, you’ll love its performance.
CAMERAS
OPPO Reno8 5G uses a Sony’s 50MP IMX766 sensor for the main camera and an Oppo-exclusive 32MP SONY IMX709 sensor for the front cameras. This sensor has an RGBW filter for taking better and sharper selfies even in lowlight. It lets in upto 60% more light with 35% noise reduction. Main photos and selfies get much-needed improvements over its predecessor.
OPPO always nails it with its selfie photography and the Reno8 takes that to another level – you’ll love taking photos with this phone.
The main camera gets complimented with an 8MP ultrawide and a 2MP macro sensor.
Camera modes to play around with include portrait, pro, extra HD which upscale 50MP photos to 108MP, 2x optical zoom, dual view video, Soloop templates and night. Video is capped at 4k for the main and 1080p for the front-facing camera. UltraSteady mode is capped at 1080p.
Photography and video performance are pretty solid even in lowlight scenarios. Shots and videos come out with pretty good contrast, sharpness and colour with impressive dynamic range.
This is the ultimate selfie camera smartphone
Regular Shots and Night Shots
If you’re looking for the perfect camera smartphone then the OPPO Reno8 5G is the ultimate pick for you.
BATTERY LIFE
OPPO Reno8 5G packs a 4500mAh battery that charges up using 80W SuperVOOC Flash Charge. It’s super fast as you can go from 17% to 90% in 20 minutes. Battery performance is dependable too as I was averaging 8 hours of screen on time with heavy use.
OPPO included 5-layer charging protection and Battery Health Engine to ensure long battery life and safe fast charging.
VERDICT
OPPO Reno8 5G boasts robust performance, excellent camera performance, ultra-fast charging, nice design and is one of the best midrange smartphones in the country.
PRICING AND AVAILABILITY
OPPO Reno8 5G and OPPO Reno8 4G are available at OPPO’s retail stores countrywide and on e-commerce sites like Kilimall.
- OPPO Reno8 5G: Ksh 59,999
- OPPO Reno8 4G: Ksh 42,999
