OPPO Reno11 Pro review: A solid photography choice at a price

Note: This review was first published on 26 February 2024.

Photography goes up to 11

OPPO’s Reno midrange series phones have always been a solid option for people looking for flashier phones with photography chops while maintaining a reasonable price point. That certainly hasn’t changed with the OPPO Reno11 Pro that launched earlier this year in January, with OPPO billing it as "The Portrait Expert."

The TL;DR version:



It excels at photography and is a generally decent phone, but its price makes it hard to recommend.

Rocking a MediaTek Dimensity 8200 chipset with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage, the Reno11 Pro is definitely a looker, particularly if you choose the Pearl White like our review unit.

To live up to the Reno series’ reputation for producing great photos, the rear camera array boasts a 50MP main camera, 32MP telephoto and 8MP ultra-wide camera, and a 32MP front-facing selfie camera. Above and beyond this formidale camera setup is a host pf portraiture-related photography features which we'll go through in detail below.

The OPPO phone runs on ColorOS 14, which is the brand’s reskinned Android 14 operating system. 

Powering it all is a 4,600mAh battery that supports OPPO’s proprietary 80W wired SuperVOOC charging, which is supposed to juice the phone up from 0-100% in just 24 minutes.

So how does the S$899 OPPO Reno11 Pro fare against other phones in this price range? Let’s find out.

Gorgeous, eye-catching design

The Reno series has a relatively short refresh cycle, with the Reno10 Pro+ 5G coming to Singapore back in July 2023. It's not surprising to see Reno11 Pro's design language being similar to its predecessor. It features the same large, pill-shaped camera housing on the rear.

This time, however, the Pearl White colour is the standout (it's also available in Rock Grey). Almost everyone who came across the phone in my review period has remarked on how gorgeous the shimmering rear is. OPPO said that was made possible by integrating three layers into a single piece of glass, with the process resulting in 3.6 million tiny reflective surfaces to create that lustre. 

A massive perk of this design is that the frosted glass back is much more resistant to fingerprints and smudges. This helps the phone look pristine for longer. 

With 3D curved glass covering both the front and back, the Reno11 Pro is a joy to hold in the hand, fitting nicely with no sharp edges. And at just 181g, it’s also lighter than many other flagship-grade phones and foldables out there offering a large screen size like it.

One thing worth pointing out is that the phone comes with a pre-applied screen protector. However, we found that it’s prone to scuff and scratches. You’ll probably want to swap this out at some point. 

We noted in our OPPO Reno10 Pro review that it was odd that the Reno10 Pro only allowed for a forced 60Hz or 120Hz refresh rate customisation, and OPPO has changed this in the Reno11 Pro by adding the option for a 90Hz refresh rate. Refresh rates can be manually selected for each app, so you can force any app to run at either 60Hz, 90Hz, or 120Hz. To enable this, you’ll need to select the High refresh rate option before the App-specific refresh rates option shows up in your Settings app.

With a peak brightness of 950 nits, the 6.7-inch OLED HDR10+ display is fairly legible under bright sunlight. However, we must point out that it’s not quite as bright as some of its rivals.

One area that OPPO has chosen to cost cut is the speakers. It has a single speaker that's positioned at the bottom of the phone. It's not the worst speaker in the world, but it's placement poses some problems no matter which way you hold it. If you hold it upright, there's a chance you'll block the speaker and muffle the sound. But in landscape mode, it's very obvious that sound only comes from one side of the phone.

Another area where cost-cutting is obvious pertains to water and dust resistance. The Reno11 Pro has no officially tested IP rating, and this lack of protection of any sort makes its S$899 price tag feel a little pricier than it already is.

Unfortunately laden with bloatware

As for software, it’s the same ColorOS skin we’ve seen over the years, just running on Android 14.

What was surprising (and upsetting given our expectations) was the substantial amount of pre-installed bloatware and apps, similar to our OPPO Reno10 Pro experience. It comes preinstalled with the likes of WPS Office, LinkedIn, Agoda, Lazada, TikTok, Shopee, Booking.com, etc., all showing up on the phone once started. I'm sure most of us will find these apps useful, but I'm also sure most of us would prefer to install them ourselves.

Less forgivable are the two folders of “Hot Games” and “Hot Apps”, which are mostly apps you wouldn't even think about before proceeding to uninstall them. While we're grateful that they aren't automatically downloaded, there are still a lot of apps to uninstall, marring what could be a great setup and user experience.

Bloatware aside, the phone boots up quickly and is generally problem-free in general day-to-day use. The biometrics unlocking process is passable as well, with the phone unlocking on each first try, even if the fingerprint scanner does take around a second to get ready. 

Imaging Quality

We’ve tested the Reno11 Pro's Ultra Clear Portrait System previously and written about it here with plenty of camera samples, so you’ll definitely want to take a look at the in-depth piece while we recap the rest of the imaging system's abilities here. 

In addition to the (excellent) portrait shots that the Reno11 Pro is capable of, the phone fares well with closeup shots of subjects like food, retaining plenty of detail, and reproducing colours accurately. 

Night shots also turned out fine, even for scenes with greater contrast (like the neon sign in the example above) that could cause some auto-exposure issues. However, foliage in night shots appears smudged when zoomed in, but it’s not too big of an issue if you are just uploading the photos to social media.

Even though the telephoto zoom only has a 2x optical range, the photos from the 5x digital zoom still managed to retain a good amount of detail and clarity (as long as you have sufficient light).

The ultrawide camera doesn't have much issues with distortion at the corners either. In fact, the ultrawide photos out of the camera look pretty good even without any editing.

Benchmark Performance

Oddly enough, the OPPO Reno 11 Pro is powered by an older chip, the MediaTek Dimensity 8200, which was launched in late 2022. This does mean that we probably won’t see great numbers in the benchmark tests when compared to recent smartphones that are powered by newer MediaTek or Qualcomm Snapdragon chips.

Putting it to the test

To find out how the competitors line up specs and price-wise, check them out in this link.

For this review, we've picked phones in a similar price range, such as Google Pixel 8, Nothing Phone (2), Xiaomi 13T Pro, Vivo V29, and not to forget, its predecessor from the Reno lineup, the OPPO Reno 10 Pro+.

To find out more about the tests we conduct and what they relate to, we've jotted them down here.

Benchmark Performance remarks

Since the OPPO Reno11 Pro is powered by an older chip, it wasn't surprising to see it post lower numbers than its competitors. However, despite the lower numbers, the phone is still perfectly fine for normal usage. There isn't too much stuttering or lag. Considering that we don’t have many other phones in the S$900 price range, the numbers aren’t too far off from what we see from more expensive smartphones like the Google Pixel 8. You might note that the the Reno 11 Pro lost out to its Reno 10 Pro+ predecessor across all the tests, but it might also help to understand that the Reno 10 Pro+ was quite a bit more expensive at S$1,149 and boasted a speedier processor.

If you’re obsessed with getting the best performance, you would likely want to consider pursuing premium-grade smartphones with the latest chipsets and optimisations. But is the current processor detrimental to the phone? That would be a no.

Battery Life

Our battery benchmark uses PCMark for Android’s Work 3.0 Battery Life test to determine a modern Android-based smartphone's battery uptime in minutes. This controlled benchmark simulates real-world usage with a combination of both web and social media browsing, video and photo editing, parsing data with various file formats, writing (on documents), and more. 

The phone's battery life is average when compared to its competitors. It seems like the Mediatek processors aren't very good at power efficiency considering the one other phone that had meagre battery life in this comparison, the Xiaomi 13T Pro, also used a Mediatek chip.

The Reno11 Pro used up 23% for an hour of 60Hz gaming at max brightness and consumes roughly 80% of its battery throughout a normal day with moderate use and dynamic refresh rate turned on. The phone also gets rather hot to the touch when under load. While playing Honkai: Star Rail with a battery monitoring app open), we saw internal temperatures hit as high as 46 degrees Celsius. 

Thankfully, the OPPO Reno11 pro has 80W wired fast charging with the adapter in the box, which juices the phone up from 0-100% in around 44 minutes. Also worth noting is that the charging head in the box comes with a plug that is compatible with Singapore’s three-pin (Type-G) power outlets. Wireless charging is missing, but that is typical of OPPO’s mid-range Reno series handsets. 

Conclusion

The OPPO Reno11 Pro straddles the line between true midrange and budget flagship status at S$899, with both the price and performance in the middle of the pack. 

On the outset, Its price point makes it difficult to compare to other contenders, since it commands substantially more than a true midrange phone, like the Vivo V29 (S$649). And if you can stretch your budget, you can get a true high-end device like the Google Pixel 8 (S$1,099). 

If we compare Reno11 Pro to cheaper alternatives, the Vivo V29 is one of the closest alternatives in terms of performance and target audience, but it feels disingenuous since the V29 is a considerably more affordable true midrange phone at S$649. For the budget-conscious, the S$250 of savings is too significant to ignore.

That said, it seems to offer more than the S$888 Samsung Galaxy S23 FE because a similar price fetches you much greater storage (512GB on the Reno11 Pro, instead of 128GB), and the photography chops on the OPPO phone is much better across the board. That's with the performance and battery life being on par. So, the Reno11 Pro is not the worst choice money can get you. But its value over the Galaxy S23 FE  and price point also means it also has to contend with high-end alternatives.

The devil is in the details

If you compare the Reno11 Pro to more expensive phones like the Google Pixel 8 at S$1,099 or the Nothing Phone (2) at S$999, it becomes harder to recommend the Reno over the others. While the Reno11 Pro is more affordable, the Pixel 8’s AI features and photography capabilities or the Nothing Phone (2)’s strong performance and battery life could be worth the S$100-200 premium. Furthermore, the Google and Nothing alternatives have IP-rated water resistance, too, and that's a nice thing to have if you are careless with your devices.

Its performance might only be average, but Oppo's Reno 11 Pro has a beautiful rear finish, a large HDR screen, an expansive 512GB of internal storage, and, most importantly, great cameras that excel at taking portraits with human subjects. The Pixel 8, while a wonderful phone that we recommend if you can stomach its price point, has a smaller display than all the phones we've compared. Only the expensive Pixel 8 Pro (at S$1,549) can match the large screen offering, but even that starting from just a measly 128GB internal storage capacity. Putting the Google option aside, let's have a look at the other options:-

From the table, you can see that while OPPO has a means to justify its asking price, it would be great if they could knock the retail price down by another S$100 to make it much easier to recommend over other midrange or high-end alternatives. Splitting hairs over differences at this fairly high price point is not the same as dwelling on differences on a mid-range phone half the price point like a Xiaomi Redmi phone.

Currently, the S$899 price tag puts the OPPO Reno11 Pro in a tough spot, particularly if the company wants to release a Reno11 Pro+ sometime in the future. It's still a good choice for a spot of photography with all the basics down pat.

OPPO Reno11 Pro comes in two colourways: Rock Grey and Pearl White. It comes in only one configuration that has 12GB RAM with 512GB storage. The official pricing is S$899.

The device is available at the OPPO online store, physical OPPO concept stores, as well as Shopee, Lazada, Qoo10, TikTok, iShopChangi, and other consumer electronic retailers (Best Denki, Challenger, Courts, Gain City, Harvey Norman, Popular).

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