Oppo Reno2 review: An excellent update over the original Reno

Note: This article was first published on 23 January 2020.

Overview

Oppo is on a roll it seems. Their Reno series was announced in April 2019 with the Reno 10x Zoom and Reno only to be quickly followed up by the Reno Z in July. This was later followed up by another launch in mid-October, adding the Reno2 and the Reno2Z to the line-up. The Reno2 Z is simply a direct upgrade for the Reno Z, with a new camera system and a notch-free display thanks to the inclusion of a pop-up selfie camera.

We'll focus on their higher-tier Reno2. More than just a simple replacement for the Reno, this sits just under the Reno 10x Zoom and above the standard Reno as a tweener between the mid-range and flagship categories. As such, it gets the slightly newer (relatively speaking) Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G octa-core processor (2.2GHz) with Adreno 618 GPU, a step above the Snapdragon 710 octa-core processor on the Reno and a level below the Snapdragon 855 on the Reno 10x Zoom.

This is even reflected in the screen size. The Reno2 has a 6.5-inch, 2,400 x 1,080pixels (401ppi) AMOLED display (20:9 aspect ratio), which places it right smack in the middle of the Reno and Reno 10x Zoom in terms of size. Here's how they stack up:-

• Reno2: 6.5-inch, 2,400 x 1,080pixels (401ppi) AMOLED display (20:9 aspect ratio)
• Reno 10x Zoom: 6.6-inch, 2,340 x 1,080pixels (387ppi) AMOLED display
• Reno: 6.4-inch 2,340 x 1,080pixels (387ppi) AMOLED display

The camera system is also more aligned to that of the Reno 10x Zoom, as the Reno2 gets the same fin-style pop-up 16-megapixel selfie f/2.0 camera and a robust 48-megapixel quad camera system:

• 48-megapixel f/1.7, main wide-angle lens
• 13-megapixel f/2.4 telephoto lens that offers 2x optical zoom
• 8-megapixel f/2.2, ultrawide lens
• 2-megapixel f/2.4, depth-sensing

Together the system covers the equivalent of 16-83mm focal length (35mm equivalent terms), with 5x Hybrid Zoom and 20x Digital Zoom that’s powered by what Oppo calls Fusion Imaging Technology. There’s also a new AI-tuned Ultra Dark Mode, and a new AI Beauty Mode, with your usual bokeh effects.

The Reno2 comes with only one standard configuration of 8GB RAM and 256GB storage, but unlike the Reno, you’ll get the option of adding memory via microSD (supporting up to a further 256GB in capacity).

Design

Like the Reno 10x Zoom and the Reno, (and really most phones today) the Reno2's front is mostly glass with hardly any bezels. To be precise, it has a 93.1% screen-to-body ratio. The screen has a rated contrast ratio of 1,400,000:1 and a maximum brightness of 800nits. That’s not the brightest of screens you can find in the market now (the Note10+ maxes out at 1,308nits), but it’s sufficient enough that you won’t have issues viewing the screen even in bright sunlight.

The biggest difference between models really comes in the finish. Oppo introduced a new "Twilight Mist" finish with the Reno2, and this gives a nice deep sheen over the majority of its back, while the sides are a slightly lighter toned so when the light catches the sides, it feels like there’s an LED light flashing around the edges.

The Reno2 comes in two colour options: Luminous Black and Sunset Pink. Our review unit was in the Luminous Black, and with this in colour option in particular, the centre strip is surrounded by a lighter tone too. So when you tilt the phone up and down it seems like there’s a light flashing around the centre of the phone too.

In terms of size and weight, the Reno2 fits between the Reno 10x Zoom and Reno too. It measures 160.0 x 74.3 x 9.5mm and weighs 189g, just a hair smaller than the Reno 10x Zoom (162.0 x 77.2 x 9.3mm, 210g) and slightly wider and thicker than the standard Reno (156.6 x74.3 x 9.0mm, 185g).

Gorilla Glass covers both the front and back of the phone. The camera system is once again flush under the glass surface, with a tiny glass knob placed strategically so that the lens doesn’t come in contact with the surface when you place the phone down. 

You’ll find the volume up and down buttons on the left, with the power/hold button on the right.  Just below the power button is also where you’ll find the SIM card tray, and it’s worth noting that you can configure the power button to call up Google Assistant with a long press.

Just like the Reno, the Reno2 has a 3.5mm audio jack at the button of the phone, with a USB-C port for charging and data transfer. Fingerprint scanning is once again the preferred biometric security implementation, with an under-display scanner to preserve the all-display front.

There’s also face recognition with the selfie camera, and this works just as well as the implementation on the Reno 10x Zoom – fast to pop up, and fast to retract. That also means the same limitations though – the physical gaps necessary to allow for the camera system to pop up and down means the phone isn’t IP rated for dust and water protection.

Display

Like the first salvo of Reno products, the Reno2 sports a Full HD+ (2,400 x 1,080 pixels) AMOLED display. Oppo dubs this a “Sunlight AMOLED” screen, and that’s because the display goes up to a max of 800nits brightness, with a contrast of 1,400,000:1. The Reno2’s screen is also the first mobile phone to get Full Care Display Certification by TÜV Rheinland, and this covers eleven aspects including display quality, ambient light management, eye protection technology and user health and comfort guidance.

It also has an Auto-Brightness adjustment feature to help against eye strain and a dedicated Night Shield mode that reduces blue light at night, with the option of low-brightness flicker reduction at the expense of screen noise. According to Oppo, the Reno2 reduces 37.5% more blue light than the Reno, so that’s definitely a significant improvement.

Back to the display attributes, once again, you get a choice of two colour modes – Vivid and Gentle. The Gentle colour mode seems a bit too cool to be accurate, so we left it on Vivid mode through our testing. As with the Reno 10x Zoom, the colours are generally accurate, with perhaps a slight yellow tinge to images on our unit.

Audio

Now this is where the Reno2 leans more towards “midrange” than “flagship”. You get pretty much the same in-ear headphones as with the Reno, so expect the same level of performance – decent mids, and good clarity on vocals, while the lower bass and upper highs leave much to be desired, especially if they don’t fit you well. 

Given that it shares the same design as the Reno 10x Zoom, it’s also no surprise that the performance from the speakers is similar too. You again get a lopsided listening experience as the speakers on the top of the phone (the left if you’re holding the phone horizontally) are noticeably softer, presumably to accommodate the pop-up selfie camera.

That aside, the speakers do pretty well on vocals, and seem to pick out sound effects fairly well, so they should be good for casual listening. Because the lower speaker does go fairly loud without distortion, they should be good for when you want to share a video with friends too, just don’t count on them for any sort of critical listening. 

Software

As previously mentioned, ColorOS itself takes its cues from iOS, with rounded edges to its square icons next to the circular ones, and you'll again get the option to go with drawer mode if you want to easily access all your apps. One thing we didn’t note before was that it now uses a universal font – Oppo Sans. This is supposed to reflect Oppo’s brand style as well as combine technical beauty with global vision and is embedded in ColorOS 6.1 for a “more unified brand experience at all touch points”.  

The Reno2 runs ColorOS 6.1 based on Android 9, and this version gets the latest Android security patch and improved fingerprint algorithms as well as better Bluetooth compatibility with cars. So, if you go into the Settings menu and look under Smart Services, you’ll find a separate tab for Smart Driving.

When this is enabled, the phone will have Bluetooth turned on and ready for connection in the car. You will also get to enable Do-Not-Disturb Driving, which as its name implies, is a group of settings that let you control what incoming calls can come through, whether or not to automatically switch to speaker when an incoming call is detected, or to simply auto send an SMS saying that you’re driving. That’s a bit more control than what was previously offered, though Riding Mode seems to have disappeared completely. Small details if you've been an Oppo fan, but we hope you appreciate us noticing the finer things.

Imaging

At the launch event, Oppo really talked up the capabilities of the camera system on the Reno2, and now that we’ve had a chance to properly test this out for ourselves, we have to say we agree with their claims.

To recap the details shared earlier, the Reno2 has a quad-camera system on its back, with a 48-megapixel f/1.7 main wide-angle lens, a 13-megapixel f/2.4 telephoto lens an 8-megapixel f/2.2 ultrawide lens and a 2-megapixel f/2.4, depth-sensing lens.

Note that the telephoto lens only offers 2x optical zoom, as it’s a standard telephoto lens and not the periscope-style design found on the Reno 10x Zoom. On the whole, colours captured are true to life, without much colour bias to them. While you don’t get the 10x optical zoom of the Reno 10x Zoom, you get a pretty decent 5x Hybrid Zoom that should cover most of your everyday photography needs.

Zoom performance

Here's an example of how the zoom levels compare. (Click to view the full-resolution images)

First, the Reno2.

Now, the captures from the Reno 10x Zoom is as follows:-

You'll probably already notice that the Reno 10x Zoom captures a bit more detail than the Reno2, especially at full telephoto, but we do think the Reno2 performs admirably given it doesn't have the advantage of the periscope-style telephoto lens.

Colour Rendition

Here's a look at the colours captured by the Reno2. 

Low light performance

What most impressed us was actually the new impressive Ultra Dark Mode, as this seemed to turn in the best results of the Reno family so far. Ultra Dark Mode kicks in when the light levels are below 5 lux, and as you can see from the image below, even at ISO 3,103, there isn’t a significant amount of noise in the frame. The vehicles in the picture are much better defined than the ones in the capture from the Reno 10x Zoom, and there’s a wider dynamic range overall.

How this is achieved is likely through a heavy amount of pixel binning, as the final file is only about 3MB large. That’s just about enough if you’re only going to view the image on screen or if you don’t intend to crop the picture further, so we’d suggest to adjust your shot planning appropriately.

Looking at this capture gives you an idea of how the Reno2 handles skin tones at lower light conditions. The capture was taken at ISO500, which is relatively low, but as you can see from the crop, there's hardly any detail left in her skin as everything is washed out due to what seems like aggressive noise reduction.

Front camera

Now let's take a look at the front camera. The camera seems to do a pretty good job of balancing the tricky lighting condition overall, but it seems like there's some digital retouching applied even at the lowest setting. This makes it seem as though there's some smudging on your skin.

Video capture

Play

From this video clip, the first thing that becomes obvious is how long it takes the Reno2 to adjust exposure for the lighting conditions, leaving the singer overexposed for a good eight seconds or so. That aside, we'd say the colours captured are pretty accurate, and there's no obvious noise, banding or artefacts in the capture. Audio capture is also quite good, as there's good clarity in her voice overall.

Benchmark Performance, Battery life and Conclusion

As we mentioned when we reviewed the Samsung A80 back in September last year, mid-range smartphones with game-optimised processors are becoming more common now. And this certainly gives you more options if you’re looking for better value for money.

Like the Samsung A80, the Reno2 is also running the Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G processor, so you’ll get two Kryo 470 cores running at 2.2GHz derived from the Cortex-A76, and six A55-derived Kyro cores running at 1.8GHz for speedier performance.

The original Reno only uses the more pedestrian Snapdragon 710 which has two Kyro 360 cores running at 2.2GHz and six Kyro 360 cores running at 1.7GHz. The Reno2 also has the newer Adreno 618 graphics processor compared to the Adreno 616 in the Reno, so we’d expect performance to be a fair bit faster.

3DMark Sling Shot Extreme

3DMark Sling Shot is an advanced 3D graphics benchmark that tests the full range of OpenGL ES 3.1 and ES 3.0 API features including multiple render targets, instanced rendering, uniform buffers and transform feedback. The test also includes impressive volumetric lighting and post-processing effects.

The Reno2 easily outclasses the original Reno with this benchmark, with a score of 2,574 to the Reno’s score of 1,878. It seems the Adreno 618 really puts the Reno2 ahead of the competition as it’s second only to the Galaxy A80, which also uses the Snapdragon 730G. However the gulf in performance between these two phones means Samsung must be doing something else under the hood too. Perhaps some form of software optimisation?

Antutu v.7.2.4

AnTuTu is an all-in-one benchmark that tests CPU, GPU, memory, and storage. The CPU benchmark evaluates both integer and floating-point performance, the GPU tests assess 2D and 3D performance, the memory test measures available memory bandwidth and latency, and the storage tests gauge the read and write speeds of a device's flash memory.

The tables are turned when it comes to the Antutu benchmark though, as the Reno2 leaps miles ahead of the competition with a score of 261,223. None of the other competitive phones go above 200,000 mark, while only the Galaxy A80 coming close with a score of 196,994.

Geekbench 4.4.2

Geekbench CPU is a cross-platform processor benchmark that tests both single-core and multi-core performance with workloads that simulate real-world usage. Geekbench 4 scores are calibrated against a baseline score of 4000 (which is the score of an Intel Core i7-6600U CPU processor).

With this, the Reno2 again leads the pack with a multi-core score of 7,038 and a single-core score of 2,554. The original Reno only had a multi-core score of 5,824 and a single-core score of 1,495, so you could say the Reno2 is 1.5 times faster than the Reno in this benchmark.

The next best performing phone was again the Samsung A80, with a single-core score of 2,508 and a multi-core score of 6,928. Seems like the Snapdragon 730G is quite a step-up.

JetStream 2

JetStream 2 measures the browsing performance of a device when processing JavaScript. It not only takes into consideration the underlying hardware performance but also assesses how optimized a particular platform is in delivering a high-speed web browsing experience.

Results on JetStream 2 again had the Reno2 leading the pack with a score of 46.232. That’s only about seven points above the Galaxy A80, but already 1.5 times better than the Reno, so it’s evident that in terms of processing power the Reno2 is much stronger than the Reno.

Battery Life

Our standard battery test for mobile phones has the following parameters:

• Looping a 720p video with screen brightness and volume at 100%
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
• Constant data streaming through email and Twitter

Now here’s the one area where the Reno2 fell completely flat. It only managed 573 minutes in our battery standard battery testing, which doesn’t even break the 10-hour mark. That’s rather surprising considering it ships with a 4,000mAh battery!

The Samsung Galaxy A80 has a smaller 3,700mAh battery, but that lasted 887 minutes (14 hours and 47 minutes), so you’d get almost five hours more from that. Looking at the maximum brightness value for both phones gives a possible explanation: the Galaxy A80 tops out at 607 nits, while the Reno2 goes up to 800nits, so that's likely to contribute to faster battery drain.

Still, it does seem like Oppo could take a closer look at battery optimisation on the Reno2 as that seems to be its biggest limitation at the moment if you use the phone outside a lot.

Conclusion

If you’ve been a fan of Oppo's recent phones, the Reno2 would come easily recommended. As we’ve seen from our testing, it has a highly competitive upper mid-range processor in the form of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G, a flashy pop-up fin-style selfie camera, and a very capable quad-camera system in the rear. It's one The one critical limitation would be the less than great battery life.

The suggested retail price of S$899 only places it some S$50 more than the S$849 of the orginal Reno too, so if you ask us, the Reno2 completely supersedes the Reno as it is better in almost every way. Where it gets trickier is when you ignore processing performance and only compare the Reno2’s camera system to the Reno 10x Zoom’s. The Reno2’s camera is arguably a more well-rounded one that only loses out in terms of telephoto reach, yet retails for about S$300 cheaper.

That said, because it’s been on market for a while, the Reno 10x Zoom can be had for as low as S$700 now (street prices). So, if you’re really looking to buy now, that would be the option to get as the street price of the Reno2 has only fallen to S$680 in terms of street price. Otherwise, we’d wait a few months for prices to taper further and tilt the Reno2 to its favour further. Just remember that unlike most phone of its class that have some form of water and dust protection rating, the Reno2's design cannot offer such protection.