Oppo Reno 2 review - A great option amidst excellent competition - Android
Be it charging speeds or appealing designs, Oppo has consistently upped the stakes. The original Oppo Reno was a gorgeous piece of kit that took a very different approach with its pop-up selfie camera. The Oppo Reno 2 builds on that foundation and delivers a well-equipped package that oozes style.
The Oppo Reno 2 goes up against competition such as the OnePlus 7T, ROG Phone II, and the Redmi K20 Pro. All three phones trounce the Reno 2 as far as the hardware package is concerned. However, the devil is in the details and, depending on your preferences, an optimized software build can often hold up against more powerful hardware.
The Reno 2 is competing in a category that is dominated by OnePlus, both in terms of market share and mindshare. This makes it even more interesting to see if a focus on superior design can help the brand make inroads into the value flagship segment.
The Oppo Reno 2 ships with a very comprehensive package that includes a high-quality case, a pre-applied screen protector, as well as a headset in the box. Additionally, the phone ships with a VOOC 3.0 charger and accompanying USB-C cable, as well as the usual quick-start guides.
Oppo has made big strides in design and build quality. The Reno 2 embodies all the learnings, and is a downright stunning piece of hardware. From the generally great design to the high-quality construction, this is a phone that screams luxury.
Up front, the phone is an all-screen affair. There are minimal bezels on either side and a barely-there chin along the bottom. The phone employs an in-display fingerprint scanner. I found this to be near-instantaneous in unlocking the phone. That said, the scanner is positioned a bit too low relative to the size of the phone. I found myself bending my thumb awkwardly to reach the fingerprint reader, and I suspect people with larger hands will find this harder still.
The volume buttons are two separated keys that sit on the left, while the power button is on the right. You can set the power key to activate Google Assistant with a long press. The tactile feedback and general construction is top-tier here. The bottom edge has a USB-C port, a headphone jack, and a single speaker flanking the right side of the USB port.
You might be wondering where the front-facing camera is. Call it a party trick, or a design flourish, but the Reno 2 sports the same shark fin camera design that debuted on the original Oppo Reno. It looks cool and helps differentiate the phone from the standard pop-up selfie cameras in the market. There’s little to no functional difference here.
Weighing about 189g, I really like the weight distribution of the Oppo Reno 2. There’s a sense of balance here, and the phone slips into your hand without coming across as overly big or unwieldy, as is the case with devices like the OnePlus 7T Pro. The rear glass panel, however, is quite slippery and a smudge magnet to boot. Oppo managed to keep the rear camera module flush with the shell of the phone, so there isn’t an untoward bulge or protruding element here.
Save for a rounded-off nub that helps elevate the body just a bit when placed on a flat surface, and serves as an anchor point when holding the phone, the rear of the phone is clean. It is, however, very busy. A long strip of branding takes away from the otherwise stunning design. It also doesn’t help that Oppo does not claim any form of IP rating or water resistance for the Reno 2.
The 6.5-inch AMOLED display used on the Reno 2 looks rather good. A lot of it comes down to the sheer uninterrupted canvas that it offers due to the all-screen design, uninterrupted by a notch or cut out. The 20:9 aspect ratio makes it very comfortable to hold as well.
I noticed that the screen skews towards blue tones, which gives it a cooler look. It isn’t the most natural representation, but I’d be nitpicking if I said that it was a dealbreaker. There are options to tweak the color profile, but differences are minimal here. The standard color profile also shifts toward cooler shades.
The display skews toward cooler tones, and peak brightness might not be enough under direct sunlight.
Text and icons look tack-sharp and we measured peak brightness at 475nits, which is just under the 500nits maximum brightness claimed by Oppo. It is good enough for outdoor use, though reflections hinder visibility in bright sunlight. A bit more headroom here would have definitely been helpful.
Unlike the OnePlus 7T, the Oppo Reno 2 doesn’t pack a flagship-grade Snapdragon 855 processor. Instead, it makes do with a sub-flagship class Snapdragon 730G, a gaming version of the Snapdragon 730. This doesn’t make much of a difference in daily usage.
Unless gaming is a priority, performance is more than satisfactory.
Unless you count frame rates or want to eke out every last bit of performance, the hardware combination here is more than adequate for gaming and anything else you throw at it. Certainly, the 8GB of RAM helps. I found the phone to be perfectly capable of long sessions on PUBG cranked up to high, without much of heating. Software optimization is great too, and Color OS flows along beautifully without a hint of stutter.
Benchmark performance is predictably lower than competing hardware owing to the stepped-down specs, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it. There’s enough grunt here to power through practically anything you might want to do on the phone. The Reno 2 scored 260533 points in AnTuTu. This is markedly lower than the 370255 points scored by the Redmi K20 Pro and the OnePlus 7T, though these two phones pack the faster Snapdragon 855.
Between the high-capacity battery, frugal Snapdragon 730G processor, and an optimized software build, battery life on the Oppo Reno 2 is very good. A full day of reasonably heavy use is no hassle for the phone. I routinely ended the day with more than 30% charge left despite extended use of Slack, email, social media, and music apps. In our battery benchmarks, the phone managed over 17 hours of continuous video streaming and over 14 hours of web browsing.
Charging times are speedy enough, but not as good as 30W charging on the OnePlus 7T. Using the bundled 20W VOOC 3.0 charger, you can top-off the phone in just about 85 minutes.
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