The Oppo Reno 12 Pro is a tough phone to pin down – the Pro title suggests premium features, and while it delivers on some, it misses on others. And maybe that’s OK – while it’s called a Pro phone, the price (between $500 and $600) suggests a mid-range device. AI features that mirror those found on devices like the Google Pixel and top-tier battery life help nudge the phone past some competitors, but ultimately, as we’ll break down in our Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G review, we end up with a really good phone, albeit with some shortcomings.
Design and build
It’ll be an ongoing theme – in some ways this phone is Pro, in other ways not. The first thing you’ll notice picking up the Oppo Reno 12 Pro is that it doesn’t feel as hardy in hand as a lot of smartphones. That’s mostly due to the plastic frame, although I also felt like it was a bit too thin (7.4mm) to be comfortable to hold, especially at a large 6.7” size. The slightly curved display around the edges helped a little with feel in the hand.
But, then we’ve got Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protecting the display (a big upgrade from last year’s Reno 11 Pro), with a screen protector layered on top, so it’s got premium protection from the display shattering or getting scratched. And, while it’s not completely waterproof, the IP65 rating means it’ll hold up to splashes of water.
The back of the phone has a cool wavy pattern that plays with light nicely and gives the phone a little character. There’s also a camera bump on the upper left corner, which I found to be fairly unobtrusive, especially considering one of the three cameras is a zoom camera.
Otherwise, no surprises – while some mid-range phones still retain the 3.5mm headphone port, this phone isn’t one of them. However, there is one old friend who stuck around – the reverse side of the SIM tray can be used as a microSD card slot or for a second SIM. Unfortunately, there’s no eSIM on this phone, so you’ll have to choose between loading up two SIM cards or loading up one and using a microSD card. Just make sure you don’t lose that elusive second SIM! Regardless, it’s good to see the microSD card slot for folks who don’t want to go the cloud storage route.
Performance
We see a lot of borderline mid-range/premium phones use a top-end chipset from the previous year to provide excellent performance while keeping the price tag down – the Xiaomi Poco F6 Pro is a good example. It’s a great approach that some of the best mid-range phones take, but the Oppo Reno 12 Pro instead uses the Mediatek Dimensity 7300 Energy chipset, a mid-tier product, and 12GB of RAM.
That’s not all bad! That chipset is tuned for efficiency, and as we’ll see later in the review, that pays big dividends in battery life. But, it comes at a cost – I found the phone to be a little sluggish overall compared to mid-range competitors, whether that’s loading, swiping, or web browsing. And, while it can handle games like Genshin Impact on max settings, the frame rate stays a little lower than other devices at this price range, and the phone gets noticeably warmer. That said, after an hour of playing at max settings, the phone never got hot enough to become uncomfortable to hold, and performance didn’t seem to get worse over time.
There’s also an under-screen fingerprint sensor and facial recognition, both of which work well – I found the facial recognition to be more consistent and fast than the fingerprint sensor, but either one was fine. There’s also an IR blaster on the phone, which can be used to control some home appliances – great for reducing remote clutter!
Display and audio
The display on the Oppo Reno 12 Pro is an undisputed bright spot – the phone has a 6.7″ 1080p OLED panel with up to a 120Hz refresh rate and support for HDR10+. The one knock on it is that max brightness is just 1200 nits – that’s fine for outdoor use, but doesn’t maximize the color contrast benefits of OLED. Still, that’s a fairly minor complaint – gaming and videos on the phone looked terrific.
No surprises from the stereo speakers – like a lot of mid-range devices, the speakers get very loud, but the bass performance is so diminished, you’re almost always better off with any pair of earbuds or headphones. However, the sound was distinct, without getting muddy at higher volumes, which isn’t bad for folks who have a harder time hearing.
Battery life
The display is nice, but the battery life on the Reno 12 Pro impressed me the most. The more efficient Dimensity 7300 Energy chipset gets the most out of the 5,000mAh battery, and that shows in everyday use. It wasn’t uncommon for me to end the day with 70%-80% of capacity left – I easily got two days of use on the phone.
That goes down when you throw in a lot of videos and gaming, but even then, the results are solid. An hour of watching videos at full brightness only ticked the battery down 6%. Pushing the phone to its limit with an hour of Genshin Impact (max settings, full brightness, 120Hz refresh rate) strained the phone a lot more, taking down 20% of the battery.
Even if you do get into battery trouble, the phone has up to 80W SuperVOOC charging – with a compatible charging brick, you can get the phone back up to 100% within an hour. Unfortunately, the phone doesn’t ship with a charging brick in most markets (India being the exception), so hopefully you’ve already got one on hand.
Oppo left wireless charging off the Reno 12 Pro. We usually don’t mind with how inefficient and slow wireless charging is, but with the new Qi2 charging standard getting up to 15W charging, a lack of wireless charging is going to be a lot more noteworthy from this year on.
Camera
The Oppo Reno 12 Pro comes with three rear cameras – a 50MP main camera with phase-detect autofocus and optical image stabilization, an 8MP ultrawide (112 degrees) camera, and a 50MP telephoto camera with phase-detect autofocus that enables 2x optical zoom.
The telephoto camera has become a prized premium smartphone feature in the last few years, and it’s good to see it at this price point, especially when combined with autofocus. It’s also the main difference that makes this phone the Pro model in the Reno 12 series – the base Reno 12 is otherwise almost identical. On the front is a 50MP selfie camera with phase-detect autofocus, which is slightly better than the one on the base Reno 12.
I was particularly impressed with the main camera – I got terrific color reproduction and saturation in all my shots, and the pictures came out detailed and well-defined. Colors looked a little more faded in the shots I took with the ultrawide camera, but on the whole I was happy with what I got – objects were well-defined, and light was balanced. Just keep in mind that the ultrawide camera doesn’t have autofocus, so it’s probably best used on landscapes and vistas than sweeping action shots.
While I appreciated having the zoom camera, I did notice that colors looked significantly more faded in my 2x shots. It’s also possible to take 5x hybrid zoom shots, but I don’t think I was happy enough with any of them to say I’d use 5x consistently. The results are better than what you get with pure digital zoom, but they still end up fairly blurry. The zoom camera works nicely for 2x portrait or close-up shots, more so than landscape shots.
Portrait mode looked solid – object detection was strong, without blurred edges. The background blurring looked natural, so whatever post-processing is being done is light. I liked the results I got from both main camera and the zoom camera.
Low-light shots were nothing special – noticeable artifacts, especially when the zoom camera is used. They’re serviceable, and the camera manages to pick up a good amount of light, but there are better options out there, especially if you can find a flagship phone from last year around the price of the Reno 12 Pro.
For video, you can take 4K video at only 30fps,1080p video at 30, 60, 120, and 480fps, and 720p video at 960fps. For stabilization, you get both gyro-electronic image stabilization and optical image stabilization, and you can take video in HDR. The selfie camera can also take video in 4k at 30fps, and can take 1080p video up to 60fps. However, there’s only electronic image stabilization on the selfie camera, so don’t expect to be able to move around as much while taking video with the selfie camera as opposed to the main camera. Also, keep in mind that video just uses the main rear camera – while you can take 2x zoom video, the phone isn’t actually using the zoom camera to record that video.
Software
Bad news out of the way first: there is a LOT of bloatware on this phone. I can usually accept bloatware up to a point as a cost for keeping the price down, but that doesn’t go over as well when you have Pro in the name of the device.
Even if it wasn’t a Pro model, the sheer volume of duplicative Oppo system apps from their ColorOS Android overlay, pre-installed games, game and app download suggestions (that you’re prompted to download during setup, and that remain in a folder on the home screen), app folders, and alternate app stores makes for a cluttered, messy first impression. You can get rid of most of it (expect for Oppo’s system apps), but it took a lot more doing than clearing out bloatware usually does.
Oppo’s ColorOS Android overlay itself tries to do a bit too much. It tinkers with notifications in unnecessary ways – that I can only open individual emails from a Gmail notification and not go straight to my inbox by default sounds minor, but it’s something I do so often without thinking about that it became a constant annoyance while I was using the phone. It’s still not one of the most intrusive overlays, but it made me notice it, which usually isn’t a good thing.
But! There’s some good stuff here, too. One pretty neat addition is that you can assign refresh rate to individual apps. Usually, you can either set the phone to a higher refresh rate across the board, or get a more expensive phone that can adjust the refresh rate algorithmically. Having more granular control here is a neat way to set the balance between battery efficiency and performance on your terms.
There’s also some AI features that resemble what phones like the Google Pixel have. Some features are a little oversold – the phone reading aloud an article is a nice feature, but it’s not AI – but what’s here works well. I was pleasantly surprised that AI summaries of articles proved to be mostly accurate. The AI summaries struggled with more specialized topics, and sometimes presented details like names and places out of context, but mostly I thought it worked well.
AI Eraser can detect and remove objects from your pictures. AI Best Face is another feature similar to what the Pixel has, melding several takes of a group photo into one where everyone is looking good and not blinking, while AI Clear Face can clear up your skin on selfies. AI Studio is there if you want to create an AI-generated facsimile of yourself using selfies. I think the most-used feature might end up being the one where you can trace objects or people and turn them into emoji stickers.
Sustainability
With smartphones, what can be done to make them more sustainable boils down to packaging and, more than anything, making them last longer. Unfortunately, the Oppo Reno 12 Pro isn’t likely to be your phone for more than a couple years. While the IP65 rating and Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 provides some protection, that plastic frame means the phone will be done in by drops sooner than metal phones.
On top of that, Oppo is only guaranteeing two years of OS updates and three years of security patches, which is on the low end – Samsung sets the bar high with seven-year guarantees for both, for context.
Pricing and availability
The Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G was released on July 12 in several markets worldwide (mostly in Asia and Europe, but also in South Africa and the United Arab Emirates), and will not be available in the United States. Price varies by market, but usually comes out to between $500 and $600 as a starting price. The phone can be purchased with 256GB of storage and 12GB of RAM or 512GB of storage and 12GB of RAM, in Space Brown, Sunset Gold, and Nebula Silver.
Bottom Line
The Reno 12 Pro is a solid phone – only the bloatware and the occasional excesses of ColorOS can be frusterating. Fortunately the battery life is some of the best I’ve seen in any phone. But, it’s sitting at a price point that demands slightly more, and while the inclusion of a great zoom camera is important, the less powerful chipset seems like a big miss.
It’s not that the phone is slow – it performs fine on most day-to-day tasks – it’s that you can often find better at this price, especially mid-range phones that come equipped with flagship chipsets from the year prior. So, something needs to balance out that sacrifice, and while the battery life and display impress, they’re not that much better than what else is out there.
So, it boils down to how much you like those AI features! The Reno 12 Pro is one of the few Android phones out there with a suite of AI features similar to what Google is making available on the Pixel, and by and large, those features work well for what they are. If that’s appealing and you’re not looking to get an increasingly expensive Pixel, the Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G might be the phone for you.