Cameras on the Reno come a long way.
Welcome to Season 2 of the Oppo Reno 10 Pro+ Review! (That rhymes). Here, we’ll be tackling the one major thing Oppo is constantly boasting about this phone, the cameras. That also includes the 32MP selfie! Oh, this time, all our shots are in a 4:3 aspect ratio so you could see all those glorious 12.6MPs without binning.
Unlike the Nord 3, there’s no “AI mode” so we’re assuming that the MariSilicon X NPU is on by default and cannot be disabled. This fancy NPU makes images brighter and supposedly, more vibrant depending on the scene.
50MP PRIMARY:
Pictures taken using “Photo” mode have a resolution of 4096×3072, effectively making them a 12.6MP shot without binning. The phone takes a while to apply post-processing effects, particularly, about 2 or 3 seconds. Oddly, the phone does not have RAW support on its Pro mode but it does have a histogram (The OnePlus Nord 3 has both). Other features include the 50MP mode, a text scanner, panorama, and dual-view video, which allows you to create vlogs by utilizing both the primary and selfie cameras.
As expected from a phone of this price range, photos have a wide dynamic range, vibrant tone (possibly too vibrant), and smooth colour reproduction. We love how the grasses and trees look green and lively and how the colours on the buildings reflect how they look like in real life. It’s actually slightly less vibrant than our shot with the OnePlus Nord 3, despite having a similar camera app. Though, they are taken at a different time of day, they are still daylight shots. We also like how the small and intricate details are visible, especially in macro shots.
However, one thing we noticed is that both phones suffer from oversharpening and oversaturation. While the Reno 10 Pro+ produced more natural colours, it’s still too vibrant for our tastes. Maybe Oppo/OnePlus could tone down the saturation just a little so the images look more accurate.
The phone has a toggle feature called ProXDR that when tapped, looks for parts that need to be highlighted and then improves on that. It’s essentially a toggle for HDR which feels useless outside of this phone because images don’t get saved as these ProXDR images and what you get is the final shot before this feature is applied.
While there is no macro camera (thank god), the 50MP can be configured to be one by moving closer to your subject. Once you do, it will apply a bokeh effect and then post-processing will analyze the image so that said blur effect would be applied appropriately. It does a great job at it on human subjects but it is a hit and miss on non-human ones.
The EXTRA HD mode is where the photo binning happens. It takes a 4:3 shot with a resolution of 8192x6144px, roughly 50.3MP. Compared to the normal 12.5MP shots, these don’t make much of a difference. You can only zoom up to 3x as well and only works with the 50MP Sony IMX890 sensor, not including the telephoto.
8MP ULTRAWIDE:
Just like with the Nord 3, the 8MP ultrawide is surprisingly competitive. Of course, shots here are softer than the 50MP Primary but that goes without saying. We like how detailed each images are with just the right amount of sharpness (unlike the 50MP Primary), vibrant and lively colour reproduction, and smooth results. They are perfect for your Instagram shots. Just look how beautiful those red flowers are, how vibrant those green leaves look. Try it on your local garden!
We also like how there is no visible distortion, like those cheap fisheye lenses you can buy online. It has a 112° Field of View which is wide enough to take a large image.
64MP PERISCOPE TELEPHOTO:
All of our periscope shots have a 30x magnification and saves in a 4624×3472 resolution, roughly equating to 16MP. This is where the NPU should come into full play. There’s no High-Res mode for the telephoto so we have no idea where the rest of the 32MP pixels are gone. The phone will switch to the 64MP telephoto automatically once you hit 11x zoom. It could zoom digitally up to 120x.
Anyway, besides that. The shots on the 64MP telephoto are really sharp even when magnified 30x. As you can see from our bird shot, it’s fast enough to capture them before they fly away. That shot is honestly one of our favourites ever. While it does have OIS, it takes a while for it to activate, about a split second. So you have to be steady. The app will tell you when OIS is activated. Once it is, take a shot immediately before moving or else OIS will be turned off again.
Thanks to the high-resolution sensor and Oppo’s AI capabilities, there are no noticeable grains and pixelation when zoomed in. The 64MP telephoto is magnificent at taking zoomed shots. It’s got nice colour reproduction, a decent dynamic range, and most importantly, decent sharpness with every shot resulting in a clear, smooth result.
Of course, this entire review would be pointless without moon shots. We let AI take care of everything while we maintained our hands and our tripods steady until the sensor stabilizes itself. Originally, the photo appears overexposed and pixelated but the phone manage to quickly adapt and adjust settings accordingly. What we got is a surprisingly detailed moonshot with the sky around it completely isolated. There is some vignetting and it does look slightly pixelated, especially in the corners but for a 64MP sensor, it makes for decent moon shots. We took two photos. The first is 60x zoom and the other is 90x zoom.
32MP SELFIE:
Who doesn’t love selfies? The Reno 10 Pro+ comes with a 32MP selfie camera with a wide 90-degree angle. Though, in actuality, it feels wider than that. Like the Nord 3, retouching is automatically activated and so my face feels smoother and cuter than usual. You can turn it off if you want though. T
Unlike the 16MP front camera of the Nord 3, the 32MP selfie camera of the Reno 10 Pro+ is really good. Photos here are more vibrant and more detailed, and my skin tone is also accurately replicated. It is only a notch away from the quality of the 50MP Primary. Though, when taking a shot, I noticed that my face is not actually centered, as if the phone is designed for group selfies than solo ones. It has face detection that rapidly and accurately tracks your face but also, you’re positioned at a rightmost angle than centered. I found this a little annoying but I don’t often take selfies, so meh.
With a group, my face is more centered. I was roving around Megamall to see whether Oppo retailers can identify the phone. Well.. yeah they did, and with a surprised and bewildered look too.
NIGHT SHOTS:
While you can take night shots using the Photo mode, it’s best to use the dedicated Night Mode to take shots, which we did.
We took our shots around 7PM, the sky is dark due to inclement weather but that didn’t stop us from taking pictures. It also means that the surroundings are also darker.
Night shots are also “Pro+” level on the Reno10 Pro+ with little to no noise, decent dynamic range, and bright results without overexposure. As you can see in these images, the sky has more details and clouds are noticeable. Though, the sensor’s sluggishness is much more prominent here because it takes 1-2 seconds to take a shot (2 seconds if the area has no light) and another few seconds to apply post-processing effects. However, I didn’t feel the effects of the MariSilicon X NPU here as these shots feel similar to the Nord 3, and that didn’t come with any fancy NPUs.
8MP ULTRAWIDE NIGHT SHOTS:
Ultrawide night shots are as good as they are during the day. Noise and grain are well-maintained. In fact, it’s not visible here. Just like with the main camera, the resulting image is bright and colourful with accurate colour reproduction. We also like the small touches as they are detailed. Though moving vehicles will have distortion due to the slow shutter speed.
It produced softer images than the 50MP primary, as expected because this has 1/5th the resolution. You can see this softening on the trees at the right where the leaves aren’t that detailed. It can also be inconsistent on how it handles foliage, so dynamic range isn’t its best suit. That’s where the 50MP camera excels.
64MP TELEPHOTO NIGHT SHOTS:
All images here, apart from the IBP sign (which is 50x magnification), are taken with 30x zoom. We used night mode for this one. It can be challenging to take night mode shots using the 64MP periscope because OIS does not work here, it also takes about 2 seconds to capture an image which makes shooting a lot more difficult.
All the signs you’re seeing are actually pretty dark and the phone did a magnificent job brightening them without overexposing them. Even with 30x zoom, the telephoto images are sharp and vibrant. They are detailed enough so you can tell what’s going on with the image. In other words, they are not pixelated, even at night which is nothing sort of impressive.
32MP SELFIE CAMERA NIGHT SHOT:
Even at night, the Oppo Reno 10 Pro+ is ideal for taking selfies because even here the image is bright and vibrant, has decent dynamic range, and retained the same skin tone as my daylight selfies. The background is also pronounced though there is also more noise and grain, unlike the rear cameras. Heck, I’d say it produced more noise than the 8MP ultrawide.
Overall, it’s great at taking selfies during the day but the performance is worse at night. As you can see here, my image looks really soft, and that’s not because of retouches either.
VIDEO:
Before we proceed to 720p and 4K, let’s go first with 1080p. Both of these have no OIS included, so they’re raw recordings.
The first thing you will notice is that there is a watermark at the bottom left corner. This is the first time we’ve seen this occurrence. This can also be disabled if you want. You can edit the watermark by the way, but we like to keep the default settings.
The first 1080p video has really good quality and it does not look overprocessed. It almost has the same quality as when taking images. The OnePlus Nord 3 has overprocessed videos but here, everything is smooth. In every scene, every movement, there are well-kept details. Sound quality is also pretty good. My voice is loud and clear. The phone has a smart audio mode which accurately isolate outside noise with your own voice, like the Nord 3.
The same deal happens with the 60fps video though this one is more processed and so the resulting video is crunchier. It does not destroy the overall quality though and the Reno 10 Pro+ does a great job of handling movement, even without OIS. EIS is probably active by default and cannot be disabled.
The video above has OIS. Just like the Nord 3, videos with OIS enabled are capped to 1080p@60fps. The overall quality feels the same as the one without OIS. It does a fairly decent job of stabilizing the video without destroying quality or reducing frame rate. Though, like the Nord 3, it isn’t perfect because there are still some subtle wobbles that can occur, even when walking at normal speed.
4K VIDEOS
The 4K videos feel a lot shakier and this time you could feel that EIS isn’t enabled. This must be a software thing since this issue is also shared with our OnePlus.
Besides that small problem, the 4K video turned out to be excellent with bright and colourful imagery, full and sharp details, and no flickering. For both videos, sound quality is consistent and are high-quality.
Phew… that’s the end of that. Due to how long this part was, WordPress started slowing down in the making of this article. We love how consistent the cameras are on this phone and Oppo proved it once again that the Reno series is quite ideal for photographers and videographers alike.
Stay tuned for part 3 as we discuss the phone’s sweet Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset!
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