The Oppo Reno 10X Zoom hit the market recently, and is already making waves. We took a detailed look at this new entrant, taking our time, checking out each and every one of its features and testing what the hype is all about. Finally, we’re here with our unbiased view of this product.
First of all, the Oppo 10X zoom smacks of style the moment we open it and cradle it in our hands. Its smooth rear design and the asymmetric, ‘out-there’ pop up camera makes quite a statement, and we’re impressed. It feels a little slow to use, but make no mistake: It is a processing powerhouse that boasts of the latest, cutting-edge features and specifications. The Oppo Reno 10X zoom is a high mid-range product and is out to give its Western counterparts some tough competition.
Admit it, the Oppo Reno 10X zoom is big, although it is not being marketed as the bigger version of the Oppo Reno. Its body weighs 162 x 77.2 x 9.3mm, so it’s certainly large, and thick. In fact, it is currently one of the thickest handsets around and even has a big screen. The phone weighs 215g so it is heavy as well, although it doesn’t feel too heavy.
Coming to design, the Oppo Reno 10X Zoom is a sleek, stylish product, with not the slightest camera bump at the back. In fact, the completely smooth surface is disturbed only by the O-Dot, a small round button that prevents the phone from lying flat on any surface, so as to protect the camera lens.
This almost-flat surface gives the phone an elegant appearance, and the shark-fin pop up which contains the front-facing camera as well as an LED flash for both the front and the back of the phone.
The Oppo Reno 10X zoom is slower to pop up and down than its contemporaries out there in the market, but it’s also a lot sturdier as you can press it down without the phone going out of control and sending you warnings.
There’s the volume rocker on the left, the power button on the right, and a USB-C port at the bottom, along with the downward-facing speakers. But this means one has to use both hands to use the phone, unlike other phones which have both the power and volume buttons on the same side. The flipside is that the Oppo Reno 10X Zoom does not have a headphone jack, even though it allows listening to music non-stop. For AED 3,299, the phone has some of the best features you can buy.
The Oppo Reno 10x Zoom’s screen is a massive 6.6-inch stunner – you won’t find many phones in this price range. Interestingly, the display only takes up 93.1% of the device’s face – that’s because there’s a thin top bezel, and slightly thicker bottom chin.
The screen is an AMOLED display with a 1080 x 2340 resolution, resulting in a pixel density of 387 pixels per inch – pretty high, for a smartphone of that range. This makes it awesome for viewing media, photos, or apps, with maximum brightness and bold, vibrant colors. The icons are quite large, but not too much, and the swipe-down options menu is bigger and easier to use than in most other Android phones. The app drawer has been disabled by default, although it can be activated in the settings menu. There are also gesture controls which you can use to navigate the phone, but these seem harder to use than other phones.
The Oppo Reno 10x Zoom’s battery life is nothing much to speak of-with medium-to heavy use, it lasts for about a day and with less use, it lasts longer-just like with any other modern smartphone. Actually, the battery is unimpressive-it won’t disappoint, but it won’t stun you either. Fact is that with a battery capacity of 4,065mAh, you’d expect the device to last much longer, but the large AMOLED screen and the up and down movement of the ‘shark-fin’ tends to drain the battery considerably.
In fact, the camera supports only 5x optical zoom, via to the periscope lens, but a massive 60x digital zoom – that’s the highest level of zoom in a smartphone so far, although the pictures are not very high quality when zoomed in so much.
You can switch between zooms by easily pressing the zoom button, jump from 1x, to 2x, then straight up to 6x, then 10x and then ultrawide, completely skipping 60x zoom.
In fact, the 0x zoom actually refers to hybrid zoom which, basically means a mix of optical and digital zoom, but it’s a new technology that most people aren’t really aware of.
When we took pictures with the front-facing camera in normal camera mode, they looked a little washed out, and the foreground and the background looked way too light. Portrait pictures did not seem to have this problem, although there seemed to be a slight blur in the background. However, these are just minor issues, and the selfies and videos taken with this phone turned out awesome, even in low light.
And oh yes, the Snapdragon 855 chipset within, and the 6GB or 8GB RAM makes it ideal for fast gaming and camera processing on the phone.
The Oppo Reno 10Xzoom is a stunner with some powerful, unbeatable features that make it a proud possession. So go for it!
Price: AED 3,299.00
