Compared to some South African industry stalwarts like Samsung, Apple, and Huawei, Chinese firm OPPO has only been operating locally for a handful of years. Despite being a relative newcomer, it appears as if OPPO is carving out solid space for itself when it comes to well-specced phones that are equally well priced.

While those tenets hold true for the entry-level and mid-range space, what about flagship phones? On that front the company has the Reno10 series, led by the Reno10 Pro+ 5G locally. With last year’s Reno8 proving an impressive outing, does this new iteration stack up to its predecessor, as well as the wide range of options available in the R20k-plus price bracket?

These are but two of several questions we looked to answer with the Reno10 Pro+ in tow over the past couple of weeks for review.

Here is what we learned about the latest offering from OPPO.

A new aesthetic

We start as always with design, and here we have mixed feelings.

This as the OPPO Reno10 Pro+ is a bit of a departure from its predecessor. Our gripes are regarding the rear camera housing, which has been reworked for this iteration. On the Reno8 we were big fans of the design, as the rear camera housing was integrated into the phone itself, looking like one seamless piece of technology, and in many ways, a little architectural.

On this new phone, OPPO has shifted to what many other manufacturers have done, losing the seamless look and featuring a large pill-shaped housing that juts out quite a bit.

Now there’s nothing wrong with the new look, we just felt like the premium Reno series phones could have retained a similar design aesthetic across different iterations.

Moving on from the camera array, the rest of the phone is sleek and slick, with curved edges on the FullHD+ 6.74″ display. In fact it remains us a lot of the curved edge Samsung phones of a few years back, as it seems screens curving down the sides of smartphones is getting a bit of a resurgance.

As for the rest of the phone, the Reno10 Pro+ features all the hallmarks you’d expect of a flagship device, including an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor, 12GB RAM, and 256GB onboard storage. In our benchmarking, the phone scored high as expected, registering 1 445 and 4 001 on GeekBench 6’s single-core and multi-core tests respectively.

This was matched by the in-hand experience, with the phone showing no signs of sluggishness while multitasking or running processor-intensive applications.

Camera-focused

Next let’s talk about the one area that OPPO has been hyping up on the Reno10 Pro+, the camera system. We won’t be focusing on the 32MP selfie camera up front, as we don’t have a ton of experience taking duckface-selfies, but in general it is solid and features a wide enough field of view to ensure you and your friends get in shot with plenty of detail too.

As for the array on the rear – three lenses are present – 50MP primary, 64MP telephoto, and 8MP ultra wide-angle.

This trio yields great photos in a number of environments. We were particularly impressed by the colour accuracy and how it performed in low light conditions. As an all-around shooter it is very solid indeed, with the dedicated portrait mode also producing good photos with the coveted bokeh effect.

If we are too criticise the camera performance for anything, it would be the accuracy of autofocusing when trying to capture macro-style images. This as it takes a few tries to get the camera focusing on the right subject or part of the digital viewfinder you want.

This is by no means a deal breaker, but certainly something we picked up on during our time with the Reno10 Pro+.

The final element worth highlighting on the phone is its battery life. The 4 700mAh battery onboard is a little under par for flagship phones these days, most of which go as high as 5 000mAh, but the management of said battery life from OPPO is savvy, as we are able to eke out at least two days of use from a fully charged battery.

Added to this is the 100W fast charging or SUPERVOOC as OPPO calls it. This might seem like overkill, but the fact that you can get up to 50 percent battery life from zero in just under 10 minutes comes in very handy indeed, especially given our current power woes when loadshedding can hit at a moment’s notice.

Our only concern, which is a wider industry one, is how continued use of this fast charging of this nature will impact the health of the battery long-term. Luckily though, you can toggle the rapid fast charging off in the settings, and only turn it on when you’re in a bind.

Final verdict

The OPPO Reno10 Pro+ is about R2k more expensive than its predecessor at R21 999 (depending on the retailer). Do you get more value or performance on the Reno10 Pro+? The short answer is yes, with better specs across the board, but that is to be expected of a new iteration.

The problem that the Reno10 Pro+ finds itself with is that at R21 999, it is in the same price bracket as the Samsung Galaxy S23. While that phone was launched earlier in the year, this new device is still not on par with its specifications or performance.

As such, while OPPO’s new flagship phone is a great all-around performer, there are still better options in the same price bracket. If this phone was coming in closer to the R19k or even R18k price point, perhaps it would be a savvier pick up.

For now though, it finds itself up against a fairly well stacked Android flagship market.

FINAL SCORE: 8 OUT OF 10.