Oppo Reno 2 review: versatility, illustrated by Oppo

Oppo has not been idle on its Reno range. Inaugurated last April, it was already being renewed for a second edition in August. A way for the manufacturer to correct early mistakes, or to show that it knows how to adapt to a boiling market?

The answer to this question is ultimately of little importance as this Reno 2 easily manages to hide the good and bad ideas of its predecessor.

Oppo thus makes a clean sweep of its nascent range of smartphones, and promises a model much better able to find its place in an ultra competitive market. A successful bet, to the point of being able to consider the purchase of a Reno 2 on this price range? This is what we will detail in this test.

The Oppo Reno 2 in its 8 + 256 GB black version. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid

Oppo Reno 2: the technical sheet

The Oppo Reno 2 is a mid-range smartphone. An ultra saturated market, in which the manufacturer still manages to pull out of the game with a few details, especially aesthetic.

The Oppo Reno 2 is:

• Screen : 6,5-inch AMOLED with a definition of 2400 x 1080 pixels (401 ppi) and covering approximately 88% of the front surface


• SoC : Snapdragon 730G (8 nm) with octo-core processor (2x 2,2 GHz + 6x 1,8 GHz) and Adreno 618 GPU


• RAM : 8 Go


• Internal storage : 128 or 256 GB (expandable up to 256 GB via microSD) UFS 2.1


• Battery : 4 mAh, fast charging up to 000 W. Does not support wireless charging.


• sealing : Not certified


• 3,5mm jack : Yes


• Rear cameras : 48 MP (ƒ / 1,7) 1/2 "sensor 26 mm equivalent + 8 MP (ƒ / 2,2) 1 / 3.2" ultra wide-angle equivalent 13 mm + 13 MP (ƒ / 2,4 ) 1 / 3.4 "telephoto equivalent 56mm + 2 MP (ƒ / 2,4) 1/5" dedicated to portraits


• Video : 2160p 30 fps or 1080p 30/60 fps
  
• Front camera : 16 MP (ƒ / 2,0)


• Fingerprint sensor : Yes, under the screen


• Reverse recharge : No


• Dual SIM : Yes


• 5G compatible : No


• Connectivity : Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 5, NFC


• OS : Android 9.0 + Color OS 6.1


• Color : Black White


• Price : 499 €

The main particularity of the Reno 2 is of course its front photo sensor housed in a motorized "shark fin" on the upper edge of the phone. An eccentricity, which distinguishes it, say, from a OnePlus 7 Pro which opted for a simple “pop-up” camera. In either case, the objective remains to maximize the display area.

The Reno 2 comes with a hard leatherette case. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
In its case, the Oppo Reno 2 comes with a 20 W power adapter with its USB-C cable. A pair of wired headphones is also part of the game, as is a faux leather shell with the most beautiful effect.

Acheter Oppo Reno 2

An efficient and unchanged design

The Oppo Reno 2 takes over the same design lines as its predecessor. We are therefore dealing with a good-sized smartphone (160 x 74,3 x 9,5 mm for 189 grams) which, as expected, gives a large place to its 6,5-inch AMOLED screen on the front.

The absence of a notch at the front is appreciable. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
No notch, "drop of water" or any other mark disturbs the eye. Housed in this famous motorized “shark fin” (Oppo promises 300 uses for its mechanism), the front photo sensor will only come out of its hole when you ask it to do so via the interface.

Surprisingly, the "shark fin" houses the front photo sensor of the Reno 2. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
The lower part of the screen houses the fingerprint sensor, which has the good taste to be inspired by the most recent models from OnePlus on the reliability side. We will come back to that.

The edges of the device are all in sobriety. On the right is the Power button (slightly highlighted by a thin green border), located just under the SIM / microSD card drawer. In contrast, the two volume control knobs are conveniently placed to allow use without having to reposition your fingers. Something that we would like to see in more manufacturers.

© Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
The upper edge houses, as has been said, the mechanism of the front camera, and the lower part displays the 3,5 mm jack port, the USB-C port and the single speaker grille which, a times is not customary, rather amazed us in terms of sound quality.

The back of the device does not deny the initial promise of sobriety. Here presented in its black version, the smartphone displays a discreet integration and above all without protuberance of its various photo modules. It's almost impressive, in 2019, not to see the various cameras of a smartphone protrude from the chassis.

The back of the smartphone is very successful, and perfectly flat. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
Under the four modules arranged vertically, Oppo has decided to integrate a tiny ball supposedly intended to improve the stability of the phone's grip. We will be satisfied to say that it is above all a small aesthetic element differentiating on an otherwise rather classic smartphone.

In the alignment of this ball, we will find the Oppo brand, judiciously surrounded by a strip reacting to light - the most beautiful effect. A feature that also seems to have been integrated on the edges of the device (curved on the back) and which, depending on the tilt of the phone, display a very successful bluish glow.

Aesthetically, the Reno 2 is a great success. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid

A generous and comfortable screen

Already equipped with a beautiful diagonal of 6,5 inches, the Oppo Reno 2 is afforded the luxury of a screen completely devoid of notch. It goes without saying that the reading comfort (text and video) is optimal. Especially since we are dealing here with an AMOLED panel, the contrast ratio by definition infinite. But what about its calibration?

The screen of the Reno 2 is a real treat. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
By default, the Reno 2's screen comes pretty close to our white balance expectations. Set to the “Vivid” display mode, the smartphone fully covers the DCI P3 color range, but will tend to blue certain shades. It will then be recommended to heat the display via the settings in order to reach more neutral values.

Regarding the display finesse, however, there is nothing to complain about. Displaying FHD + at over 400 ppi, the Reno 2's screen is precise and devoid of any aliasing on its icons. Be careful, however, to those looking for a high display frequency: the Reno 2 is limited to 60 Hz. You will have to turn to the OnePlus 7T, in the same price range, to benefit from a frequency of 90 Hz.

Navigation and reading are very comfortable on the Reno 2. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
The maximum brightness is also very good. Peaking at 530 cd / m2, it offers optimal reading comfort, even under a sun at its zenith.

© Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
Finally, let's take stock of the fingerprint sensor integrated under the Reno 2's AMOLED screen. If the industry is making a strong move towards this type of biometric unlocking, few manufacturers have actually mastered this new tool. Special mention to Samsung which, on the Galaxy S10, has even succeeded in being less secure than a traditional scanner.

Luckily, this is not the case with Oppo. Belonging to the same group as OnePlus, the company obviously went to pick up the good tips from its friend, since the result is one of the fastest fingerprint sensors ever tested. It's simple: only the OnePlus 7T Pro does better. The finger placement tolerance is wide, and the unlocking is almost instantaneous. In short: that's all we ask.

The Reno 2's fingerprint sensor is among the fastest we have ever tested. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid

ColorOS a little behind the competition

Oppo could not decently copy everything at OnePlus. Also ColorOS advances like an overlay much less advanced than OxygenOS is. Based - at the time of this writing - on Android 9, ColorOS 6.1 suffers from the lack of certain features that we should no longer have to do without at the end of 2019. Dark mode in mind.

Indeed, no setting will allow you to fully enjoy the deep blacks of the Reno 2's AMOLED screen. This will require the release of ColorOS 7 - based on Android 10 -, scheduled for December.

ColorOS 6 lags behind compared to OxygenOS or MIUI in certain aspects.
Otherwise, ColorOS 6.1 navigates very diverse waters for inspiration. Its very square icons and the presence of numerous bloatware will inevitably remind the most observant of MIUI. On the other hand, the wealth of its options and the presence of an application drawer will tip the scales more towards an Android Stock.

But if the dark mode is currently absent subscribers, we are delighted to see a gestural navigation as well integrated in the Reno 2. This one offers to opt between a navigation "Xiaomi type", where the swipes on the edge of the screen allow you to go back, or another "Samsung type" (or OnePlus) asking to start from the bottom of the screen to do the same.

Gesture navigation is perfectly integrated into the interface.
In addition, the interface is clear and the menus detailed enough not to get lost looking for a particular option.

Note to players: the Reno 2 also has an overlay that automatically launches with compatible titles. This allows you to mute notifications, take screenshots and do a little sorting in the phone's RAM to ensure the fluidity of the games.

A good power-consumption balance

You will have noticed by observing the technical sheet: the Oppo Reno 2 differs from many smartphones in its range by not opting for a high-end SoC. Around € 500, manufacturers (especially Chinese) do not hesitate to talk the powder by integrating Snapdragon 855, even 855+ as is the case of OnePlus - again him - on its latest 7T.

Oppo is riding another wave. Assuming that beyond a certain point the improvement in performance is unnecessary, the manufacturer preferred to ensure its rear by choosing an SoC also very energy efficient: the Snapdragon 730G. Does it do the trick? Very widely, yes. It also offers better performance than the Huawei Mate 20 Pro - one of the best performing high-end smartphones of 2018.

On AnTuTu, the Reno 2 therefore obtains the trifle of 263 points, which ranks it neck and neck with the very recent Xiaomi Mi Note 215.

The Reno 2 enjoys the performance of a 2018 flagship.
Geekbench 4 and 5 give Reno 2 scores of 2 and 559 in single-core, and 549 and 7 in multi-core. Performance here again very close to the last flagship signed Xiaomi.


Without UFS 3.0 flash memory, the Reno 2 displays very classic read and write speeds. With 475,42 Mb / s and 203,21 Mb / s, it is light years away from the OnePlus 7T and its 1 Mb / s in reading. Finally, on the graphics side, the Reno 410 and its Adreno 2 chip do the job very well with 618 and 2 points on 403D Mark (Sling Shot Extreme).


In other words: gambling is never a problem. It is even possible to push certain graphics parameters to benefit even more from the generosity of the Reno 2 screen. Call of Duty: Mobile was notably launched in its high quality, while maintaining a very advantageous framerate.

Playing is a pleasure on such a screen. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
The navigation is also very responsive, and multitasking is never a problem. You will understand: a very versatile smartphone, especially in that this measure in performance allows in terms of autonomy.

Impressive autonomy

The Snapdragon 730G / 4 mAh battery pair obviously works wonders. In reality, the Reno 000 even boxes in a completely different category: that of the most enduring smartphones of the year.

It's simple: according to our tests, only the Asus ROG Phone II is up to its level ... but for € 400 more expensive.

With exactly 55 hours on a single charge, the Reno 2 spent 10 hours with the screen on. Autonomy which should also be further enhanced by the arrival of dark mode via an upcoming update.

The Reno 2 is among the toughest smartphones of the year.
It is simply impressive, and should allow anyone - even the most greedy - to use the smartphone for two whole days without having to recharge it.

Charging, let's talk about it! Via its supplied 20 W adapter, the Reno 2 can regain 50% in 30 minutes of charging. Going from 0 to 100% will however require between 1:30 and 1 h 40.

Detailed and bright photos in all circumstances

If some manufacturers do not hesitate to increase the number of photo sensors on their devices, hoping that this will make them good photophones, others like Oppo are more willing.

As a reminder, we find on the back of this Reno 2 no less than four modules that we will detail here.

The Oppo Reno 2 is very well equipped in photos. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
The first, which we no longer present, is the Sony IMX 586 and its 48 megapixels. And if we have done better since in terms of resolution (the 1 megapixel Samsung GW108 which equips the Xiaomi Mi Note 10 in particular), Sony's solution is often the best option on a mid-range smartphone.


© Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
Bright (despite an unfairly grayish sky at the beginning of December), the photographs taken via the standard module are especially teeming with details. At the risk of doing too much? It is certain that one can find fault with the sharpness and sometimes too extensive saturation of the rendering.


© Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
Unfortunately for the Reno 2, the other photo modules fall far enough to offer such convincing results. At the end of the argument of versatility (the smartphone offers a focal range of 13 to 56 mm, excluding hybrid and digital zoom), the dive is with the subscribers absent on the very wide-angle sensor.

The wide-angle sensor struggles to collect enough light. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
Insufficiently defined, the 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle module also struggles to properly expose the scenes. Especially in bad weather.

If the center of the image is more in the nails, noise is pervasive at the edges of the image, where significant diffraction is also present.

Digital noise is very present via the ultra wide-angle sensor. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
The telephoto lens raises the level with images "sharp" enough to change things. With its 13 megapixels, this sensor manages to render many details on the screen. But its low aperture of ƒ / 2,4 will make even less bright shots difficult to use without generating significant digital noise.

The 2-megapixel x13 zoom does it with level of detail honors. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
Note that it is also possible to push the vice until you get a 5x hybrid zoom which, you imagine, is not very useful if you want to keep even a little detail in the image.

In 5x hybrid zoom mode, we already lose a lot of details ... © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
Technically, it's also possible to push the digital zoom up to 20x - equivalent to a focal length of 520mm. Needless to say, at this level, this functionality will not be of much use to you, except as a substitute for a pair of binoculars. On long focal lengths, no one has yet managed to match the Huawei P30 Pro, or the Google Pixel 4.

In 20x digital zoom mode, the photo is barely usable. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
Equipped with a fourth sensor (2 megapixels) dedicated to capturing depth of field for portraits, the Reno 2 does it with the honors in this category. The smartphone gives the impression of understanding the scene, and harmoniously turns its subject. The background blur then applied is for its part very precisely dosed, for a fairly natural rendering.

Portrait mode works very well. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
Something the front sensor has a harder time doing. The clipping is much more random (the edges tend to “drool” a bit), but the 16 megapixels still manage to render enough detail for glorious selfies (not like this one, then). As explained above, switching to self-portrait mode automatically triggers the “pop-up” camera mechanism, which comes out of its housing in just under a second.

Up front, we are less convinced by the portrait mode, in particular because it does not support HDR. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
Finally, for night photography, the Oppo Reno 2 once again has good arguments for it. We know how versatile the Sony IMX 586 is, especially in low light. Opening wide, the Japanese sensor captures a lot of light to adapt to many situations ... to the point of producing more usable photos without Night mode than with.


On the left without night mode, on the right with. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
We explain ourselves. In “normal” capture mode, Oppo will automatically detect a night scene and apply light processing to improve exposure. We then obtain a rendering quite close to what we see with the naked eye.


On the left without night mode, on the right with. Notice how the sharpness is exaggerated on the floor. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
Night mode, on the other hand, will (in some cases) allow a lot of detail to be recovered and digital noise to be reduced. But digital stabilization seems to be particularly bad at making Night Mode really effective. Therefore, stacking the images captured via night mode gives very random ... if not bad results. Your best bet is to let the phone handle it all on its own.


On the left without night mode, on the right with. Here, we can see how much the stabilization failed on the second shot. © Pierre Crochart for Itopdroid
The video is not left out, and even benefits from a very good “Ultra stabilized” mode on the 1080p60 configuration. Videographers will thus be able to have a blast on fluid panoramas. Technically, the smartphone is also capable of filming in 4K at 30 frames per second. But stabilization then becomes ineffective. A matter of choice therefore.

Oppo Reno 2: Itopdroid's opinion

The Reno 2 is a great smartphone. Truly. Pleasant to the eye, responsive and efficient, it is above all one of the most enduring smartphones of the year, and enjoys great versatility in terms of photography.

What saves the Reno 2 from the hovering shadow of the OnePlus 7T is the additional € 100 requested by the latter. But it also has its own arguments. Starting with the very large surface area covered by its 6,5-inch screen, which is not hampered here by any notch or cutout in the panel.

At this price point, you will undoubtedly find more efficient (for what?), Or better in photos (the Mi Note 10 in the lead). But if you don't want to make any concessions and are looking for the perfect balance of battery life, speed and photography, the Reno 2 is for you.

Oppo Reno 2

8

Most

• Very successful design
• Astronomical autonomy
• A total screen of the most beautiful effect
• Very versatile in photography ...
• One of the fastest fingerprint sensors on the market

The lessers

• No dark mode yet
• The performance of a 2018 flagship
• ... for a sometimes uneven rendering

Design8

Screen9

Performances6

Autonomy10

Photographie7

• Most
• The lessers
• Details

• Very successful design
• Astronomical autonomy
• A total screen of the most beautiful effect
• Very versatile in photography ...
• One of the fastest fingerprint sensors on the market

• No dark mode yet
• The performance of a 2018 flagship
• ... for a sometimes uneven rendering

Design8

Screen9

Performances6

Autonomy10

Photographie7

Acheter Oppo Reno 2
Test carried out using a smartphone loaned by the brand