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Oppo has leveled.
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The Chinese phone brand has historically made solid mid-range phone.
But with the new Reno series, it's taken a more dazzling turn.
The Oppo Renos 5g is, as the name suggests a 5g putting it in an exclusive clause.
In that territory, it's competing with the Samsung Galaxy S10.
5g, the LG V 50 and the one plus seven 5g.
Unsurprisingly, it's the company's most expensive phone yet.
The Australian price converts to 1030 bucks.
Which still makes it the least expensive 5G phone you can get.
There's also a 4G version, the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom, which is identical to the Reno 5G in all ways except, well, 5G.
Its Australian price converts to $825.
It may be the future of mobile internet, but right now The best selling points about the Oppo Reno 5G actually have nothing to do with 5G.
Once a shameless maker of iPhone clones, Oppo's Reno phones have a distinct slick design.
There's no notch up top, so you'll take selfies on a shock field style pop up camera.
Here, it bears a strong resemblance to the 1+7.
But that's not suprising, given the two are essentially sibling companies.
It has a two tone back coming in ocean green or jet black, which isn't as flashy as say Huawei HP 30 phones, but it's refined, subtle look.
The next upgrade comes through the camera.
It has a fantastic track camera setup, consisting of a 48 megapixel main camera, a 13 megapixel telephoto lens, and an 8 megapixel ultra wide shooter.
It comes with premium brows and whistles, like a mat mode, ten times hyper-zoom and a handy ultra eye setting.
It's not the best camera out there, the Huawei P34 has a slightly better night mode and sharper ultra Y lens.
When I compared the photos from the Renault to an iPhone Xs, I found the iPhone deals better with sunny conditions As the Reno is prone to overexposure.
But when it came to portrait shots and photos taken in ideal lighting conditions, I actually often prefered the Reno 5G.
And keep in mind, it is the cheapest of those three phones.
Finally, the Oppo Reno 5G is a powerhouse.
It uses Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor, currently the fastest on the market, and it has a crazy long battery life.
But there are problems.
But biggest gripe is color OS 6 offers take on Android pie.
There are some nice features here, like a shortcut box, that can be dragged from the right side of the screen.
But on the whole, the software drags the experience down rather than pulling the hardware up.
One of the selling points of the phone is its five time optical zoom.
So it's a little confusing that Tapping the zoom prompt in the camera app pushes you from one to two to six times magnification.
And there are some strange rough edges, like the notifications atop the screen, which look like their logo is copied and pasted from Microsoft pain.
Is this a deal breaker?
No, but you're paying a premium price.
From the software should be premium to then this 5g this isn't a flow with the phone as such it's simply that 5g at the moment isn't really worth investing in in the us uk and australia coverage is spotty relegated only to certain parts of cities or suburbs My experience ranged widely.
I got up to 489 megabits per second in one 5G area, but couldn't go above 155 in another.
155 megabits per second isn't bad, and on that speed, I was able to download [UNKNOWN] in under two minutes.
But it's not the 1, 10 or 20 gigabytes per second we've been promised.
And even if it was, coverage is just too limited to make using 5g convenient.
But if you're looking to make an early investment in 5g Oppo Reno is the least expensive one you can make.
It's also a great phone in its own right, which to me makes the cheaper non-5G version, the 10x Zoom, the more attractive deal.
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This is Daniel Van Boom for CNET, check back to the site for the full written review.
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