OPPO Reno12 Pro review: unrivaled battery life, artificial intelligence and overpriced price

If it weren’t for the high price, OPPO Reno12 Pro could have become a real hit, because this smartphone has a good level of performance, incredible battery life, a beautiful design, and a decent camera. Of course, there are some software nuances, but let’s get to that.

Technical specifications of OPPO Reno12 Pro

Technical characteristics
Display	6.7″ AMOLED HDR10+
	2412×1080 394 ppi
	120 Hz 600-1200 nits
Processor	Dimensity 7300
Graphics	Mali-G615
RAM	12 GB
ROM	512 GB + micro SD
Communication	5G / 4G LTE
	Wi-Fi 6
	Bluetooth 5.4
	NFC
	IR port
Interfaces	USB Type C 2.0
Main camera	50 MP + 8 MP+ 50 MP
Front camera	50 MP
Battery	5000 mAh
Charging	80 W
System	Android 14
Dimensions	161.5×74.8×7.4 mm
Weight	180 grams

 

Package and packaging

The box with the smartphone contains an 80 W charger, a USB Type C cable, a paper clip for the SIM card slot, and paper documentation. The phone itself has a protective film (not glass). The case is not included.

OPPO Reno12 Pro design, ergonomics, interfaces

Subjectively, the hero of the review has an excellent design: small rounded bezels that do not cut into the hand, moderate weight (180 grams), beautiful design of the back panel, and pleasant to the touch materials. The build quality is high, everything feels monolithic (IP65 protection) and you can immediately understand that this is not a budget device even without turning it on

The only ergonomic nuance is that OPPO Reno12 Pro wobbles on the table due to the protrusion of the camera modules. However, this problem is common to many modern smartphones.

At the bottom, the manufacturer has placed a SIM card slot where you can put two SIMs or one SIM + micro SD memory card. Nearby are the speaker, microphone and USB Type C 2.0 connector. On the right side is the lock button and volume keys.

On the top is another speaker and an infrared port, which won’t work for transferring files to old Siemens phones, but it will be useful for controlling appliances, such as a TV or air conditioner. The left side is «clean» and contains nothing.

Display

The AMOLED screen has a good margin of brightness of 600 nits (briefly up to 1200 nits, according to the manufacturer). Despite the 6.7-inch diagonal, the phone is not too big, it fits comfortably in the hand. The colors are realistic, pleasant, but with manual settings.

Out of the box, the OPPO Reno12 Pro has overly saturated colors with yellowish white tints. Fortunately, the manufacturer allows you to change the screen settings yourself. The main thing is that the display has good viewing angles, infinitely black color and does not tire the eyes (DC Dimming 2160 Hz).

The refresh rate is 120 Hz, and the smoothness is felt everywhere, except where the software fails. For example, some proprietary applications have not very smooth scrolling, sometimes the Google Discovery feed can freeze, which is a problem with all smartphones, including the most expensive flagships with this OS.

OPPO Reno12 Pro camera

The 50 MP f/2.0 selfie camera takes clear pictures day and night. The portrait mode seems to gently blur the background, although sometimes the algorithms eat the edges of hair.

At night, the camera works quickly, soapy photos are rare, and the ratio of good shots to bad is high. The image becomes very bright (much brighter than the human eye can see). In some photos, you might think it’s just beginning to get dark, even though they were taken after 10:00 pm.

The algorithms stretch the scene as much as they can, sometimes spoiling the realism, although it looks beautiful. For social networks, this is what is needed, and all large companies are well aware of such things, so they aggressively promote artificial lighting for night photos.

4K 30 FPS video on a large screen (computer or TV) doesn’t look very good because of poor stabilization — the image seems to shake when you move. You can shoot good videos with a tripod, but not when walking. OPPO Reno12 Pro can record slow-motion video at 960 FPS 1280x780p or 480 FPS 1920x1080p.

To summarize, the OPPO Reno12 Pro camera produces beautiful pictures, albeit not very realistic, but stable, high-quality, with a minimum number of bad shots. Modern Android flagships have not strayed far from the hero of the review, and the difference between budget models is immediately noticeable, especially at night.

Working performance of OPPO Reno12 Pro

The Dimensity 7300 processor is an exemplary midrange solution. The processor is moderately fast, economical, and does not heat up too much. In the browser, the results are at the level of a budget laptop with Intel Celeron, in Geekbench 6 and Antutu the situation is somewhat better.

Performance also depends on the battery level. An almost completely discharged smartphone is 25-30% weaker. The processor power remains unchanged only in some budget devices, so it’s quite common to see such a drop.

The strength of OPPO Reno12 Pro is its low throttling because only at the end of the stress test did the CPU start to drop the frequency. Note that the benchmarks were conducted in the summer heat with room temperatures up to 30 degrees Celsius. The processor is stable and heats up less than the vaunted Qualcomm Snapdragon flagships.

The 512 GB drive shows good read/write speeds (over 1200 MB/s) when 120 GB is full. Of course, the results will be lower as the storage fills up, but the point is that you need to fill it up for years. There’s a lot of space, which is nice, and you can add a memory card of the same capacity.

It has 12 GB of RAM, programs do not crash, you can switch between dozens of applications without rebooting. Sometimes it happens that the program reboots after 10-12 hours of standby, but this is not critical because «cold» or restarting applications is fast.

The Wi-Fi 6 receiver is stable, it picks up far away, there are no problems with Bluetooth connection, and the 4G module depends on the area (from 1 Mbps 30 kilometers from the regional center). The sound is of average quality, the volume is enough for all scenarios, and the microphone has noise cancellation.

Game performance

You should not count on maximum settings in AAA games with such a processor. However, OPPO Reno12 Pro runs any game with an adequate frame rate at low or medium graphics settings.

For example, Genshin Impact averages 35-40 FPS, Call of Duty Warzone 30-45 FPS, and Call of Duty Mobile always keeps 60 FPS with high settings. Asphalt 9 also comes with maximum graphics of 30-45 FPS.

So OPPO Reno12 Pro will allow you to play absolutely all Android video games. Projects like Subway Surfers, Standoff 2, Arena of Valor, Brawl Stars, and millions of other video games with PlayStation 2-level graphics run perfectly smoothly.

OPPO Reno12 Pro software

The phone runs on Android 14 with the proprietary Color OS 14 shell. The firmware is heavy and has many useful features, but it looks cluttered. Among the interesting software, we can note the following:

• Compass;
• Infrared remote control;
• Game overlay (like Win+G in Windows);
• Cloning a phone;
• «Music party» (synchronizes phones to play music);
• Zen Space for concentration;
• Relax with the relaxing sounds of the sea or nature;
• Smart side panel;

In addition, there is a proprietary app store that allows you to download programs without creating a profile. This at least proves that Chinese manufacturers need Google only as a free developer of a new version of the operating system because without their services, the phones feel great.

Of course, the European version has Google Play and all the other favorite services of Western civilization. The phone has no problems working in our area, including NFC payment, good network coverage, etc. No one can guarantee all this with a cheaper Chinese version (bought on Aliexpress)

Among the disadvantages is the huge number of programs and video games offered for download. There is no aggressive advertising in every corner of the system, like Xiaomi, but OPPO Reno12 Pro offers many applications whose shortcuts are already waiting to be downloaded.

Just be careful not to accidentally press «Download All», as this will start downloading 12 applications (the number of tiles on the screen) at the same time. Delete this folder of recommended apps/games impossible. Some games are already installed «out of the box».

It is also worth noting that the translation in the system is not perfect, as some menu items are often in English (it is good that they are not hieroglyphics). In addition to the top panel with settings, there is an additional working screen with widgets that can be accessed by swiping from top to bottom.

By default, the manufacturer sets ugly (subjectively) icons, but you can change them and adapt them to your taste. A few minutes of manipulation and we managed to get something at least a little bit like the original Android OS.

The hero of the review is promoted by marketers as a smartphone with artificial intelligence support. In addition to the usual camera algorithms and photo editing assistant, OPPO Reno12 Pro can do a lot more, such as convert voice memos to text.

It’s good for long interviews, which the smartphone will automatically transcribe, but there were some difficulties with the Ukrainian language, or rather, it works only with a few languages (English, Chinese, Indian), which are the target audience of almost all Android smartphones.

The problem also applies to many other AI functions related to language models. OPPO Reno12 Pro’s artificial intelligence will be appreciated in Europe, the US, China, India, but not in Ukraine. Perhaps if Chinese companies completely take over our market, they will eventually release updates to such features for a small audience of Ukrainian speakers. But for now, it’s good functionality, but not for us.

In general, OPPO Reno12 Pro has a good firmware with its own nuances. It’s a bit clogged, not very adapted to our market, but it’s functional, works stably, and doesn’t tease with intrusive ads, as the domestic Chinese competitors of a well-known manufacturer in Ukraine do

Battery life and charging speed

OPPO Reno12 Pro may not be mighty, but it holds a charge for a very long time. But before we praise the hero of the review for its autonomy, we note one serious nuance. The smartphone does not accurately determine the battery level.

For example, it took almost 50 minutes of active use on social networks and various applications with an average brightness level to discharge it from 100% to 98%. The first few percent of the battery lasts too long, which indicates that the sensors are not working properly.

It also charges with considerable power after reaching 100% charge. Sometimes it takes another 5-8 minutes after the full charge indicator until the power supply is completely turned off. This bug made it difficult to accurately test the battery life of the device.

We ran four tests in total: three in PC Mark 10 and one in gaming. With 100% screen brightness, the smartphone lasted 8 hours and 25 minutes — the screen is the main energy consumer of OPPO Reno12 Pro. Due to a bug with a 100% charge, PC Mark 10 with 50% brightness showed a better result (16 hours 55 minutes) than with the minimum screen brightness (15 hours 58 minutes). This is because in the first case the battery was charged to «true» 100%, and in the second test it was possible to put some more energy there.

It’s amazing that in Genshin Impact, the smartphone lasted 7 hours and 18 minutes with 100% brightness. This is one of the best indicators among all phones on the market because OPPO Reno12 Pro gives a normal FPS (35-45) with adequate graphics and lasts longer than typical flagships. The golden mean, so to speak.

An 80W power adapter will not harm OPPO Reno12 Pro because the phone is able to adjust the charging power based on the temperature of the device. In the summer heat, after prolonged stress tests, the smartphone body heated up, which is quite normal, but the most interesting thing is that the power supply provided only 15-20 watts with an almost completely discharged battery.

The smartphone cooled down a bit, and then the power increased to 45-50 watts, which causes the case to heat up again, the power drops to 15-20 watts, and so on in a circle. It’s not very convenient, but it’s safe for battery health. The maximum was 82 watts at the beginning of the process.

If you turn on the phone while charging, the power immediately drops to 20-30 watts. It takes about 40 minutes to fully charge in normal, relatively cool conditions, although the phone will continue to charge for some time after reaching the false 100% mark with a power of 5-15 watts.

Experience using OPPO Reno12 Pro

After the budget models and the old Android flagship of 2018, OPPO Reno12 Pro provides a noticeable contrast during daily use. It’s elegant, comfortable, fast, and ergonomic, although it falls short of modern flagships, and the most demanding Apple iPhone fans may be disappointed.

But OPPO Reno12 Pro is the champion in terms of battery life, as it holds the battery under high load as if it were a budget smartphone based on Unisoc Tiger, but the performance is 2-3 times higher. As mentioned, this model holds a charge for up to seven days, depending on usage.

I charged it once every three to four days, considering active testing, taking photos, playing video games, surfing the Internet, killing time on unnecessary social networks and other applications. I liked the smartphone, but not enough to think about replacing my old flagship, especially at this price.

Price and competitors

Official price OPPO Reno12 Pro averages 25,000 hryvnias, and «gray» sell for as low as 21,500 hryvnias. Considering its capabilities, this is a lot. In China, this phone is significantly cheaper and has a more powerful Dimensity 8250 processor. In the Ukrainian market, it will not be easy for it to compete for buyers because the hero of the review has many strong competitors.

Apple iPhone 13 is still relevant and outperforms Reno12 Pro in all respects except for storage capacity and battery life.

Realme GT 6T has a Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 processor, less memory, and cannot record slow-motion video at 960 FPS. A compromise, but still a good option for 23,000 hryvnias (unofficially even less).

Motorola Edge 50 Pro — is one of the best Android smartphones in its class with 125W charging, 512GB of storage, and a 144Hz OLED screen.

Google Pixel 8a is an exemplary Android smartphone, although it has its own serious drawbacks compared to the hero of the review. A patriotic option for true fans of a pure OS without shells.