Hands-On, Smartphone

Oppo Reno 10x Zoom Retails at RM3,399 in Malaysia

A couple of weeks ago, the standard Oppo Reno was launched in Malaysia. Today, it’s the bigger brother’s turn: the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom Edition is now available for pre-order on our shores until 17 June. As a full-fledged premium smartphone, the Reno 10x Zoom also carries an equally premium price tag – it goes for RM3,399 in Malaysia.

At this price point, the Reno 10x Zoom is unmistakably a costly smartphone. But is it worth its asking price? Let’s find out.

Design wise, the Reno 10x Zoom looks and feels a lot like its more affordable sibling, even though it has a slightly larger 6.6-inch 1080p OLED display. It feels like a proper flagship smartphone, and I love the frosted glass-like finish on the back panel of the Ocean Green variant.

And then we have the all-screen design of the Reno 10x Zoom. While there’s still a bit of a chin at the bottom of the display, the top bezel is free from any notch or hole-punch cutout. It gives the phone a very sleek aesthetic, and it really is one of the most visually appealing smartphones in the market now.

In order to realise the all-screen design, Oppo equipped the Reno 10x Zoom with a motorised “shark fin” 16MP f/2.0 pop-up camera. As I’ve mentioned in my hands-on of the standard Reno, the unique camera mechanism is a lot quieter to activate, but it is also slower to move up. Overall, however, the slightly slower pop-up action shouldn’t affect regular use too much.

What differentiates the Reno 10x Zoom from the standard model are a couple of notable hardware. Not only is the former powered by a much more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset (instead of the regular Reno’s Snapdragon 710 SoC), it comes with a much more sophisticated camera system too.

Naturally, as its name suggests, the Reno 10x Zoom model can do 10x hybrid zoom, thanks to its triple camera system. It consists of a 48MP f/1.7 shooter, a 13MP f/3.0 telephoto camera, and an 8MP f/2.2 ultra-wide angle sensor. The camera system also uses a periscope-style lens arrangement, which makes it possible to have that impressive zooming capability without added thickness.

So how does the 10x hybrid zoom perform? Well, it works as advertised. Without a doubt both optical and digital zoom are used to achieve 10x zoom, but the results do look quite promising. Then again, this is only my first impression of it: I wasn’t able to test out the phone’s zooming performance extensively.

Camera performance of the Reno 10x Zoom as a whole, on the other hand, is quite good. In fact, it’s very similar to the standard Reno’s image output, though this 10x Zoom model does have the added flexibility of a telephoto lens (obviously) and a wide angle shooter. I’ve only tested the camera’s performance under ideal lighting, so it remains to be seen how well it would perform in low light conditions.

As for performance, the Reno 10x Zoom has ample amount of power. The Snapdragon 855 under the hood of this phone is a very capable chipset, and it lends to a very pleasant user experience. In my brief time with the device, I didn’t notice any stutter or lag; as expected of a flagship smartphone.

Much like the standard model, the Reno 10x Zoom also comes with an OLED panel. It’s a slightly larger 6.6-inch 1080p display, and it has very deep blacks, punchy colours, and great viewing angles – common traits of OLED screens. A 1080p display may not sound impressive (especially for a flagship phone at this price range), it does have one major advantage: power efficiency.

Since it is a bigger phone, the Reno 10x Zoom also has a larger 4,065mAh battery. With the combination of the generous battery capacity and 1080p display, you can expect to get good battery life out of this device.

All in all, the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom Edition is a good flagship smartphone – great, even. Its zooming capability is impressive (even if the Huawei P30 Pro has a similar camera system), it has a sleek design, and it is a fast smartphone. But the thing is, it’s also priced on the higher side of things.

Sure, RM3,399 isn’t all that bad for 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM, but Oppo’s decision to bring in only one variant of the Reno 10x Zoom also means there is no lower price of entry. Even if you don’t want that much storage space, you don’t have any other choice.

Of course, the Reno 10x Zoom Edition’s feature set and design could justify its steep asking price, and it’s only fair to reserve judgment until I’ve got the device in for a full review. Nonetheless, if you really fancy the phone’s camera system and all-screen design, I reckon it is worth checking out.

Plus, this is an Oppo flagship smartphone – it’s rare for the company to release any device in this particular segment.

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