Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G

Verdict

While it’s not among the very best mid-range phones in its class, the Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G does a quietly accomplished job. An impressive sense of balance is enhanced by stand-out camera flexibility and overall stamina, though you can get better performance, design, software, and main camera results elsewhere.

Introduction

You might not give Oppo too much thought, but by many estimations, it’s the fourth biggest smartphone maker in the world. This Chinese brand quite clearly knows what it’s doing, as phones like the Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G demonstrate.

Here is a highly competent mid-range phone that offers such a smooth and painless experience for your £499, it can be hard to pick out any clear and obvious faults. With a strong display, excellent stamina, competent performance, and a nicely balanced camera system, it provides all-round quality on a mid-range budget.

The only trouble it faces, aside from a possible lack of brand recognition here in the West, is a whole bunch of accomplished rivals selling for similar money. The Samsung Galaxy A55 5G, Pixel 8a, and Poco F6 Pro all have their own specific strengths that the Reno 12 Pro 5G will have to contend with.

So what can Oppo offer us that we haven’t seen already?

Design

• Gently curved glass and plastic design
• Wavy optical finish to rear
• Slightly curved Gorilla Glass Victus 2 front

The Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G design ranges between the quietly pleasing and the humdrum. When it comes to the basic shape and feel of the phone, I couldn’t help but find the all-plastic body to feel slightly cheap, especially with the tacky reflective finish applied to the flat rim.

I’m not massively taken by the Nebula Silver shade my unit came in either. It’s more of a shimmering metallic mauve than anything, with a wavy optical finish that reminded me of one of those old holograms that used to grant a basic 3D depth effect on cereal boxes and comics. There’s also a more sober Nebula Black option with a mix of matte and glossy options, which looks a little more classy – at least in pictures.

The shape of the camera module is pretty bog standard too, with a ridged oblong surround that doesn’t leave much of an impression – certainly not compared to the striking industrial looks of the Oppo Reno 10 5G.

Flip the phone over to the front, however, and things take a turn for the better. Oppo reckons that the Reno 12 Pro 5G’s design offers the “best of both worlds”, in that it has a stylish rounded finish redolent of a curved screen, yet it remains perfectly flat. The latter point means that there are no visual distortions on full-screen media, and you won’t get any false screen presses from your holding hand either.

We’ve seen this before, of course, in so many phones with so-called ‘2.5D’ screens. It’s not an effect we see in too many modern mid-range phones, however, so it stands out here. Then there’s the use of materials, with Gorilla Glass Victus 2 giving distinct flagship vibes while promising greater scratch protection than we normally expect at the price.

Indeed, while most of the phone is coated in plastic, there’s a reassuring sense of rigidity. Oppo claims to have used a “high-strength alloy framework” to make the phone bend- and dent-resistant. I didn’t dare put this to the test, but it certainly feels more solid than your average cheap plastic phone.

IP65 splash resistance places the Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G comfortably in the middle of the pack. It can’t compete with the Pixel 8a or the Samsung Galaxy A55 5G (both IP67), but it tops the Poco F6 Pro (on IP54).

Factor in a weight of 180g and a thickness of 7.28mm, and the Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G feels nicely balanced in the hand. The design language is slightly jumbled alright, but the overall effect is just about a net positive.

Screen

• 6.7-inch AMOLED
• FHD+ resolution
• 120Hz refresh rate

There’s a certain measured quality to the Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G, and that also applies to its display.

This 6.7-inch AMOLED doesn’t particularly stand out from its peers. With an FHD+ (1080 x 2412) resolution it doesn’t have the Poco F6 Pro’s sharpness, while a stated peak brightness of 1200 nits isn’t going to put it anywhere near the top of the mid-range pile.

Despite that, I had absolutely no complaints with this screen. It’s sharp enough, fluid enough at 120Hz, and bright enough in most conditions. Once I’d switched away from the gaudy and cool-tinted Vivid colour mode to Natural, I also found it to be reasonably colour-accurate, and there’s HDR10+ support too.

Throw in the aforementioned high-quality 2.5D glass, as well as a fast and reliable in-display fingerprint sensor, and the Reno 12 Pro 5G display proved thoroughly pleasant to interact with.

Having very few notes about a smartphone display can be a positive thing, at least at this end of the market. You can get better for the money, but good enough is good enough.

Performance

• Mediatek Dimensity 7300
• 12GB of RAM
• Impressive 512GB of storage as standard

The Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G’s performance reflects its design and display. It doesn’t tear up any trees or make any bold statements, but it’s been expertly calibrated to provide a reassuringly solid experience.

The Mediatek Dimensity 7300 chip that powers the phone is no great shakes on paper. We’ve seen it recently powering the Nothing CMF Phone 1, which is a device that costs less than half the amount.

Benchmark results reveal a decidedly low-to-mid-range component, falling well short of the flagship-nudging Pixel 8a and Poco F6 Pro. Even the Samsung Galaxy A55 5G, which falls well short of those mid-range pace setters, hands out a hiding in CPU tests and a narrow win in GPU terms.

The thing is, though, you wouldn’t know it simply from using the Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G. I don’t know if it’s the capacious 12GB of RAM that’s been laid on or expert optimisation from Oppo – quite possibly it’s both – but this phone feels fast and fluid in general use.

In gaming terms, it performed well on Zenless Zone Zero on medium settings, and even responded reasonably well to nudging things up to 60fps. Genshin Impact ran reasonably fluidly on medium-to-high settings. It’s not going to handle high-end games flawlessly on higher graphical settings like those rival devices, but if such things matter to you you’re probably already looking elsewhere.

Special mention should go to Oppo’s decision to go with 512GB of storage as standard, at least here in the UK. It’s an unusually generous amount.

Would I have preferred 256GB (or even 128GB) and a more capable processor? Almost certainly yes, if only with a view to how the phone might perform in two or three years’ time. But in the here and now, it feels like a rare ‘above and beyond’ inclusion in an otherwise finely balanced package.

Camera

• Decent 50MP main camera
• Unusual 50MP 2x telephoto
• 8MP ultrawide the weakest link
• Strong 50MP selfie cam with AF

Here’s a turn up for the books: a sub-£500 smartphone with a dedicated telephoto camera. It’s not completely unheard of, but most phones at this end of the market will ditch such an optical zoom capability altogether or worse – swap it out for a pointless macro camera.

The Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G continues to sell itself convincingly as a balanced, well rounded phone with a 1/1.95-inch 50MP main sensor, an 8MP ultra-wide, and a 50MP 2x telephoto.

That main camera captures vibrant, right shots with decent dynamic range. There are hints of overexposure, and Oppo’s image processing might be a tad over-enthusiastic when processing bright colours and blue, cloudy skies. One or two sunny day shots that I took struck an unnatural note. Mostly, however, it produces crisp, clear, eminently sharable snaps.

It also does a decent job in Night mode, with shots that pull out the colour and detail in artificially lit subjects whilst maintaining inky black skies and shady corners. Like those bright daytime shots, the odd night shot struck a bum note with slightly unnatural, artefact-y skies, but for the most part it’s a perfectly usable mode.

I was most impressed with that 50MP telephoto camera, however. It’s not that the quality of these zoomed shots is outstanding – it clearly plays second fiddle to that main sensor, which itself is decent rather than great. But the tone of the 2x shots I captured was of a piece with said main sensor. Oppo has done a fine job balancing them out.

You can also get usable 5x hybrid zoom shots. Detail drops off to a noticeable degree, as you might expect, but they’re far from a write-off.

The 8MP ultra-wide is by far the weakest link here. Shots taken with this mode are notably lacking in detail and dynamic range, with Oppo’s image processing working overtime to punch up the colours.

Oppo has done well with the 50MP selfie camera, too. It’s capable of capturing rich, details shots thanks to that high pixel count and autofocus – something that tends to be reserved for flagship phones. Again, consistency can be a slight issue here – in two consecutive and mostly identical shots, the first turned out way overexposed, while the second was beautifully balanced and rich with colour.

As with every other manufacturer, Oppo is making a song and dance about its phone’s AI camera features. These essentially resemble a cut-down version of the Google/Samsung offering, with the ability to delete background elements and people, and to straighten out those blinkers in group photos.

I found Oppo’s implementation of those background removal elements to be pretty decent. It also successfully located, erased, and covered up unwanted photobombers, though you could clearly see the wobbly patch-up job when you looked more closely. The AI-enhanced image is to the right here:

Software

• ColorOS 14.1 on Android 14
• Busy but fluid UI
• Familiar suite of AI tools
• No stated software support promise

Oppo is very much in that class of phone manufacturers who think they know better than Google when it comes to tasteful, appealing software. Just like with Xiaomi, Honor, Samsung, and plenty of others, I’d argue that they don’t.

The menus, while crisp and clear, lack that combination of style and visual cohesiveness that stock Android and iOS exude. It also packs in some bloatware, with Spotify, Booking.com, LinkedIn, WPS Office, TikTok, Amazon Shopping, Facebook, Netflix, and six throwaway games preinstalled.

Oppo supplies some of its own extraneous fluff too, with the O Relax mindfulness app essentially providing a bunch of soothing ambient sounds and natural scenes.

With that said, ColorOS 14.1 running on Android 14 is a solid enough interface that feels rock solid here on the Reno 12 Pro 5G. Home screens and menus flit past with snappy yet smooth animations – a testament to Oppo’s optimisation work as well as the efficient Dimensity 7300 chip at the heart of the phone.

As with most of its competitors, Oppo gives you plenty of options, between gestures and buttons, and between an app tray or pure home screen navigation. There’s also a handy sidebar function that lets you access keys apps and file management with a lateral swipe from the top edge. It also handily contains Oppo’s general AI tools.

It’s a similar suite of features to those that Google and Samsung have implemented, such as AI Summary (summarise long articles), AI Writer (sharpen up your messages), AI Speak (vocalise text), and the various camera features mentioned above. I pitched Oppo’s AI Summary feature directly against the Gemini-powered feature on the Galaxy Z Flip 6, and found Oppo’s to be slightly less astute and concise with its precis.

We’re not seeing any specific software update promises here, which likely means that you’re not going to see more than two new versions of Android. Samsung lets it be known that the Galaxy A55 will get four while Google makes a virtue (quite rightly) of the Pixel 8a’s seven, so Oppo’s silence probably speaks volumes.

Battery Life

• 5,000mAh battery
• 80W SuperVooc support, though not bundled in
• Genuine two-day usage potential
• No wireless charging

Oppo has equipped its phone with a fairly standard 5000mAh battery. Combined with an efficient processor and Oppo’s optimisation, this yields some outstanding stamina.

In a full 16-hour day of moderate usage (around 4 hours of screen on time), I found that the Reno 12 Pro 5G had dropped to around the 70% mark. Admittedly, this was a day of fairly stable and favourable network conditions, but the fact remains that two days of usage on a single charge is quite attainable.

Even more intensive usage didn’t stress the Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G out too much. An hour of Amazon Prime movie streaming sapped 4%, while 30 minutes of light gaming on Slay the Spire ate just 3%.

Oppo can typically be relied upon to give its phones a decent charging provision, and the Reno 12 Pro 5G matches previous efforts with its 80W SuperVooc support. However, Oppo now omits said charger from the box, meaning you’ll need to splash out extra if you haven’t retained a previous example.

Fortunately, I had a 100W SuperVooc charger handy from the OnePlus 12R (OnePlus is essentially an Oppo sub-brand), and was able to record it getting from empty to 40% in 15 minutes. It took 46 minutes to conduct a full 0-100% charge.

There’s no wireless charging here, which is pretty normal for a mid-range phone. If such a feature is important to you, however, there’s always the Pixel 8a.

Latest deals