Oppo Reno6 5G review

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Introduction

Just about half a year ago, we had the Oppo Reno5 5G in for review and now the Reno6 series is upon us. Once again, the vanilla version is the center of attention and likely to be Oppo's main representative from the series in the European and Indian markets. Sadly, the Reno6 Pro+'s market availability outside of China is still a mystery.

Still, we are somewhat glad to have the vanilla Reno6 for the review as it's the only one in the family with updated looks. The design is a big departure from the previous generation, even though most of the hardware on the inside has been recycled from the previous model. It's unrealistic to expect a big generational jump in just six months so that's fine by us.

The Reno6 5G is a well-rounded midranger with the new and rather uncommon MediaTek Dimensity 900 chipset and a generous amount of memory - 8GB/128GB or 12GB/256GB.

Oppo Reno6 5G specs at a glance:

• Body: 156.8x72.1x7.6mm, 182g; Gorilla Glass 5 front, plastic back, metal frame .
• Display: 6.43" AMOLED, 90Hz, 430 nits (typ), 600 nits (HBM), 750 nits (peak), 1080x2400px resolution, 20:9 aspect ratio, 409ppi.
• Chipset: MediaTek MT6877 Dimensity 900 5G (6 nm): Octa-core (2x2.4 GHz Cortex-A78 & 6x2.0 GHz Cortex-A55); Mali-G68 MC4.
• Memory: 128GB 8GB RAM, 256GB 12GB RAM; UFS 2.1.
• OS/Software: Android 11, ColorOS 11.3.
• Rear camera: Wide (main): 64 MP, f/1.7, 26mm, 1/2.0", 0.7µm, PDAF; Ultra wide angle: 8 MP, f/2.2, 119˚, 1/4.0", 1.12µm; Depth: 2 MP, f/2.4.
• Front camera: 32 MP, f/2.4, 26mm (wide), 1/2.8", 0.8µm.
• Video capture: Rear camera: 4K@30fps, 1080p@30/60fps; Front camera: 1080p@30fps.
• Battery: 4300mAh; Fast charging 65W, SuperVOOC 2.0.
• Misc: Fingerprint reader (under display, optical).

The camera setup, although not proficient, seems to be mostly in line with the current state of the mid-range market segment. In fact, only the most expensive option from the series would give you proper telephoto and ultrawide cameras. The non-Plus Pro model carries the same camera setup as the vanilla configuration.

Oppo's specialty - fast charging - isn't neglected as well. The device has a bit smaller than your average midranger's battery capacity, but it smokes the competition with a snappy 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 charging support.

It all sounds well outside of context, but now it's time to put the Reno6 5G into one. The mid-tier segment is rather overpopulated, and there are plenty of brands competing for your hard-earned money, especially in the €400-500 price range, which is occupied by the Reno6 5G. Follow us into the next pages to see how it fares in our tests and how it compare it to the competition.

Unboxing the Oppo Reno6 5G

The device comes in a generous package containing not only the usual user manuals, appropriate charger and USB-A to USB-C cable but also a protective silicone case. Not that the charger is a given these days.

Since the phone doesn't have a 3.5mm audio jack, Oppo has provided a pair of wired USB-C earbuds that would do just fine if you are not a fan of wireless headphones.

Design and handling

The Reno series have always been lookers, and arguably, the vanilla Reno6 5G has the most intriguing design of them all, this time around. Sure, the Pro and the Pro+ boast glass backs with the same Reno Glow paint job, but the Reno6 5G has that iPhone-esque design language and should appeal more to anyone liking the industrial aesthetics.

The side frame is indeed made of anodized aluminum, while the back offers a plastic mimicking the aluminum feel. And we can definitely say that Oppo has hit the jackpot with this one. We had a tough time confirming that the back is plastic. The matte surface feels really nice, while the Stellar Black color shines gorgeously depending on the lighting conditions. Moreover, as Oppo notes, the back finish doesn't attract smudges and fingerprints. They are virtually non-existent and impossible to spot, no matter how close you look.

Since there is no gap between the back panel and the side frame, it was easy to assume that the device features a metal unibody design at first.

The camera island on the back sticks out quite a bit and goes well with the overall solid, blocky design. The three camera sensors are separated with metal rings and are joined by the LED flash and a color temperature sensor for better white balance metering and color accuracy.

The side frame is flat; it accommodates the two volume keys on the left and the green-accented power key on the right. All keys are clicky and responsive but could have been placed a little lower as opposed to the fingerprint reader's position, which is a bit on the low side. The current positions certainly are a reason for some thumb gymnastics for people with bigger hands.

The bottom side is home to the speaker grille, the USB-C connector and the SIM card tray, which gives you two SIM card slots but no microSD.

The Gorilla Glass 5 sheet on the front is completely flat, features thin bezels all-around, except for the chin, which is by default the thickest of the bunch. It goes well with the square-ish feel of the body yet doesn't feel sharp or protruding around the edges. It lies flush with a subtle curve that transitions into the side frame.

Oppo Reno6 5G

The punch-hole in the upper-left corner comes off a bit too big to our taste and could have been moved a little closer to the left edge to free up some space for icons in the status bar. Not a big issue, though.

Surely, the Reno6 5G is one of the lighter 6.4-6.6" handsets around (182g), and a thickness of just 7.6mm is somewhat impressive. However, the flat and blocky design makes it feel bigger than it actually is. The matte surface of the frame and the back don't help with the grip either, and it is slightly more slippery than your average glass sandwich phone.

Don't get us wrong, we really like the serious, premium-looking chassis of the Reno6 5G, but it comes with some trade-offs you might want to consider. The absence of fingerprints and smudges is a great bonus.

Bright 90Hz OLED

Judging by the specs - everything from rated maximum brightness to resolution and size - the Reno6 5G recycles the Reno5 5G's display. It has a 6.43-inch OLED with an off-centered punch-hole for the front-facing camera and crams up a tall 1080 x 2400px resolution (20:9 aspect ratio). It's also 90Hz, just like the previous vanilla Reno phone.

But while the previous iteration got a pass on the 90Hz panel, we don't feel comfortable letting the Reno6 5G walk away with it. Sure, 90Hz is better than 60Hz, but it's also a step behind the competition's commonly used 120Hz panels, OLED at that.

Display test	100% brightness
	Black,cd/m2	White,cd/m2	Contrast ratio
Oppo Reno6 5G	0	438	∞
Oppo Reno6 5G (Max Auto)	0	632	:1
Realme GT 5G	0	443	∞
Realme GT 5G (Max Auto)	0	650	∞
OnePlus Nord 2 5G	0	438	∞
OnePlus Nord 2 5G (Max Auto)	0	633	∞
Xiaomi Mi 11T	0	498	∞
Xiaomi Mi 11T (Max Auto)	0	798	∞
Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G	0	383	∞
Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G (Max Auto)	0	800	∞
Oppo Reno5 5G	0	444	∞
Oppo Reno5 5G (Max Auto)	0	634	∞

There's also no HDR10 support, although the maximum recorded brightness in auto mode is 632 nits - a respectable score that should do just fine outdoors. We also found it to be quite responsive to the environment and adjusts its brightness accordingly. Manually, the screen can go up to 438 nits - again a good result.

Unfortunately, color accuracy isn't its strongest suit, with yellows, greens, purples and reds being slightly off. More noticeably, the whites and grays are leaning towards blue with the default Vivid mode. Going with the Gentle mode would improve the color accuracy slightly, but would still leave blue-ish whites and grays. There's a color temperature slider that could come in handy if you are looking for a warmer and more accurate white balance.

Display settings

HRR control doesn't seem to have improved since the previous generation. We found the same behavior at hand with 60Hz kicking in only in select scenarios. Opening the YouTube and Netflix apps would limit the display's refresh rate to 60Hz, and so does playing videos with the default player in the gallery. However, for everything else, you get 90Hz, even when the screen is idle.

That's not ideal, but we would definitely take that over the forced 90Hz refresh rate on all things.

Battery life

The Reno6 5G runs on the same 4,300 mAh battery as its predecessor and employs the same 6.43-inch OLED panel. One of the main reasons why the two handsets scored exactly 109 hours overall endurance rating. However, the change in the chipset has caused a change in the screen-off and screen-on runtimes.

The Dimensity 900 helped the Reno6 5G get a significantly higher standby score as well as slightly higher web browsing runtime while falling short in the video playback and 3G talk time tests.

Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating denotes how long the battery charge will last you if you use the device for an hour of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. More details can be found here.

Compared to some of its rivals, the Reno6 5G holds up well, but its battery endurance isn't on par with the competition. Here's how it stacks against some of the alternatives on the market.

Video test carried out in 60Hz refresh rate mode. Web browsing test done at the display's highest refresh rate whenever possible. Refer to the respective reviews for specifics. To adjust the endurance rating formula to match your own usage patterns check out our all-time battery test results chart where you can also find all phones we've tested.

Charging speed

Even though the Reno5 and Reno6 have the same battery capacity (4,300 mAh) and charge over the same 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 charger, the new model smokes its predecessor (and the competition). It seems like Oppo has adjusted the charging curve to achieve a blazing-fast 100% charge in 29 minutes. Only OnePlus' Nord 2 5G gets close to the Reno6 5G's charging, but the Nord has a slightly bigger battery.

30min charging test (from 0%)

Higher is better

• Oppo Reno6 5G
  100%
• OnePlus Nord 2
  98%
• Oppo Reno5 5G
  87%
• Realme GT 5G (65W)
  87%
• Xiaomi 11T
  86%
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  53%

Time to full charge (from 0%)

Lower is better

• Oppo Reno6 5G
  0:29h
• OnePlus Nord 2
  0:31h
• Realme GT 5G (65W)
  0:39h
• Oppo Reno5 5G
  0:40h
• Xiaomi 11T
  0:41h
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  1:28h

And for those of you worried about battery health with all that fast charging, the software can take care of that when doing overnight charging. It would keep the battery at a high percentage, but not 100%, until right before you wake up. This limits the overcharging and thus, keeps your battery healthy for longer.

Battery and charging menu

Speaker

Sadly, still no stereo speakers. And judging by the loudness score and the sound quality, we bet it's the same speaker as before. This means that the loudness of just -30 LUFS isn't impressive by any means. The competition has already moved to stereo speaker setups.

Audio quality isn't on par with rivals either. The highs are a bit distorted at higher volumes, and the non-existing bass makes everything sound flat.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here

ColorOS 11.3 and Android 11

We reviewed the Reno5 5G a few months ago running ColorOS 11.1, and now, the Reno6 5G launches with 11.3 version of the software, which offers some marginal improvements and bug fixes but no major features. In other words, we already know what to expect from the Reno6 5G in terms of software.

Not exactly clean Android experience by any means. While the company's close siblings, OnePlus and Realme, are going for a bit more stock-ish look, ColorOS is still heavily customized and customizable, too.

You can go for the standard app drawer, which was enabled by default on our phone, the recent apps menu is familiar with an icon row at the bottom, which can be used to quickly scroll between the apps for faster navigation. The notification shade is in typical ColorOS fashion with oval, square icons and the brightness slider at the bottom.

Home screen, notification shade, recent apps, app drawer

Good thing Oppo gives you the freedom to customize almost everything you see on the screen. Most of the options can be found under the Personalizations sub-menu in the general Settings menu. You can set up a theme, icon pack, change the shape of the quick toggles in the notification shade, choose the accent color of the UI elements around the OS, switch the font, and you even have a wide selection of fingerprint reader animations.

Personalization options

The edge lighting has a couple of colors to choose from, while the always-on display feature is highly customizable - a plethora of clock styles, animations, custom text styles, etc. The behavior of the AoD is, of course, adjustable, so the screen will light up only when touched or at a specific time of the day to preserve battery.

Personalization options

You can take advantage of several Home screen features. For instance, pulling down from the Home screen summons a global search, which can be replaced with a pull-down for the notification shade. That's what we prefer too. A double-tap on any empty space would lock the device, and a double-tap on a locked screen can unlock it. Standard stuff.

Except for the so-called Icon pull-down gesture. We liked the feature the first time, and it seems like it's been improved too, or we are just better at it now. It does have a learning curve but what it does is improve one-handed operation. Swiping upwards along the left or right edge of the screen brings down the icons closer to the bottom half of the screen. The highlighted app of your choice launches as soon as you release your finger. We found it to work pretty well, and the gesture is quite responsive.

Home screen settings and Icon pull-down gesture

The ability to reduce animation speed is a nice touch because you don't have to enable the developer options menu. As we stated before, animations do seem a tad slower than they should be, so going for the faster animations might not be such a bad idea. And they will still look smooth at 90fps.

Android 11-intrinsic features such as bubbles, one-time permissions, conversation grouping in the notification shade and the media playback controls are now integrated into the quick toggles menu drop-down instead of taking space in the notification area.

Chat bubbles

Nowadays, everyone is doing their own variation of Samsung's Edge panel feature. Oppo calls it Smart sidebar, and it's a small, movable and customizable area docked to either side of the edge of the screen and gives you access to commonly used tasks or apps of your choice.

Smart sidebar

As before, the fingerprint reader experience is impeccable. It's fast, accurate and works well in all lighting conditions. Our only complaint is about positioning, which we've already covered in the Design section of the review.

Lastly, ColorOS 11.3 brings a so-called RAM expansion feature that everyone is doing lately. It allocates some of the storage space so that it can be used for RAM and keep more apps opened in the background. Its usefulness is arguable since the phone already has more than enough memory - 8GB to be exact. The software allows you to add 2, 3 or 5GB. It's probably more beneficial for phones with less than 6GB.

RAM expansion

Overall performance is great, though, and we didn't find any setbacks, annoying bugs, and we didn't experience any hangs. The software felt snappy. However, we would have liked a bit less bloatware. We found many pre-installed apps on the device, including some games. Luckily, most of them can be removed. The Netflix app and other system apps, of course, can't be removed.

Performance

The handset employs a recent MediaTek SoC that's hard to find on other devices. We are talking about the Dimensity 900 chipset based on TSMC's 6nm N6 manufacturing process. The chip uses an octa-core CPU that consists of 2x Cortex-A78 cores ticking at 2.4 GHz that do the heavy lifting and 6x Cortex-A55 cores running at 2.0GHz. The Mali-G68 MC4 GPU clocked at 900MHz takes care of the graphically-intensive workloads.

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Realme GT 5G
  3555
• Realme GT Master
  2917
• Xiaomi 11T
  2834
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  2801
• OnePlus Nord 2
  2792
• Oppo Reno6 5G
  2131
• Samsung Galaxy A52 5G
  1820
• Oppo Reno5 5G
  1813

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Realme GT 5G
  1139
• OnePlus Nord 2
  814
• Realme GT Master
  785
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  771
• Xiaomi 11T
  742
• Oppo Reno6 5G
  722
• Samsung Galaxy A52 5G
  636
• Oppo Reno5 5G
  608

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• Realme GT 5G
  703986
• OnePlus Nord 2
  512164
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  429675
• Oppo Reno6 5G
  362450
• Samsung Galaxy A52 5G
  334981
• Oppo Reno5 5G
  317762

AnTuTu 9

Higher is better

• Realme GT 5G
  810433
• OnePlus Nord 2
  598022
• Xiaomi 11T
  590837
• Realme GT Master
  529263
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  506432
• Oppo Reno6 5G
  430765
• Samsung Galaxy A52 5G
  386474
• Oppo Reno5 5G
  377615

3DMark SSE ES 3.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  5010
• Realme GT Master
  4988
• Oppo Reno6 5G
  3764
• Oppo Reno5 5G
  3208

3DMark SSE Vulkan 1.0 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  4231
• Realme GT Master
  4020
• Oppo Reno6 5G
  3818
• Oppo Reno5 5G
  3008

3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Realme GT 5G
  5872
• OnePlus Nord 2
  4224
• Xiaomi 11T
  4172
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  2491
• Realme GT Master
  2481
• Oppo Reno6 5G
  2024
• Oppo Reno5 5G
  1658
• Samsung Galaxy A52 5G
  1107

Sadly, the Reno6 5G has to deal with considerably more powerful rivals. The Dimensity 900 SoC is just no match for the Snapdragon 778G, a common chipset in this price segment. There are quite a few running MediaTek's top-shelf Dimensity 1200, too.

However, the Dimensity 900 does offer a noteworthy improvement over the Snapdragon 765G found in the Reno5 5G and manages to beat the Snapdragon 750G as well in CPU, combined and GPU-intensive tests.

One less camera but essentially the same setup

Compared to the Reno5 5G, the Reno6 skips the depth sensor and borrows the rest of the cameras from its predecessor. It's hardly a downgrade given the rather questionable utility of the depth sensor anyway. The main 64MP, 1/2.0", 0.7µm pixels sensor is here to stay, and it's once again paired with an f/1.7 aperture.

The ultrawide unit is familiar as well - 8MP f/2.2, 1/4.0" with 1.12µm pixels. The dedicated macro camera relies on a 2MP sensor with an f/2.4 lens.

And as for selfies, the device uses a fairly large for a selfie camera sensor - 32MP, 1/2.8", 0.8µm and an f/2.4 aperture.

Camera menus

There's nothing too sophisticated about the default camera app. The main camera modes are arranged in a typical carousel formation, while Macro mode is tucked away in the More sub-menu. You will find four toggles on the viewfinder - one for the ultrawide, one for the main 1x mode, and two zoomed ones of 2x and 5x. Both crop from the center of the main camera, of course.

The default Camera app

The usual controls for HDR and the AI mode can be found on top of the viewfinder. The Settings menu gives you the standard list of options.

Daylight samples

Main camera

The main 64MP camera performs as expected considering the price range, meaning it's rather good for daylight photography with a wide dynamic range. Sharpness is good, and there's plenty of fine detail for pixel-peeping.

There are some inconsistencies at times, however. The exposure can be slightly off sometimes (leaning towards darker images overall). Additionally, whites can look a bit warmer than they should be.

12MP daylight samples

Taking the phone inside for a couple of indoor shots results in a drastic drop in detail. We blame the noise suppression algorithm mostly, judging by the small soft patches that occur. Speaking of noise, we had only one sample that showed a significant amount of noise, so we think it's a rather rare event.

12MP daylight samples

Shooting in the full 64MP resolution wouldn't benefit you much. You do get a bit more detail that comes along with noise and softness.

64MP daylight samples

2x zoom

There's no dedicated 2x zoom camera, however, the 2x mode outputs crops from the main camera which look quite nice.

The images are nice and detailed so perhaps there's some additional processing going on in the background or even multi-image stacking because these photos turn out better than we would expect.

Daylight 2x zoom samples

Whatever the case may be, we see a minimal loss in sharpness while inheriting all of the benefits of the default 16MP photos. Sadly, this also means that the small issues we found in the standard 16MP images are present here, too. That doesn't change our great impression of the zoomed photos. We can even argue that the 2x zoom samples look almost indistinguishable from some budget telephoto shooters.

Ultrawide camera

We weren't expecting much from the ultrawide camera, but we were pleasantly surprised by it, at least when it comes to certain processing aspects. We liked the colors, contrast is okay, and the level of detail is rather sufficient. To be honest, that's more than you could ask from a mid-range 8MP ultrawide unit.

Otherwise, expect soft-looking photos with a narrower dynamic range and your regular edge softness. Color fringing is absent, though, and the barrel distortion is limited thanks to the software algorithm.

Daylight ultrawide samples

Macro camera

It's just like pretty much every other dedicated 2MP macro camera out there - struggles with dimmer conditions, sharpness is okay, but the detail is lacking (it's a 2MP sensor after all), the absence of autofocus makes it harder to shoot moving objects and colors are a bit desaturated. Contrast needs a little boost too.

Macro camera samples

Low-light samples

Main camera

The low-light photos look quite impressive, and it seems that the HDR algorithm is doing a pretty good job. Dynamic range is wide, and the level of detail even in the shadows is great. Light sources may appear clipped at times, while sharpness and contrast need a little bump too. But images are overall bright enough and just a tad noisy in the shadows.

Low-light main camera samples

The Night mode doesn't bring such drastic improvements to the image but it cleans up whatever little noise there is and brightens up the shadows. It does take about 5 seconds to do its magic.

Night mode main camera samples

The Night mode produces generally brighter photos, although it's hard to tell the difference sometimes. More importantly, adds quite a bit of sharpness, boosts the contrast and renders light sources better. The noise suppression algorithm is a double-edged sword in the Night mode as it clears up the remaining noise in the dark areas of the image but washes away some detail along the way. Our recommendation is to use both modes for a single scene and decide which one is better afterward.

2x zoom

It may not be a clear cut whether the default Photo mode or Night mode takes better 16MP pictures; it's evident that the Night mode 2x zoom samples look a lot better. The default ones are soft, lack detail and are washed out. The Night mode clears up the image, brings out some detail from the shadows and adds much-needed contrast and sharpness.

Low light 2x zoom: Normal • Night mode

Still, we can't say that all of the zoomed Night mode samples are usable, so it's a hit or miss.

Ultrawide camera

The ultrawide camera is hard to recommend at night as it produces muddy, low-contrast and noisy images with a narrow dynamic range. The Night mode brightens things up and adds some artificial sharpening, but it's not enough to give it a pass.

Low-light ultrawide: Normal • Night mode

Here's how the primary camera on the Oppo Reno6 5G stacks against the rest of the competition in the controlled environment of our Photo Compare Tool.

Oppo Reno6 5G vs. OnePlus Nord 2 5G and the Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G in our Photo compare tool

Portraits

To our surprise, the portrait shots are far from impressive. With sufficient ambient light, the noise isn't visible, but even the slightest drop in light affects the picture's clarity. Sharpness and detail aren't on par with the competition, but the edge detection algorithm seems rather good. You can expect a nice foreground blur, too.

Portrait samples

Color accuracy, on the other hand, is good, although the subjects' skin tones come across a little pale.

Selfies

The 32MP selfies look sub-par, especially in terms of sharpness and level of detail. The photos don't look like they are 32MP, and noise is aplenty in almost all lighting conditions. Moreover, colors are dull, and images look soft overall. Dynamic range is wide, though, and keeps a well-balanced exposed without overexposing the subject's face at the same time.

Selfies: Normal • Portrait

HDR doesn't work in selfie Portrait mode, hence the burned background on the third scene, and the photos look softer too. The edge detection seems to be pretty consistent and surprisingly accurate as it clips only some small hairs off of the subject's hair.

Video recording

The handset caps at 2160p@30fps recording using the main camera; the ultrawide can only go up to 1080p@30fps due to its limited resolution. Let's start with the 4K footage.

It doesn't impress with a high level of detail, and it's not exactly sharp, but it pretty much nails the rest. We'd like to call the colors accurate, the dynamic range wide and the contrast - good. Noise is hard to spot, even on uniform surfaces.

The 1080p@30fps video produced by the ultrawide camera is downright disappointing. Although, we are hardly ever impressed by midrangers doing ultrawide videos. Anyway, the ultrawide video looks muddy, a tad noisy and suffers from a narrow dynamic range and lacks any kind of detail. Contrast needs boost and colors, too.

We also tried out the Ultra Steady mode that's supposed to provide gimbal-like stabilization. And this is the case here for the most part. However, the video is capped ad 1080p@60fps, so it won't be very sharp, and there's an apparent jello effect that distorts the image with each step. We experienced similar behavior on the last model.

Here's a much sharper, better-looking 4K video for reference, although very shaky. No EIS in 4K.

Once you are done with the real-life scenarios, take a look at our video compare tool to see how the Oppo Reno6 5G stacks against the other phones we've reviewed.

2160p: Oppo Reno6 5G vs. OnePlus Nord 2 5G and the Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G in our Video compare tool

Competition

Not much has changed over the last generation Reno, except competition, of course. After all, five months in the smartphone world is a lot. The chipset and the design are the only variables that changed, so we can call the Reno6 5G a refresh with a clear conscience. Sure, the new SoC is sensibly faster than the Snapdragon 765G from before, but the Dimensity 900 still drags behind when put against other €400-500 handsets, where the Reno6 5G competes.

The €410 OnePlus Nord 2 5G and the recently released Xiaomi 11T asking about €500 both run a faster Dimensity 1200 chipset. Going a rung up the price ladder, to around €550, would even get you a Snapdragon 888 in the form of a Realme GT 5G. Funny how the Renoa6 5G faces fierce competition from its relatives from OnePlus and Realme. Even Samsung's Galaxy A52s 5G got a significant upgrade over its predecessor and is now running the shiny new Snapdragon 778G SoC.

Realme GT 5G • Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G • OnePlus Nord 2 5G • Xiaomi 11T

The display isn't any faster either. Clocked at 90Hz, it falls short of the commonly used 120Hz OLEDs in the alternatives above, except for the Nord 2. This may not be a deal-breaker for most, although it adds to the long list of cons. The absence of stereo speakers is another major misstep, along with no ingress protection. The latter is something we often see in even lower-priced handsets. If this is a must-have feature for you, the Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G and the Xiaomi 11T may fit your criteria.

Battery life is on point, although with lower screen-on runtimes than the Reno5 5G, but the speedy charging smokes the competition. When it comes to camera performance, it's not clear cut, but the Reno6 holds up pretty well and shows particularly impressive nighttime and 2x zoom performance despite not having a proper telephoto. And that's rather surprising because the device sports the smallest sensor around - the Nord 2 5G has a 1/1.56" 50MP one, the 11T goes up to 108MP, 1/1.52" and even the A52's and the GT's 64MP units are bigger.

Even though the design has always been a subjective aspect, there's no denying that the Reno6 5G has refreshing and stylish new looks. The back may not be glass but doesn't compromise with texture. Not attracting smudges and fingerprints is a nice bonus.

Come to think of it, the Reno5 5G might not be such a bad deal given that it now sells for less than €400 and offers the same features as its successor. People that are sold to Oppo's ColorOS or some other niche feature that the Reno series offer should definitely consider the previous generation, in case you can still find it on the shelves.

Verdict

The Oppo Reno6 5G isn't exactly a niche product, and it's hard to recommend unless you are in it for the design. It's nice, but it's not enough to sell the phone. All of the phone's competitors are more powerful, even the lower-priced ones, and all have superior displays too. The lack of stereo speakers, microSD card slot and ingress protection are just contributing to the argument.

Camera quality is indeed good, and the fast charging may win over some buyers; however, none of those are exclusive to the Reno6 5G as well. There are plenty of handsets between €400 and €550 that are giving you a better value for money.

Pros

• Light, stylish and fresh new design.
• Bright 90Hz OLED.
• Dependable battery life.
• Good camera experience, especially at night and 2x zoom.
• Blazing-fast charging.
• Customizable and smooth ColorOS.

Cons

• Considerably more powerful alternatives.
• Faster and brighter displays available.
• Not competitive price-wise.
• No stereo speakers.
• Plastic back, lacks ingress protection.

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