OPPO Reno 8T Review: Undeniably stylish but lacks powerful hardware

The OPPO Reno 8T is a stunner. It is undeniably eye-catching with its iridescent matte-finish rear panel and gorgeous curved display. The phone also has a good primary camera for daylight use and great battery life. However, it lacks powerful hardware. At this price, featuring the Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 SoC means it offers the same performance chops as lower-end phones such as POCO X4 Pro, Vivo T1, Moto G62, and Micromax In Note 2. Meanwhile, its competitors in and around the 30K price point run away with all the performance accolades.

OPPO Reno phones have made a name for themselves specifically for an aesthetically pleasing design language and great camera chops. The newly-launched OPPO Reno 8T is no different in its approach. Priced at ₹29,999 though, the phone competes against fierce contenders from other companies such as iQOO Neo 7 5G, POCO X5 Pro, Redmi K50i, and others. Most of the phones launched under the ₹30K price point pack a serious punch when it comes to the phone’s day-to-day performance. However, the OPPO Reno 8T – while it is a gorgeous-looking smartphone – features the slightly underwhelming Snapdragon 695 SoC, which we’ve also seen in phones in and around the ₹15-20K price point. Is the combination of design and camera enough to make up for the hardware packed into this phone? Let’s find out.

OPPO Reno 8T Review: Build and display

The OPPO Reno 8T looks gorgeous and eye-catching with its matte-textured back with an iridescent glow. The camera module juts out considerably with two large circular discs that house the rear lenses and flash. There’s also the OPPO branding on the bottom left and text saying “108 MP Portrait Camera” which doesn’t look too flashy. 

However, there is a considerable amount of flex on the polycarbonate rear panel which slightly takes away from the premium feel. The buttons, on the side, are tactile and clicky and the frame of the phone is plastic but sports an aluminium look. The in-display fingerprint sensor is fast enough and we recorded only a couple of misreadings during our testing period. The phone is also incredibly lightweight at merely 171 g and is 7.7 mm thick, which improves handling. However, it is slightly slippery, so we suggest buying a good protective case.

Moving on to the display, the Reno 8T houses a gorgeous curved panel that spills over the edges. While the phone’s display is usually more prone to shattering due to curved panels, you cannot deny that they look uber premium. You get a 6.7-inch OLED display with FHD+ resolution and 120 Hz refresh rate. It is also a 1 billion colours OLED panel, so the colours displayed are rich and vibrant. 

The display’s peak brightness is rated at 950 nits and we recorded 898 nits of peak brightness under direct sunlight, which nearly matches OPPO’s claims. So, the panel is easily viewable even under harsh sunlight. The viewing angles are also excellent. But sadly, the display is not HDR compliant, which is a big miss in this price segment. However, it is Widevine L1 certified, so you can view HD shows on streaming platforms.

OPPO Reno 8T Review: Performance

While the design and display of the OPPO Reno 8T impressed us to an extent, the performance is where the phone lets us down. The phone houses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 SoC, which is a decent chipset but not at this price point. In fact, a lot of older, budget phones house this chipset including the POCO X4 Pro, Vivo T1, Moto G62, and Micromax In Note 2. These phones are all under the ₹20K price point. The OPPO Reno 8T comes with 8 GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128 GB UFS 2.2 storage, with expandable storage support.

Starting off with benchmarks, the phone expectedly scored underwhelmingly. In AnTuTu, the OPPO Reno 8T was considerably behind similarly or lower-priced phones such as the iQOO Neo 7, POCO X5 Pro, and Redmi K50i. In GeekBench, the phone lagged behind the Redmi K50i and iQOO Neo 7 but beat the POCO X5 Pro in the Single Core test surprisingly. Again, in PCMarkWork, the OPPO Reno 8T was left behind by all three smartphones. We also ran the CPU Throttling Test and found that the phone throttled to 89 per cent of its peak performance in 15 minutes, which is pretty good and means it doesn't throttle extensively under heavy workloads.

Moving on to GPU benchmarks, the phone lagged behind the iQOO Neo 7 and the Redmi K50i by a humongous margin in both the 3D Mark Wild Life and GFXBench benchmarks. We also put the phone’s real-world gaming to the test using Gamebench Pro and the Reno 8T wasn’t able to run Call of Duty: Mobile with consistent frame rates at High Graphics. So, we pushed the graphics down to Medium which is when the phone managed 57 fps gameplay at 97 per cent stability which is far behind the Poco X5 Pro that ran this game at High Graphics while maintaining 60 fps at 97 per cent stability.

So, if you’re playing intensive games on High Graphics, you are going to see tons of stutters and frame drops, which is atypical of a ₹30K phone in 2023. In day-to-day use, the OPPO Reno 8T manages to still feel responsive enough and the 120 Hz smooth refresh rate display does help with that. However, there are still a couple of instances of apps lagging and force closing that we encountered. OPPO’s ColorOS 13 has a ton of customisations and features but there is a considerable amount of bloatware in the form of system and third-party apps. Overall, if you’re looking for a performance-focused phone, it is better to look elsewhere.

OPPO Reno 8T Review: Camera

The OPPO Reno series usually focuses on a holistic camera experience and the OPPO Reno 8T hopes to continue that practice. It houses a triple rear camera setup with a 108 MP primary lens, a 2 MP depth shooter, and 2 MP microscope lens. For selfies, it has got a 32 MP shooter. The 108 MP primary lens captures 12 MP binned pictures by default, but you can also take full-resolution 108 MP shots. Sadly, there’s no ultrawide lens, which is a shame, since the 2 MP depth lens doesn’t really do much.

In daylight, photos from the main camera look fantastic with vibrant albeit slightly saturated colours, impressive detail, and good dynamic range. The phone can extract a considerable amount of detail from the shadows without blowing out the highlights too much, which is a plus point. Portrait photos come out looking social-media-worthy as well, with decent edge detection. Here are some camera samples, but they have been compressed for web view. We will be updating this review with a couple more images in a few days.

Low light photography is where the phone’s camera struggles a bit with noise and softness creeping in along with a touch of lens flaring. If you take your time with low light shots and hold the phone perfectly still, you can get great night shots, but for the most part, the low light photography is not the most impressive. 

The Reno 8T also adds a microscope camera that takes surprisingly usable shots. At first, we suspected this feature would be a gimmick but we were pleasantly surprised by how good the microscope shots looked. You can get in really close to subjects and extract some great-looking, detailed close-up shots like these examples we’ve added below.

Microscope Mode shots on OPPO Reno 8T: Close-up of wood (left) and Close-up of mousepad (right)

The 32 MP selfie camera impressed us with its colours, detail and dynamic range in not just daylight but also low light. Overall, the OPPO Reno 8T has a strong camera setup, however, the low-light performance leaves something to be desired.

OPPO Reno 8T Review: Battery life

The OPPO Reno 8T houses a sizable 4,800 mAh battery with support for 67 W SUPERVOOC fast charging. The battery life of this device is more than satisfactory. When charged to full, most users will not need to plug in their device for more than a day. If you are a power user, you may have to plug in your device at the end of the day.

The phone lasted over 15 hours in our 4K video loop test, which is fantastic at this price range. Moreover, the phone only lost 5 per cent of its battery (from 32 per cent to 27 per cent) when playing Call of Duty: Mobile for 15 minutes, and it lost 5 per cent juice (22 per cent to 17 per cent) again when streaming Netflix for half an hour. 

When the OPPO Reno 8T does run out of juice, the 67 W fast charging can speedily top up the phone from empty to full battery in merely 47 minutes, according to our tests.

OPPO Reno 8T Review: Verdict

The OPPO Reno 8T is a stunner. It is undeniably eye-catching with its iridescent matte-finish rear panel and gorgeous curved display. The phone also has a good primary camera for daylight use and great battery life. However, it lacks powerful hardware. At this price, featuring the Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 SoC means it offers the same performance chops as lower-end phones such as POCO X4 Pro, Vivo T1, Moto G62, and Micromax In Note 2. Meanwhile, its competitors in and around the 30K price point run away with all the performance accolades. Lacklustre performance aside, the phone also could have better low-light photography, and it lacks essential features such as an HDR-compliant display and an ultrawide lens. Overall, the OPPO Reno 8T does feel like an overpriced device – where its looks are meant to be its saving grace – but sadly, we don’t feel like it's enough to get a confident recommendation from us.

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