Oppo’s $799 Reno 12 5G reviewed

Not quite the high end, but some of the way there, the Oppo Reno 12 5G impresses with several cameras and a big screen. Is the $799 handset worth owning?

Design

Appearing a little premium thanks to a metal and glass design that wouldn’t be out of kilter on a flagship from a few years ago, the Oppo Reno 12 definitely seems a little more high end than other Oppo models out in Australia.

The metal frame is slick and shiny, slender at the edges where the glass curves, and with a smooth back. Lots of words beginning with “s” can be used talking about the Reno 12’s design, which reminds us of the Huawei P30 Pro from a few years ago, albeit with some more recent tech inside.

Features

That includes the MediaTek Dimensity 7300 chip and 12GB RAM, accompanied by 256GB storage with room to move via a microSD tray, as well, with Android 14 pre-installed and skinned with Oppo’s ColorOS 14.1.

You’ll find three cameras on the back of this phone, covering a 50 megapixel F1.8 wide main camera, an 8 megapixel F2.2 ultra-wide, and a 2 megapixel F2.4 macro camera for stills. Video is also supported with a maximum of 4K here, which is also echoed on the front using the 32 megapixel F2.0 selfie camera.

Wireless connections are covered via 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, NFC for Google Pay, 5G, and GPS, while the one physical connection is a USB-C port at the very bottom for charging, data, and the odd times you decide to plug in a wired pair of earbuds. There’s even an infrared port on the top frame, in case you want to use your phone as a remote control.

Atop all of this is a large 6.7 inch flexible AMOLED curved screen running the Full HD+ resolution of 2412×1080, and protected by a layer of Corning’s scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass 7i.

Oppo has also included a fingerprint sensor built into that screen and support for facial unlock using the front facing camera. The battery in the Reno 12 5G is rated at 5000mAh.

In-use

Grab the phone and you can quickly get to using it just like any other mobile out today. The fingerprint sensor built into the screen is fast enough, but even if it doesn’t pick up on your digits, the facial recognition provides ample speed for logging in quickly.

From there, you’ll find Oppo’s take on Android in the form of ColorOS, which is close to the real thing, but also not quite the same.

Feeling like a blend of iOS and Android with some extra Oppo touches on the top, you’ll find a widget-friendly shelf, several home screens, and even that Oppo “O Relax” app we wrote about a few years ago to help with your meditation and relaxation game.

AI features

Oppo is also joining the AI train in the Reno 12 5G with some generative AI of sorts, because, well, it’s 2024 and every other phone seems to be getting this, too. Samsung has it in the Galaxy S24 range, Asus has it in a ZenFone this year, and Google has AI features in the Pixel 9 offerings, as well.

In the Reno 12 5G, AI comes in the form of “AI Studio”, an interesting little app that feels like a combination of Google’s Pixel Studio and pictures of you.

Specifically, AI Studio will let you grab a photo of yourself or friends, and upload it to match a template, with Oppo’s system spitting out AI converted photos designed to convert you to their templates.

Neat idea, but it’s one that doesn’t work incredibly well, and comes with caveats.

For instance, any image you have has to match their template, so if you upload an image of yourself to the female template and you’re a male, it will try to force the two to meet in the middle typically to awkward approaches.

Oppo’s AI appears inflexible and unable to intelligently draw things cleverly; you’re face is just being pushed into a similar template, and it’s not you at all in these images, just a version of you like them.

This isn’t great AI.

It doesn’t help that your access to the Oppo AI platform technically costs something. That “something” isn’t yet measured in dollars, but rather a form of currency Oppo calls “stars”.

When you use AI Studio for the first time, you’re given 5000 stars, and each use of the platform costs 10 stars, telling you that you have about 500 uses. Also, the stars expire a year after you activate them, so you have 500 uses available from when you first start using the AI features on your Oppo phone. Still with us so far?

Oppo doesn’t provide a lot of information about how you get more stars beyond how logging in daily will give you some more, but the vibe is that like other AI systems, this will cost you money eventually. And frankly, we’re not sure it’s all that worth it.

Performance

The AI is weird, but so is the performance, which benches so slowly, even if it doesn’t feel that way.

The good news is you may not feel the performance problems as you use apps. That’s probably thanks in part to the 12GB RAM and some optimisation of Android.

The bad news is the benchmarks are astonishingly slow, which basically screams don’t attempt to game on this phone at all. The Reno 12 definitely seems ill-equipped in that area. Strangely, it appears even slower than the Reno 10 we checked out last year.

At least the mobile performance is decent, though; we found speeds of 202Mbps in our tests in Sydney, Australia using the Telstra Wholesale network. That’s not too shabby in the grand scheme of things.

Camera

Some apps will feel the performance problems, and one of them is the camera. Firing shots can be exceedingly slow, regardless of whether you use the volume key to trigger the shots or the on-screen shutter button.

That may be a fault of the phone performance, which is a shame. Fortunately, the camera is surprisingly decent in some respects, though not all.

Images tend to offer bright colour and crisp visuals, with even the low-light performance surprising at times. It’s not a bad camera at all, but it does have its moments where you’ll question the output.

Take the selfies, which are overly soft at times: clearly the AI camera is doing a little more heavy lifting than we’d otherwise like.

Other times, you’re essentially waiting for the system to acknowledge that you’ve taken the photo in the first place. You’ll swear black and blue you’ve made it happen, and the Reno 12 5G’s performance will just go the opposite way, with the digital equivalent of the Australian “yeah, nah”.

Battery

The battery is quite possibly the most stunning part of the Reno 12 5G package.

Including a 5000mAh battery isn’t anything new. Don’t be in admiration of that. However, we achieved two full days of battery life with this phone. Be in admiration of that performance. We sure are.

That’s rare. That’s so rare, it’s reminiscent of the old days of Oppo phones, back when battery life could achieve solid outcomes and the brand was easy to recommend if you wanted brilliant battery life.

The Oppo Reno 12 5G has brilliant battery life. There’s no denying that.

It also comes with a meaty 80W SuperVooc fast charger, so getting it back up to speed won’t take long, either. That’s handy, too. Overall, a great little battery package.

Value

The price is what ties the package, though it can feel a little higher than it should be. Available in Australia for $799, the setup isn’t bad, but does feel like it’s missing some of the extra features you may expect an $800 phone to arrive with.

For instance, there’s no wireless charging nor is there any official rating for water resistance, or even an unofficial one, for that matter. While they may not seem that much of a drawcard, the critical competition does offer those features.

At only $50 more, the Google Pixel 8a delivers both of those with a better camera system, and that’s important to note. And if you don’t need the wireless charging, Nothing’s $529 Phone 2a offers better value with a premium design.

Oppo’s Reno 12 is just too high a price for what you get.

What needs work?

There are definite aspects to the Reno 12 5G that make sense. The battery life is stunning, and the camera can get out some great shots, but it is by no means quite in the ballpark of Google’s mid-range Pixel.

The performance also isn’t quite up to scratch, being fine some of the time but a disaster in others. It has its moments on both sides, and we’re not sure an $800 phone should necessarily raise a red flag or two in terms of overall lag. That seems too costly for that.

And there’s that whole AI feature, which frankly is useless. Time consuming, sure. Semi-creative? Ok. Useless? Absolutely.

If you’re struggling to work out where AI could possibly be useful in this year’s phones, the Reno 12 5G does nothing to improve that.

Final thoughts (TLDR)

A good phone that could be better, the Oppo Reno 12 5G definitely provides a mid-range to consider, though it’s one where the price could be improved.

At $799, the Reno 12 5G doesn’t read like great value, even if the specs imply it. However with the street price closer to $599, this mobile gives other similarly priced models a run for their money. Combining a premium design with an acceptable camera system is a win, even if the performance has other ideas.

If the price is lower than Oppo’s initial $799 tag price, the Reno 12 5G offers decent value. Otherwise, we’d suggest looking around, and possibly paying a little more for something better overall.