Oppo Reno8 T 5G review

The design of the Oppo Reno8 T is a shocking departure from the Reno8 series. This here is more shimmery and up to all sorts of colour-changing antics. The Reno8 Pro we tested a few months ago was a handsome piece of tech. The back has millions of pyramid-shaped crystals etched at a microscopic level to reflect light and create different hues. It’s fascinating but not everyone’s cup of T…

Don’t have a problem with the shimmery back? Then read on. The shape and structure of the smartphone is better than before. It has curved edges and a midframe which sits in your hands without slitting your pinky in half like the boxed-shaped smartphones of the current gen.

The smooth curves around the body and the tiny bezels of the Oppo Reno8 T make it very nice to hold. The display too is better than many in this category. Thin and evenly surrounded bezels with great picture quality. This display has richer and deeper colours than the Redmi Note 12 Pro+. It’s also the brighter of the two.

When it comes to performance, the Oppo Reno8 T isn’t lacking by any standard or measure. It's got a Snapdragon 695 5G which does a better job than MediaTek’s Dimensity 1080 at handling regular tasks. The display too is better than the Redmi 12 Pro+ 5G. It’s actually the side bezels and the display quality that really impresses us about the Oppo Reno8 T.

Everything else is great. Plenty of RAM, a fast refresh rate (120ZHz), fast charging and a big battery to last an entire day. There could be improvements to the UI but that’s just how Oppo has always been, bloated and slightly ad-free.

There are only two cameras on the Oppo Reno8 T. One is a 108MP primary camera and the other is a microlens camera. The main camera does pretty much what you’d expect from a budget smartphone but compared to Redmi, it delivers saturated colour tones and takes longer to process shots.

There’s no ultrawide camera here which is supposed to be a standard with smartphones these days. There’s a depth sensor which makes portraits nicer but compared to the computation smarts of smartphones these days, I would trade this sensor for an ultrawide lens.

The front camera is very similar to the Redmi in terms of sharpness and HDR but the Reno8 T mutes the natural tones of the environment. Something like the warm lighting from the sun might look white on the Oppo Reno8 T compared to the Redmi which preserves the natural colour.

The microlens is a toy feature that lets you take macro shots by getting skin-close to the subject. It’s a novelty feature. Something that you quickly grow out of unless you keep finding subjects with interesting micro textures.

We wish it was a bit more premium. The Oppo Find series never tries to compete with the big brands and the Reno8 series could’ve easily been a wee-bit more premium with its internals and camera quality. 

There’s a bit of an audience for its design-first approach and incredible weight distribution and to those folks, the Reno8 T will absolutely impress and suffice.