South Africa has just seen the launch of Oppo’s latest smartphone – the Reno 7 Z 5G. The smartphone hit the shelves today and will feature a presumably better camera, better performance and 5G, obviously.
If you’re looking for a smartphone that isn’t going to physically hurt you when you see the price, you may be in the right place. The standard model, which comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB ROM, will set you back R11,700. If you’ve got a mid-range sized budget to play with, this one might be worth considering.
Dressed to impress
Before we get into the specs, we need to see whether this phone is good-looking enough for you to carry around. The screen is a 6.4in AMOLED display, with a standard 60Hz refresh rate. Oppo claims that the phone has been tested to offer Netflix and Amazon Prime Video in Full HD. We should hope so.
If you’re an Oppo regular, you’ll already be familiar with their colour palette. The Reno 7 Z 5G will be available in 2 colours; Rainbow Spectrum and Cosmic Black.
With regards to the actual body of the phone, Oppo says it’s going with an all-new design. All-new for this brand maybe, but there are definitely some design features we’ve seen before. The phone will weigh only 173g – with the Rainbow Spectrum variant being approximately 7.55mm thick and the Cosmic Black being 0.6mm thinner at 7.49mm. All those pretty rainbow colours require a dual-layering technique to achieve the look.
Performance is key
While having a pretty phone is important, it’s not the most important feature. What is arguably more important is how well the phone runs.
Under the hood, you’ll find Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 695 5G System on a Chip (SoC). This is the same chipset that’s found in the Poco X4 Pro or the 5G version of the Redmi Note 11 Pro. It seems to be the go-to for budget and mid-range devices looking to add 5G capabilities to their spec sheets.
The 8GB RAM that comes standard can be improved upon with Oppo’s RAM extension tech. This works the same way as the page file on your Windows machine. When you approach the 8GB threshold, the Reno 7 Z will make use of some of the slower leftover 128GB storage, up to 5GB.
Powering everything is a large 4,500mAh battery which Oppo claims can last you up to 262 hours when in off-screen mode. It also lets your phone run for up to 50 minutes when on 5% battery, but only when using it for calls, texts and navigation — just the essentials.
You’ll get 33W Supervooc fast charging. That’s just Oppo’s fancy name for its charging tech. With the Reno 7 Z 5G, Oppo claims it can charge the device to completion in just 63 minutes. That’s fairly standard for a mid-range device.
Let’s see those pearly whites
One of the primary features of the Reno 7 Z 5G is the camera. It has a 64MP main camera, a 2MP Depth camera and a 16MP front-facing camera. It also ships with a few built-in imaging features, like the Bokeh Flare Portrait, Selfie HDR and portrait retouching. Oppo says it’s added all the extras to give its customers more freedom. We’ll have to get one in hand before we can confirm that.
Another notable feature is Oppo’s Dual Orbit lights. These lights are placed right behind the cameras, creating a ring of light around them. These can be used as a way to deliver notifications, which can be programmed to show a number of different colours for different alerts. Don’t hinge your decision on them, but they’re a nice touch, we guess.
If you’re in the market for a mid-range smartphone around the R10k mark, you have yet another choice with the Reno 7 Z 5G.