OPPO Reno8 T Review: Great Design and All-Rounder

The OPPO Reno8 T is now here to bolster the Reno8 series lineup. It is being touted as the most affordable of the range but still comes with a pretty solid spec sheet including a 6.43-inch 90Hz FullHD+ AMOLED screen, a unique Fiberglass leather finish, fast charging, and triple cameras at the rear with a 100MP main lens. There are two variants globally but we will be taking a look at the 4G version in our review.

OPPO Reno8 T Specifications

OPPO Reno8 T Review – Unboxing

The OPPO Reno8 T detracts from its heritage with a new box design. Instead of a blue-green box like before, it is now encased in a primarily light gray colored box with its branding embossed at the front. Inside is the usual set of accessories for the smartphone: a silicone case, SIM ejector pin, a 33W SuperVOOC adapter, a USB-A to USB-C cable, and documentation.

Design and Aesthetics

The smartphone sports a new design – at least on the Reno8 series. Its rear is now using a Fiberglass-Leather material. It’s not the first OPPO smartphone to sport this material. It does feel good in the hand with a textured finish with even some stitching on the camera island. It’s far from feeling like real leather but gets close to quality faux or vegan leather.

OPPO is also adding another design accessory on the Reno8 T – its breathing light. There is a ring of light around the top camera, which lights up in 1 of 8 preset colors. You can bind three different activities: Calls, Notifications, and Games. It’s basically a modern-day replacement for the notification light.

It’s worth noting that the Sunset Orange variant is the only model that will come with the Fiberglass-Leather finish. The Midnight Black colorway will sport the more familiar OPPO Globe design.

The sides are made out of plastic as expected. The finish is smooth and will collect dust and fingerprints. Its power button is placed at the right-hand side while the power button and triple-cut SIM tray are positioned a bit higher at the reverse side.

At the bottom are its USB-C charging and data transfer port, grilles for the speakers and microphone, and a 3.5mm audio jack. Nothing special to see here but it’s nice that OPPO is still including the audio jack unlike other midrange devices.

Screen and Audio

The Reno8 T packs 6.43-inch 2400 x 1080 AMOLED screen with a 90Hz refresh rate and a punch-hole at the top-left corner for its selfie camera. The screen experience is pleasant to say the least. Colors pop though slightly unbalanced, details are crisp, and blacks are deep thanks to its AMOLED panel.

Color coverage is surprisingly wide with support for 95.10% DCI-P3. Brightness is rather pedestrian at 411.97 cd/m2, which should be good even while using the device outdoors under sunlight. A couple of extras that the company is throwing in is a built-in plastic screen protector.

• sRGB – 99.40%
• AdobeRGB – 81.30%
• DCI-P3 – 84.40%
• Luminance (Minimum) – 1.91 cd/m2
• Luminance (Maximum) – 411.97 cd/m2
• Gamma – 2.17
• Contrast Ratio: 1:1

Audio is pretty good. OPPO bolsters the Reno8 T’s single bottom-firing speaker by using its earpiece as a secondary speaker. This setup allows the smartphone to get loud and have a bit of soundstage. It does lack bass and a bit of clarity at the upper volume ranges but vocals remain clear regardless of noise levels.

Software

The OPPO Reno8 T is one of the first devices from the company to arrive with Android 13 with ColorOS 13 by default. OPPO doesn’t do anything drastic with the design of the new update so everything should feel familiar if you have experienced ColorOS.

Aside from the improvements brought by Android 13, OPPO is putting their own twist on the OS. They will now support Multi-Screen Connect on tablets for better multitasking between OPPO devices, new skins, fonts, and icons to choose from, and animations can now be sped up via the settings menu without activating Developer Options.

Privacy is also one of the key improvements of the OS. Its new Private Safe uses AES for encryption and screenshots can take advantage of the Auto Pixelate option in editing to quickly blur out sensitive information.

Auto Pixelate, however, isn’t functioning at its full capacity. It will blur names taken from the Messenger app but some photos and other sensitive info within the conversation area aren’t hidden. Screenshots from websites with vulgar content are not blurred either. It seems that OPPO’s machine learning only recognizes only some messaging apps at times.

OPPO Reno8 T Review – Cameras

OPPO is using quite an odd lens combination on the Reno8 T. It has a 100MP f/1.7 main lens and a 2MP f/2.4 depth sensor, which is typical for a midrange smartphone. Instead of an ultrawide shooter, however, they are using a 2MP f/3.3 microlens that can zoom in up to 40x making other macro shooters pale in comparison. Frankly, we would have preferred that the ultrawide was still present and the microlens replaced the depth lens.

The camera app is recognizable as most of the features previously are still here. It does support the usual Photo and Video modes, Dual-View Video, AI modes like Text Scanner, Slow Motion, and Time Lapse among others. Its High Resolution mode, however, is now located at the three dots at the top alongside the HDR toggle. Video resolution tops out at 1080p30fps for both the main and front cameras.

Main Camera

The company says that the OPPO Reno8 T comes with a 100MP f/1.7 main lens. Based on hardware information though, it seems that its sensor is a Samsung S5KHM6S that supports 108MP. Perhaps they have modified the software to take 100MP as High Resolution mode does capture exactly 100MP. Using standard mode with pixel binning dips photos to a more manageable 12MP.

Its main camera’s performance is good. Photos taken in good lighting look detailed though colors are a bit oversaturated for our taste. HDR is smartly tuned adjusting just the right of exposure for bright and darker parts of the image.

Photo quality does take a mild dip in lower-light conditions with colors somewhat being duller than before. Using Night Mode does alleviate these issues but OPPO needs to dial back the processing of colors as they look overwhelmed with colors.

Microlens

The Reno8 T’s microlens is basically a step up from the usual macro lens found on smartphones. It still has a relatively low pixel count but the magnification has been set to extreme. It basically acts as a microscope on a smartphone to take photos with. Magnification is at 20x by default but can be increased to 40x.

It takes detailed photos thanks to the fact that it gets up close to subjects despite its low pixel count. The lens works well enough for what it is, but the focusing distance is extremely close and thus you need to get right up into the subject making it harder to capture photos in-between objects.

Selfie Camera

The OPPO Reno8 T’s 32MP f/2.4 front-facing camera takes good selfies as expected from the company. Beautification is set to an aggressive level by default so you may want to tone that down to get natural-looking selfies. Colors are natural-looking instead of being oversaturated like the main camera.

There is some clipping to be found on its Portrait Mode especially at little details like stray strands of hair or earrings. It’s not super noticeable under most conditions but it is something to look out for.

OPPO Reno8 T Review – Benchmarks

The Philippines will be getting the 4G variant of the OPPO Reno8 T. Its SoC is now a MediaTek Helio G99 instead of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 found on the 5G model. Everything else remains the same including other features. Its chip is complemented by 8GB RAM and up to 256GB of storage, the latter of which can be expanded via a dedicated MicroSD slot.

Performance is unexceptional as the Helio G99 is a typical chipset for this price range. That doesn’t mean that the experience is choppy. Using the smartphone is smooth and there are minimal hitches during our testing. Benchmarks are okay but nothing spectacular.

Gaming capabilities are decent on mainstream titles available on the PlayStore. Not all games can be set to their highest settings but the Reno8 T can run games steadily at 60fps, if available, at their highest possible settings. Despite the 90Hz screen, however, none of the games on our bench had the option to take advantage of it.

OPPO Reno8 T Review – Battery Life

OPPO hasn’t done anything new in the power department. A 5,000mAh battery powers the device, which should be plenty for a day and a half of medium usage with WiFi and occasional data connection. Running PCMark Work 3.0 leads to around 14 hours of constant usage with medium brightness and volume.

Its USB-C port supports 33W SuperVOOC charging. It’s not the fasting charging tech from OPPO but does enough for a midrange device. Charging is linear instead of ramping up to 80% then slowing down to reach full. In our tests, the Reno8 T is able to charge 1% to 100% in just over an hour.

OPPO Reno8 T Review – Conclusion

The OPPO Reno8 T is a well-rounded midrange smartphone with a complete feature set that most people will appreciate. Its 100MP main camera is terrific, the screen is bright and saturated, its MediaTek Helio G99’s performance is decent, and the audio is serviceable. Charging speed is surprisingly fast for a 5,000mAh battery and its design is pleasant to look at – at least for the Sunset Yellow model that we reviewed.

The variant we are receiving in the Philippines does not support 5G. The ultrawide camera is sorely missed and we think that its microlens camera is nothing more than a novelty outside of very specific scenarios. We also hope that OPPO’s Auto Pixelate feature could get more precise in the future to censor other sensitive information.

At PhP 18,999, the OPPO Reno8 T is facing stiff competition. Its lack of 5G connectivity does affect its standing in the market and the lack of an ultrawide shooter might turn off some users. But those who are looking for a reliable smartphone experience with a good amount of features and a somewhat unique design, then the OPPO Reno8 T can be your new daily driver.

OPPO Reno8 T Price and Availability

The OPPO Reno8 T is priced at PhP 18,999 in the Philippines. For a limited time, the brand is bundling them with a free pair of Enco Buds2 TWS Earphones. You can get it via the official OPPO Lazada and Shopee stores, OPPO concept stores, and authorized retailers nationwide.