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The Oppo Reno13 won't blow your socks off, but a respectable camera system, two-day battery life and brilliant display adds it to the growing pile of great value Android smartphones.
The Good
- Stellar two-day battery life
- Reliable if a bit oversaturated camera
- Great display
The Not So Good
- Not the most up-to-date chipset
- Zoom isn't great past 3.5x
Need-to-knows
- Mega two-day battery life
- Premium design feel
- Reliable camera that can be oversaturated at times
- Great value, but lots of similarly good competitors
It’s been such a good start to the year for the midrange Android market. We’ve had the OnePlus 13 (which I know is knocking on the door of flagship), Xiaomi 15, Samsung A56, Poco F7 series, and the brilliantly interesting Nothing Phone 3a series.
Now, Oppo has stepped into the ring with the Reno13 Pro and Reno13 FS. Neither features a flagship chipset, but both enter the market with incredibly tempting price points. And they play nicely with the iPhone.
No, really.
More Oppo reviews!– Oppo Find X8 Pro review– Oppo Find X5 Pro review
More on that later, but I think the Reno13 series, once again, says something very important about the state of the smartphone market these days and, specifically, what this means for flagships.
How I reviewed the Oppo Reno13 Pro
Most of this review is focused on the Reno13 Pro, into which I placed my secondary SIM card. As with most Android reviews, I proceeded to use it more than my main phone (an iPhone 16e) during the review period.
My use encompasses social media, photography, communication, and browsing the web. I always term this ‘regular use’, which I think is fair for most people.
Read my iPhone 16e review
As with all of my smartphone reviews, I don’t dive into gaming or benchmarking because that is covered comprehensively by other reviewers, and I want to provide a real-world opinion of what devices like the Oppo Reno13 Pro are like to use daily.
Specs and pricing
The Reno13 Pro is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 8350 and has 12GB of RAM. There are two storage options – 256GB and 512GB.
The battery is a 5,800mAh unit which is capable of 80W SUPERVOOC charging, although there is no power adaptor included in the packaging. Display-wise, we have a 1.5K AMOLED screen with 450PPI, a 120Hz refresh rate, and a maximum brightness of 1,200 nits.
IP68 and IP69 water resistance will add peace of mind, and Oppo also promises upgrades in durability via the aerospace-grade aluminium frame.
The Reno13 FS (this is the European variant of the lower-end version) offers similar specs as the Pro but is powered by the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 and lacks a telephoto camera.
These are the prices I was given by Oppo before the launch:
- Reno13 Pro 5G: £649
- Reno13 5G: £499
- Reno13 FS 5G (12G+512G): £399
- Reno13 F 5G (8G+256G): £329
Design and display
The Reno13 Pro is one of the most premium-feeling midrange smartphones I’ve used to date. It’s available in Plume Purple and Graphite Grey, and I’ve had hands-on experience with both. The latter is the smartest of the two, whereas the former adds some significant colour and flourish to the rear of the device.
I’d love to see more colour options, and I’m sure some people would like a slightly less understated design, but the Reno13 Pro is right up my street. Most importantly, just like the Xiaomi 15, it feels like you’ve spent decent money straight out of the box.
The best budget phone? Xiaomi 15 review
It even has a relatively small camera bump, which in 2025 is something of an anomaly. The bezels are thin (they’re a bit thicker on the FS), and the display is slightly curved (it’s almost impercetible, in case you’re in the I-hate-curved-displays gang).
The Reno13 Pro also appears to be a rather tough device. I ‘drop tested it’ on my drive while exiting the car, which resulted in a fall from waist height onto concrete. The Reno13 Pro survived with just a couple of relatively minor chips to the casing. The display, thanks to the pre-applied screen protector, was unharmed.
On the subject of the display, it is predictably lovely. Because of course it is. I’m running out of things to say about Android smartphone displays. For good reason.
Camera
I’ll let you be the judge of the photo examples in this review. Truth be told, I’ve not taken a huge number of snaps with the Reno13 Pro, but I did treat it to the most important test of all over the weekend, which was to capture a family day out.
This matters. Big time. If you’re a parent, you’ll know exactly what I mean. Smartphone cameras have two jobs in that regard – the first is to capture moments without any faff or disappointment. The second is to produce a photo that could easily be printed at a relatively decent size (i.e. it needs to be sharp, colourful, and full of resolution).
The Reno13 does very well at these tasks. It didn’t let me down once that weekend, and, more importantly, it produced my favourite ever photo of my son and I. It was taken in portrait mode and by my girlfriend who, by her admission, is anything but a professional photographer.
This might be biased, but I don’t care – it immediately makes the Reno13 Pro one of my favourite smartphone camera systems ever because it caught that moment.
The photos produced by this phone overall are great. Sure, they’re sharpened, and skies are rather saturated, but that must be a case of giving the people what they want because most smartphones do this these days.
Zoom options are nicely considered. The 3.5x optical zoom is great, and while the 7x digital zoom feels a bit too long, it is nice to have that option occasionally. Anything beyond that, as always, gets way too processed for my liking.
The Reno13 series also features an underwater camera mode. This is ostensibly a combination of IP69 water resistance, a temporarily disabled touch screen, and a ‘one-tap drainage function’. I haven’t tried it because that would involve going swimming at my gym and taking photos underwater, which would promptly get me banned from the building. But it will be useful for people who do that kind of thing in less suspicious situations – and yes, the drainage function is just like the feature on the Apple Watch which uses the speaker to force out trapped water.
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There are the usual AI photo editing features with ColorOS (enhance, erase, unblur, and reflection removal, specifically), and they all work very well indeed.
Video performance is good, if slightly marred by the usual stabilisation jerkiness which seems to plague a lot of Android phones. The fact that you can shoot in up to 4K at 60fps on both the front and rear cameras is a saving grace.
Performance and battery life
The MediaTek Dimensity 8350 that powers the Reno 13 Pro was announced in November 2024. It’s not the flagship chip, but this isn’t a flagship phone. So, that’s fine.
The good news is that, as with every other phone I’ve tested recently, the Reno 13 Pro feels incredibly smooth in everyday operation. You won’t notice the difference between it and the Oppo X8 Pro in that regard. Sure, if you push the extremes of gaming, it might struggle, but Oppo has done a fair bit to counter that by implementing features like an AI multi-cooling system for when use cases get spicy.
ColorOS 15 plays a big role in how good this phone feels. It’s unmistakably Android and while the number of apps that are preinstalled may grate, beyond that, it’s a lot of fun to use. And, yes, it has all of the AI stuff you could hope for (which is, curiously, placed at the back end of the Oppo reviewer’s guide).
The best OS ever? Nothing Phone 3a review
Oh, and you can share files and images directly between ColorOS and iOS. It involves downloading an app on the iPhone and the Oppo phone connecting to the latter via Wi-Fi… but it works.
Battery life? Stellar. This is an Android phone, remember. You’ll get two days out of it with everyday use and an almost comical standby time.
Conclusion
If the Reno13 series does anything, it reminds me that we must start asking ourselves what we want from smartphones in 2025.
If you’re not into gaming and you just want to take decent photos, midrangers like the Reno13 Pro should be the default choice. Spend more and you get more optical zoom, a faster chip (on paper), and… well, what else, exactly?
Is the flagship becoming less interesting because of brilliant devices like the Reno13 Pro? Let me know what you think in the comments section.
