The OPPO Reno 10x Zoom Review: Bezeless Zoom
by Andrei Frumusanu on September 18, 2019 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Oppo
- Snapdragon 855
- Oppo Reno 10x Zoom
Display Measurement
In terms of display, the Reno 10x plays it relatively safe with a 6.6” AMOLED panel at a resolution of 2340 x 1080. Aside from the now more common 19.5:9 aspect ratio, and the fact that it’s a bezel-less, cutout-less and notch-less design, there’s nothing particularly interesting about the display panel itself from a technical perspective.
From a software standpoint, things are also quite straightforward. Oppo offers two display modes, “Vivid” which targets a P3 gamut, and “Gentle” that aims for sRGB. Aside from the gamut choice which changes the colour saturations, there’s also a global colour temperature slider that is adjustable from “Cool” to “Warm”, with a default snap-in in the middle. I noted that the default colour temperature was quite cool, and the extreme “Warm” setting actually targets near 6500K, which is what I used for the accuracy testing of the display in this section, and what I recommend people to use if they wish for more accurate whites.
We move on to the display calibration and fundamental display measurements of the Reno 10x Zoom screen. As always, we thank X-Rite and SpecraCal, as our measurements are performed with an X-Rite i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer, with the exception of black levels which are measured with an i1Display Pro colorimeter. Data is collected and examined using SpectraCal's CalMAN software.
In terms of brightness levels, the Reno 10x reaches a maximum manual brightness of 417cd/m². The result is average for this generation of OLED panels and is quite adequate. While the phone does have an adaptive brightness mode, I didn’t encounter any brightness difference in the panel when subjecting the phone under bright environmental conditions, so it doesn’t seem to have any brightness boosting mechanism.
I mentioned that I’m testing the phone with the colour temperature slider to its far end “Warm” setting, however it does seem that this setting is ever so slightly too red, resulting with reds being ever so slightly stronger. Adjusting the slider 1-2mm to the left likely resolves the issue.
The bigger issue in the greyscale accuracy test is the fact that the phone looks to be calibrated with higher gamma targets in mind. At a target 200cd/m² brightness setting with a constant APL50 and 50% window size, we’re seeing an average gamma of near 2.4 instead of the expected 2.2 for regular content. It does look like the phone has a non-linear brightness compensation based on APL and window size, however this is night impossible to accurately measure aside from using a static image with the target measurement patches.
Overall, the higher gamma will result in slightly darker tones in the image, giving off a sense of more contrast.
The greyscale accuracy dE2000 against a standard gamma target of 2.2 thus is relatively average with a deviation of 2.57. It’s still not too bad compared to what other phones exhibit, but it’s also not great.
In the “Gentle” mode that targets the sRGB gamut, we see that the screen here has a few issues. The saturations points being too saturated are result of the higher gamma calibration of the display, so that’s expected, however the bigger issue is the hue shift in the magenta and cyan secondary channels, which show larger deviations than the relatively hue accurate primary channels as well as yellows.
The saturations deltaE2000 ends up at 2.34, also not quite the best out there but at least not utterly disastrous.
In the “Vivid” P3 gamut colourspace mode, the Reno 10x behaves largely the same, again showcasing the hue-shift in magentas and cyan. The dE2000 here is near identical at again 2.34.
In the Gretag Macbeth chart of common colour temperatures, we see an overall dE2000 of 2.99. Some colours have the expected luminosity and saturation errors due to the gamma, but the hue errors are also more evident in some colour patches.
Overall, the Oppo Reno 10x’s screen isn’t nothing too much out of the ordinary. As usual for an OLED panel, the viewing angles and contrast are great. The 1080p resolution on a screen of this size is a bit stretched out, so if you’re after a sharp screen I’d recommend looking elsewhere.
In terms of calibration, things were adequate enough, however there’s clearly much better options out there on the market if one values colour accuracy.
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Alistair - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
Everytime I get excited by new phones I check the weight and am shocked at how heavy they are. The iPhone XR is very wide and heavy also, all these phones are 190g to 250g.I'll take the LG G8 or Samsung S10 just for the weight savings (150-160g), I'll keep the notch or hole instead.
Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
Wholeheartedly agree.close - Saturday, September 21, 2019 - link
Phones get bigger and the weight scale of phone materials tends to follow the famed "premium feel" scale (polycarbonate<aluminum<glass<ceramic<steel) promoted for years.This is larger than an S10+ or a G8 but other than that is there anything in particular that would make it heavier than any other phone with Gorilla Glass front and back and steel frame? Wonder if the mechanical motorized slide-out camera is a major contributor.
flyingpants265 - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
Wow, the thing that matters the absolute least out of every aspect of a phone..Alistair - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
If you use it a lot and you feel fatigued because it is too heavy or hard to hold, that is the most important aspect of a "mobile" phone.Alistair - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
Like how people don't care about the weight of their laptop, unless their use case is carrying it around in their backpack all day.StevoLincolnite - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
It's not the end of the world.250g isn't significant, I work out... If it's an issue for you, perhaps you should too?
antifocus - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
It's about the perception of the weight, the extra 250g can very well make you uncomfortable during travel.nils_ - Sunday, September 22, 2019 - link
That's the part where I care about it the least, though I generally don't care as much about the weight or height. If the compromise is between weight/height and performance/cooling, I'd rather have more performance.Notmyusualid - Sunday, October 6, 2019 - link
Whimp.