OPPO Reno13 5G review: Battery for days

While some brands (like Apple) are like clockwork with their annual product updates, others are a little less regular.

OPPO announced the Reno12 5G in July last year, and I got my review out the door in November after a couple of months of testing. The Reno13 family was announced back in February, just eight months after its predecessor, and arrived in stores in March.

While I doubt OPPO would ever tell me why it decided to replace the Reno12 after just eight months on the field, my guess after using the phone for a few weeks is that it comes down to performance.

In particular, how the Reno13 handles AI and graphical tasks. Combined with its impressive battery life and reasonably solid camera, OPPO has boosted the Reno13’s performance in a big way over last year (season?)’s model.

What is the Reno13 5G offering?

The Reno13 family is made up of three versions: There’s the premium Reno13 Pro 5G, the standard Reno13 5G I’m reviewing here and the more budget friendly Reno13 F.

The Reno13 5G sits in the middle of the bunch not just on features and performance, but also price. It has an RRP of $899, which sees it come in at $200 more than Samsung’s best A-series model, the A56.

Whether that extra price is worth it is debatable, but there are some features OPPO has included here that go some way to justifying the expense.

For a start, the Reno13 5G is rated IP69 for water and dust resistance. Not many phones can boast not just an IP68 rating, but also an IP69 rating, which means it’s not just rated for keeping out fine dust, but also can sustain high-pressure water jets for a certain period of time.

The body of the Reno13 is nice and premium. Its design incorporates a one-piece sculpted glass back and an aerospace-grade aluminium frame, with a shimmery pattern on the back like the petals of a flower.

The display is a 6.59-inch 1256 × 2760 AMOLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate. It looks good. The phone is powered by the Mediatek Dimensity 8350 chipset, and offers 12 GB RAM and 256 GB of onboard storage, without any options for expansion.

For photographers, the main 50MP wide-angle camera is partnered with an 8MP ultra-wide lens and a 2MP monochrome lens. The phone records 4K video and features an underwater shooting mode, taking advantage of those IP ratings.

Battery life gets a big boost in the Reno13, too. The phone has a huge 5,600mAh battery, which is combined with support for OPPO’s 80W SUPERVOOC fast charging.

Unlike many brands who offer fast charging but make you pay for the dedicated fast charging plug you need to use it, OPPO has included an 80W charger in the box.

The flip side is that there is no wireless charging here.

What does the Reno13 5G do well?

It’s impossible to go past the Reno13’s battery life as a standout feature. OPPO itself says that the battery will give you 12 days of standby and 2.1 days of usage, and while I can’t attest to those numbers, I can say that I could get through a couple of days without charging.

Because everyone uses their phone differently, it’s a hard thing to actually measure reliably. But comparatively speaking, this has one of the better battery performances of any phone I’ve tested.

Back that up with the fast charging, which takes 48 minutes to go from 0 to 100%, and you’ve got an attractive selling point. Sure, the charger itself is pretty chunky, but the convenience of fast charging can’t be overstated.

Performance has also received a nice boost this year. Looking at GeekBench benchmarks, the CPU scores show a fairly general iterative update, but the GPU has seen a massive step-up over the previous generation.

That comes across both through the phone’s AI performance, and the performance while gaming.

Camera performance is fine. It’s certainly not holding the phone back, but I don’t think it’s really something that would convince you to buy the phone, either.

What could the Reno13 5G improve?

OPPO has a long history of preloading its phones with junk apps. There’s no change here, and while you can delete them, it detracts from the entire experience. When you first set up your phone, you want it to be a reflection of you, not some group of apps you don’t want and will never use.

I’m also not really a fan of OPPO’s Android skin, which it calls ColorOS. It’s been around for long enough now that any regular OPPO user will be familiar with where everything is located, but it’s also different enough from vanilla Android to be a bit frustrating at times. Like trying to find the shortcut control for the phone’s vibration features, for example.

I hope OPPO adds wireless charging in the next model too. I love wireless charging, especially with the magnetic attachment Qi2 offers. It’s not an impossible ask for a device at this price, so fingers crossed.

Verdict

The OPPO Reno13 5G is a solid phone. While its battery life is easily its standout feature, the phone offers strong performance with its camera and its processor.

But is that enough? At $899, this mid-range device demands a premium against devices like the Galaxy A56 and the newer Motorola Edge 60 Fusion.

While I haven’t tested all the phones on the market in this price bracket, I’m not convinced the OPPO’s impressive battery life, water resistance and performance boost are necessarily worth that relative price premium.

If you can pick it up at a discount, then it becomes a much more enticing offering. And it’s certainly not a bad phone by measure.

It’s just a question of whether there are better options.

Compare OPPO Reno13 5G prices

OPPO Reno13 5G

RRP: $899

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