OPPO Reno14 Pro review: style and substance

The OPPO Reno14 Pro is the world’s first smartphone with MediaTek’s ambitious Dimensity 8450 SoC. But that’s not the only USP of the smartphone. Staying true to the Reno series’ legacy, the Reno14 Pro places strong emphasis on design and camera capabilities. The handset debuts with the brand’s new Velvet Glass back, offering a premium matte finish that feels both luxurious and durable in hand. Complementing its build quality is best-in-class ingress protection, which adds a layer of reassurance for everyday use.

On the imaging front, the Reno14 Pro sports a versatile 50MP quad-camera array, headlined by a dedicated telephoto lens with focus flash, a first in the industry, for low-light portraits. Additionally, the smartphone boasts a slew of AI features, a beefy 6,200mAh battery, and fast wired and wireless charging solutions.

Do all these features come together to deliver a worthwhile experience in the real world? Find out in our full OPPO Reno14 Pro review.

Verdict

The OPPO Reno14 Pro is a promising device that ticks most of the right boxes, if not all. It delivers powerful performance, a head-turning design, and excellent durability. The smartphone also excels in photography and is packed with AI-driven features designed to enhance both productivity and creativity. While thermal performance and pre-installed apps hold it back slightly, the Reno14 Pro remains a compelling all-rounder for everyday users, content creators, and casual gamers alike.

Design

The OPPO Reno14 Pro boasts a swanky design from every angle. Its frame, crafted from aluminium, has a soft matte finish that offers a secure grip. The gently curved edges further enhance comfort, ensuring the device doesn’t dig into your palm during prolonged use. The rear panel of the smartphone features OPPO’s Velvet Glass, which indeed has a velvety feel (smooth and silky) and exudes premiumness. We received the Pearl White colour variant for review, which has a unique pattern beneath the glass that shimmers with a blueish and yellowish effect when light hits it at an angle. OPPO calls it ‘iridescent mermaid’ design, which seems to have been inspired by mermaidcore aesthetics.

OPPO has extended the glass layer seamlessly across the back, flowing into the camera module, which features a glossy finish to set it apart. The squircle-shaped module has a noticeable bump, but this is cleverly softened by a new gradient layout that blends smoothly into the phone’s body, avoiding any awkward protrusion. The design feels premium, contributing to the handset’s overall aesthetic.

The module houses two prominent camera rings with a chrome finish, set against a gradient white border that fades subtly into black for a more polished and unified appearance. Although the rings may appear flush at first glance, they are slightly raised, causing a bit of wobble when the phone is placed flat and used for typing. Next to the main rings is a third telephoto lens, positioned in a pill-shaped cutout that also features “AI Camera” text and pseudo LED flash. The real LED flash is just below that pill-shaped cut-out within the module, rounding out the design.

In addition to Pearl White, the OPPO Reno14 Pro is also available in Titanium Grey, a more understated option featuring a reflective coating. Interestingly, the Titanium Grey variant is slightly slimmer, measuring 7.48mm compared to the 7.56mm thickness of the Pearl White model. While OPPO hasn’t specified the type of glass used on the back panel, it confirms that the front is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 7i, offering resistance against minor drops and impacts. The handset also boasts IP66, IP68, and IP69 ratings for water and dust resistance, giving users added confidence to use the device in the rain or near a swimming pool.

For security, the handset features an in-display fingerprint scanner that accurately and quickly unlocks the device. As for I/O, there is a USB Type-C port on the bottom edge for charging and data transfer. The top edge of the smartphone sports an IR blaster to control your home appliances.

Display

The OPPO Reno14 Pro sports a 6.83-inch LTPS AMOLED display with 1.5K (1,272 x 2,800p) resolution, up to 120Hz refresh rate, and 1,200 nits peak brightness. It is a flat display with razor-thin bezels, giving way to a 93.6 percent screen-to-body ratio. There is a punch-hole setup for the selfie camera, but it doesn’t compromise the overall viewing experience. The handset delivers an enriching experience, with crisp visuals and vibrant colours that appear almost the same even from an angle. The display colour profile is customisable and adjustable between different presets. Moreover, it comes with wet touch support, allowing the display to work seamlessly even when it is covered with water.

The UI animations and gaming graphics look appealing on the smartphone, thanks to its high refresh rate that automatically adjusts to the on-screen content. While a dynamic refresh rate would have been preferable for better power efficiency, the overall experience is impressive. The handset is HDR10+ certified too. Complementing the visuals are dual speakers, which can get reasonably loud, though there’s slight distortion at maximum volume.

Cameras

As far as optics are concerned, the OPPO Reno14 Pro sports 50MP triple rear cameras, with a dedicated ultrawide and a telephoto lens. The telephoto lens provides 3.5x optical zoom and is a preferred choice for portraits. The camera system is backed by two flash modes. One is a regular flash mode, which fires a couple of bursts to light up the entire scene, and the other is an Always-on flash that assists in capturing images in low light with soft and balanced exposure. OPPO refers to this system as AI Flash Photography, but during our testing, the results appeared consistent with what you’d expect from a well-tuned hardware flash system, rather than anything distinctly AI-driven.

The smartphone also gets AI Livephoto 2.0, allowing users to capture a still image along with a 3-second video clip, making everyday moments more vivid and dynamic. The video is easily shareable on platforms like Instagram and can be used to extract the best frame if the original photo falls short. The feature reportedly leverages AI to deliver clear, stable, and high-quality results with minimal effort.

The OPPO Reno14 Pro’s 50MP OIS main camera excels at capturing images with fine detail, balanced exposure, and a wide dynamic range. Colours tend to be slightly overexposed, yet they appear punchy, vibrant, and visually engaging. The 50MP ultrawide lens maintains strong colour consistency with the main sensor, with only a minor drop in quality, details remain impressive and uniform across the frame.

For portraits, the 50MP telephoto lens delivers crisp facial definition, effective subject-background separation, and a pleasing bokeh effect. However, skin tones can occasionally appear inaccurate. Similarly, the 50MP front camera captures sharp detail but struggles with natural skin tone reproduction and could benefit from improved dynamic range. In low light, the smartphone does an excellent job with the details, but struggles with controlling the light flare and accurately representing the scene.

Portraits captured with the Always-on flash in dimly lit environments look good overall, but fall short of being truly impressive. There’s noticeable over-smoothing of facial details, and the colours tend to appear slightly artificially boosted.

Here’s a quick comparison of the OPPO Reno14 Pro camera with the Pixel 9a, which is known for its photography prowess in the segment:

Daylight

Both smartphones have their strengths and weaknesses, but overall, the OPPO Reno14 Pro edges ahead in performance. It consistently delivers superior detail and better exposure, particularly in shadowy areas, where the Pixel 9a tends to falter. However, the Reno14 Pro’s colour reproduction isn’t entirely accurate; its images lean towards brighter, more saturated tones that, while visually appealing, stray from true-to-life rendering. For users who prioritise colour accuracy and a more natural look, the Pixel 9a may be the better choice.

Ultrawide

Thanks to its larger 50MP ultrawide sensor compared to the Pixel 9a’s 13MP unit, the OPPO Reno14 Pro captures sharper details with minimal edge distortion. The handset also impresses with its wide dynamic range and colour consistency that closely matches its primary camera. The Pixel 9a ultrawide is less consistent and even switches to cold hues, changing the complexion of the scene.

Portrait

The 50MP telephoto lens gives the OPPO Reno14 Pro an edge in portrait shots, offering crisp details. While there is some distortion around the edges of the subject, it is not as much as its counterpart. Moreover, the bokeh effect is more pronounced compared to the Pixel 9a. Having said that, its colour science tends to favour warmer tones, often introducing a yellowish tint to images. In contrast, the Pixel delivers more accurate and natural-looking skin tones.

Selfie

The selfie performance is almost on par for both smartphones. The Pixel 9a holds a slight edge with more accurate skin tones, better shadow retention, and well-exposed background details. That said, the OPPO Reno14 Pro delivers sharper facial detail, rendering hair strands and skin textures more crisply than its rival.

Low-light

In low-light conditions, the Pixel 9a has a slight edge over the OPPO Reno14 Pro, offering better exposure and reduced light flare, preventing colour bleed from signboards, as seen in the images below. The handset also provides a more accurate representation of the scene by avoiding excessive colour processing. However, while the Pixel 9a handles lighting more naturally, its level of detail falls short compared to the OPPO Reno14 Pro.

Low-light (night mode)

With the night mode enabled, both smartphones improve the images, but it doesn’t change the result. The OPPO Reno14 Pro impresses with its details and reduced noise level, whereas the Pixel 9a delivers accurate colours and controlled light flare.

Performance

The OPPO Reno14 Pro is powered by the newly launched MediaTek Dimensity 8450 chipset. This 5G-enabled 4nm SoC is based on an ‘All Big Core’ architecture, featuring eight Cortex-A725 cores clocked at up to 3.25GHz, paired with a 7-core Mali-G720 MC7 GPU and NPU 880 AI processor, which ensures strong performance while being power efficient. To put that claim to the test, we put the smartphone through our synthetic benchmark and gaming tests.

The OPPO Reno14 Pro delivers an impressive result on AnTuTu, which evaluates overall device performance across CPU, GPU, memory, and user experience. The handset also performs strongly in Geekbench’s multi-core test, indicating excellent multitasking capabilities. However, when it comes to everyday, light usage, the OPPO smartphone is likely to perform on par with its competitors.

When it comes to sustained performance, the handset struggles a bit. The Reno14 Pro throttled to almost 40 percent of its peak performance in the Burnout CPU throttle test. This isn’t a concern for regular users and casual gamers. In fact, the smartphone is more than capable of running graphically demanding titles such as BGMI, Call of Duty: Mobile, and Real Racing 3. The handset features AI Adaptive Temperature Control and AI Frame Stabilisation Algorithm, which promise to enhance gameplay by keeping thermals in check and generating additional frames for smoother visuals. Additionally, the smartphone features an ultra-thin vapour chamber, nano-sized alumina, and a high-grade graphite for an effective cooling system. This was apparent in our usage too. 

The handset performed smoothly across a variety of tasks and didn’t get uncomfortably warm even during gaming and multitasking. We played BGMI, Call of Duty: Mobile, and Real Racing 3 for a combined duration of 90 minutes, during which the device’s temperature rose by 17.5 degrees Celsius. While this isn’t the most thermally efficient result, the phone handled the load without noticeable frame drops or stuttering, delivering a consistently stable user experience.

The OPPO Reno14 Pro also includes several gaming-focused features for an immersive experience, such as Footstep Sound Boost, which reportedly boosts enemy footsteps when wearing Bluetooth headphones in first-person shooting games. The smartphone comes with only a 12GB RAM option, but you have the option to choose between the 256GB and 512GB storage variants.

Software

Software-wise, the OPPO Reno14 Pro runs Android 15-based ColorOS 15 out of the box. It is the same software that was found on its predecessor, the OPPO Reno 13 Pro. The phone comes with as many as 63 apps pre-installed, which makes the UI somewhat bloated. However, the handset offers a wide range of customisation options and is backed by OPPO’s Trinity Engine and the Luminous Rendering Engine for smooth performance and animations, respectively.

The smartphone even features several AI-driven features. These include AI photo editing options such as eraser, reflection remover, recompose, unblur, and more, all of which left a fairly positive impression. The Eraser tool, in particular, impressed me the most, effortlessly removing unwanted objects from images, except in poorly lit scenarios. In such cases, the tool’s ‘paint over’ function helps eliminate any resulting smudginess to an extent.

In addition, the phone features AI Summary, which condenses lengthy text into easy-to-read bullet points, helping you save time. The AI Writing assists in refining your content and overcoming writing challenges. Moreover, for users working with unfamiliar languages, there’s AI VoiceScribe, which offers real-time translation, subtitles, and summaries of videos, meetings, and calls; AI Translate for bilingual voice chats using split-screen translations; AI Call Assistant to summarise calls and offer text-to-speech translations.

The OPPO Reno14 Pro also introduces AI Mind Space, which is basically a smart organiser that lets you store and manage important information so that they don’t get mixed up in your gallery or any other app. For instance, it can detect a calendar event mentioned on-screen and suggest adding it to your calendar, or summarise a screenshot and display the key points alongside it within the Mind Space app.

Then there is Gemini, Google’s AI voice assistant that works across apps and can answer queries, assist with writing and analysis. It can be accessed with a long-press of the power button. Moreover, users can search for anything on their screen, text, images, songs, and more, with the Circle to Search feature. The only catch for these AI features is that you will need an active internet connection to access them.

Furthermore, the OPPO Reno14 Pro features AI Linkboost 3.0, which is touted to enhance connectivity by analysing network performance in real-time, automatically switch to a fast and more stable network, and prioritise network strength for gaming, among other things.

Battery and Charging

The OPPO Reno14 Pro boasts a 6,200mAh battery, which promises to deliver up to two days of battery life on typical usage. The handset supports 80W SuperVOOC Flash wired and 50W AirVOOC wireless charging. A charger for the former is provided in the box, ensuring quick top-ups. During our lab test, the Reno14 Pro took just 41 minutes to reach 100 percent from 20 percent, which is impressive. However, its PCMark test, which analyses battery performance by simulating real-world activities, seems underwhelming. The handset scores 9 hours and 29 minutes.

That said, the OPPO Reno14 Pro appears to be well optimised for video streaming and gaming. In our YouTube playback test, the handset consumed just 2 percent of battery over 30 minutes. Meanwhile, after playing BGMI, Call of Duty: Mobile, and Real Racing 3 for 30 minutes each, the battery dropped by an average of 6 percent, a figure that’s in line with competitors. For regular usage, such as browsing, streaming, social media scrolling, messaging, and navigation, the handset is capable of lasting a day and a half, if not complete two days.

Final Verdict

The OPPO Reno14 Pro makes a strong case for itself in the premium mid-range segment. The handset features a sleek, iridescent design with IP-rated durability, a gorgeous AMOLED display, and an impressive set of AI-backed features. Moreover, the handset delivers a snappy day-to-day performance, thanks to its MediaTek Dimensity 9450, although sustained loads reveal some thermal throttling.

Camera performance is another highlight, particularly in daylight and portrait photography, where the telephoto and ultrawide lenses stand out. However, the colour tuning could use some refinement, especially for skin tones and low-light shots. Battery life is decent, with fast charging adding to convenience, even if benchmark scores suggest room for optimisation.

The OPPO Reno14 Pro can be yours starting at Rs 49,999. However, at this price point, there are other capable options, such as the Pixel 9a (review), which offers a clean software experience and accurate colour science for photography, and the OnePlus 13s (review), which is worth considering for its compact form factor and a more powerful chipset. That said, the OPPO smartphone sets itself apart with its striking design, vibrant display, and a versatile, user-friendly camera system. The handset is not flawless, but it ticks enough right boxes to be a compelling choice for users seeking a balanced and stylish daily driver.

Editor’s rating: 8 / 10

Reasons to buy:

• The OPPO Reno14 Pro stands out with its sleek, Velvet Glass back that looks premium, feels smooth, and provides a good grip.
• The LTPS AMOLED display delivers sharp visuals, vivid colours, and a decent brightness level.
• The 50MP triple rear cameras offer flexibility for various photography scenarios and deliver impressive detail, dynamic range.
• The large 6,200mAh battery provides reliable endurance for heavy users.

Reasons not to buy:

• Low-light photography often suffers from light flare and artificial colour boosts, which take away from realism.
• ColorOS 15 feels cluttered out of the box with a large number of pre-installed apps.
• The handset might throttle under extended heavy usage, such as gaming or benchmarking, impacting the usage of power users.