Geek Review: OnePlus 10 Pro 5G

While companies are known for offering the best hardware at premium prices, there are those, such as China’s OnePlus, who has made a name as the smartphone company that provides premium hardware specifications and design, for a fraction of the price.

And now that they have established a reputation for it, they can offer the next best thing – top-end hardware and still at a fraction of the price of its peers, with the OnePlus 10 Pro 5G. Powered by the latest Snapdragon 8th Gen 1 chipset, a large 5,000 mAh battery, 12GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard storage, the 6.7-inch flagship is one of the brand’s better looking handsets to date, and priced at a mere S$1,299. While a bit more conservative in design, everything flows when it comes to camera modules and placement, colour options and the thin bezels wrapping around the LTPO2 AMOLED Display.

Our review unit is the Volcano Black version, which has the appearance of a more textured backing but is still very smooth to the touch, so much so that we recommend using the case included in the box to help with a more secure grip. The display is bright and vibrant but OnePlus does give you the ability to tweak the colour of the display to your liking.  Since we use the phone for more photos and video we intend to have it set to look more natural vs the highly vibrant settings out of the box.

The phone performs well with the Oxygen OS, which is essentially stock Android minus a few tweaks and improvements. For photography nuts, the OnePlus 10 Pro 5G has taken the playbook from its bigger brother, Oppo, and established a partnership with Hasselblad,  You see this alliance in the colour output, XPan mode and Hasselblad Pro modes inside the camera system.

Overall the image quality is impressive, with the cameras producing sharp images out of the triple camera setup: 48MP Wide 50MP Ultra-Wide and 8MP Telephoto, especially when it came to Pro mode and XPan mode. The XPan mode is our personal favourite, as it mimics the panoramic feature in the Hasselblad XPan film cameras, but gives you the ability to shoot in both black and white, and colour.  

For video, the phone is capable of shooting up to 8K at 24fps, 4K at 30, 60 or 120fps, and 1080p at 30, 60 or 240fps, which matches the latest from the current flaships models from competitors. Performance with video is good, but nothing that stood out amongst the competition.  

However, one thing that does stand out is the fantastic charge times the phone can get when paired to the 80 Watt Super VOOC Charger that comes with the unit. This can charge the phone from 0 to full in around 30 minutes time, and defies the competitors, who have withdrawn the provision of a charger out of the box. plus min. 

For what it offers in terms of hardware, features and performance, the OnePlus 10 Pro 5G is a worthy contender for low price powerhouse, though there is a caveat. The brand does not have a full-fledged customer service operations, so paying that much for little to no support isn’t something that most people can deal with. If you are looking for a smartphone manufacturer with a more physical presence, consider the Oppo with the Find X5 Pro, which shares many of the same features, but costs just slightly more.