By Vivek Singh Chauhan

New Delhi, Jul 17 (IANS): In a much-competitive premium smartphone market in India, the global smartphone brand OPPO, which is among one of the best-selling smartphone brands, has brought its much-awaited OPPO Reno6 series to the country.

OPPO's Reno series is known for its premium appearance and upgraded features. The company has been adding more value to the series as it expands the series.

Reno 6 5G and Reno 6 Pro 5G are priced at Rs 29,990 and 39,990 and offer two colours options -- aurora and stellar black.

We used the top-end variant for a while that comes with 12GB+256GB and opted for the aurora colour option. Here's how it fared.

As usual, like its predecessors, the new OPPO Reno6 Pro 5G comes with a sleek and slim design with a camera bump on its back. It weighs around 177 grams.

One good thing about the smartphone is that the back does not attract fingerprints but the aurora variant in a light bluish shade makes the device look extra glossy, which you will find similar in most smartphones. Moreover, there is a lot of resemblance between this smartphone and its predecessor.

The smartphone features a 6.5-inch 3D curved display with a 90Hz refresh rate and up to 180Hz touch sampling rate. It is said to be HDR10+ certified for a vivid visual experience.

To a great extent, it is true as it offered a smooth viewing experience. With slim bezels, the display is quite good with proper brightness and decent view angles.

The 90Hz refresh rate ensured a silky-smooth feel whether watching videos, playing top-level games or switching between apps. But, if you are currently using a 120Hz refresh rate, you may surely find the difference between the two.

Also, while using the smartphone under direct sunlight, we did not face any issues and the colour reproduction remains intact even when you are viewing the screen from different angles.

The smartphone is powered by the latest flagship 5G-integrated SoC -- the MediaTek Dimensity 1200 -- that is built on a 6nm processor, which provides stronger performance and lowers power consumption.

The chipset features one of the fastest smartphone octa-core CPUs ever -- with a clock speed of 3GHz with up to 22 per cent faster CPU performance while also being 25 per cent more power-efficient versus the previous generation.

Apart from offering a smooth viewing experience, we noticed that the device is good for gaming as well as it handled most mid-to-heavy games without any difficulty.

The smartphone did not lag at all while multitasking and the face unlock as well as in-display fingerprint sensor worked fine.

The 12GB RAM and 256GB of internal storage were sufficient for our usage. The phone runs the company's latest version of ColorOS 11.3.

The smartphone is backed by a 4,500mAh battery and supports 65W fast charging. On normal usage, the phone lasted around a day. Our usage included clicking pictures, playing online and offline games, emails, listening to music and watching videos.

The good part is that even if you use this phone extensively, the fast charging may come to your rescue and might help in solve your battery issues.

In terms of optics, the smartphone comes with a quad rear camera setup that includes a 64MP primary camera, an 8MP wide-angle camera, a 2MP macro camera and a 2MP mono camera. At the front, it carries a 32MP selfie camera housed in a hole-punch cutout at the top left corner of the display.

OPPO Reno Series is known for its camera capabilities.

The phone performed great in the bright-light conditions. However, it failed to capture the same quality pictures in low light places as it produced slightly weaker colours and details in those conditions.

The selfie camera can be said to be decent as we found the pictures clicked from the front camera a little over-sharpened, which makes the picture look edited.

A better camera output could have added another star to this premium smartphone. However, to compensate, you will find camera features like Bokeh Flare Portrait Video, AI Highlight Video, Focus Tracking, Slo-Mo, Time Lapse, etc in the camera app.

The Reno 6 Pro also misses out on the stereo sound. The smartphone resembles a lot like Reno5.

Conclusion: OPPO Reno6 has evolved a lot as compared to its previous generation smartphones and has also maintained the legacy with its premium look and faster performance. If you're looking to buy a smartphone for a sleek feel and top-end performance, this is your go-to device.

At a similar price point, the device is in direct competition with OnePlus 9R and Mi 11X Pro.