OnePlus 10 Pro Review - Successful Flagship Smartphone with Questionable Adjustments

The design of the OnePlus 10 Pro is characterized in particular by the newly designed ceramic cover of the rear cameras with 3D nano microcrystals. According to the manufacturer, this makes the surface particularly hard and resistant. In terms of colors, not much has changed compared to the OnePlus 9 Pro. With "Volcanic Black" and "Emerald Forest", there is once again a black and green variant to choose from. Both color options have a matte finish which we find very visually appealing. Fingerprints are hardly visible due to the matte finish of the Gorilla Glass 5 surface.

The build quality and feel are at a very high level. The slightly curved glass edges on the back feel pleasant in the hands. In contrast to the predecessor, the manufacturer does away with an IP certification for the current flagship smartphone, so there is no official protection against dust, splash water or rain. As with the OnePlus 9, the 10 Pro is sealed (according to OnePlus Germany), so contact with water should (theoretically) not be a problem.

The 2.5D Gorilla Glass Victus on the front curves slightly over the edges, which makes for quite thin edges on the top and bottom of the 6.7-inch display. The display surface ratio is a good 90 percent. The typical alert slider of the Chinese manufacturer is located on the right side of the case, which can be used to quickly switch between sound settings.

Unfortunately, the high-end smartphone from OnePlus does not support eSIM. Only the two physical SIM card slots can be used. On the other hand, functions such as WLAN calling and VoLTE are supported.
We like the voice quality of the OnePlus 10 Pro. Whether held to the ear or via loudspeaker: there were no points of criticism. During "normal" calls, the conversation partner sounds quite natural and the user's voice is also conveyed very clearly. In hands-free mode, which we also checked using video telephony, some reverberation and distortions come into play. But good intelligibility is always given.

In the upper left corner, OnePlus makes use of a 32 MP front camera with Sony IMX615 sensor. In well-lit conditions, the 10 Pro takes very nice selfies. Surprisingly, however, there is no UHD option for video. Unlike the OnePlus 9 Pro, this flagship generation has to make do with 1080p.

The 48-megapixel main camera of the triple cam is still based on the 1/1.43-inch Sony IMX789 sensor of the predecessor. The 7P lens offers an aperture of f/1.8 as well as optical image stabilization and an equivalent focal length of 23 mm. The results of the main camera are rich in detail and the dynamic range in the shots is high. Overall, the OnePlus 10 Pro over-sharpens the subjects too much for our taste and the exposure doesn't always fit in bright areas of the image either. In very low light, the strength of the rather large sensor and OIS comes into play. The OnePlus phone captures a lot of image information despite the darkness, and the illumination is also very appealing. However, the sharpness could be better.

For improved color reproduction, the Chinese have once again collaborated with Swedish camera brand Hasselblad. Colors are captured naturally without the subjects appearing too pale. However, the color fidelity we measured is neither particularly good nor particularly bad - as with the predecessor, mediocrity prevails here. There is great potential for improvement, especially with bright green tones and greyscales.

While the OnePlus 9 Pro has an IMX766-based wide-angle camera with a comparatively large image sensor (1/1.56 inches), the OnePlus 10 Pro is equipped with a Samsung JN1 sensor, which has a sensor size of 1/2.76 inches and very small 0.64 micron pixels. Especially in low light, this is a step backwards in terms of photo quality. But even during the day, the level of sharpness is visibly worse than that of the OnePlus 9 Pro. On the other hand, the 10 Pro now has a special mode that allows for significantly wider-angle shots with an image area of 150 degrees.

The telephoto camera offers a resolution of 8 MP, a 3.3x zoom without any loss in quality, and OIS. The well-known OmniVision OV08A19 sensor delivers decent results, but even at fivefold magnification, subjects sometimes appear artificial. Thanks to the optical image stabilizer, relatively sharp shots can be taken even at 10x or 20x magnification.

All three lenses enable the capture of 12-bit RAW images and 10-bit video. New features include RAW+ mode, which has a larger dynamic range and better noise reduction, and a manual video mode. Moving images can again be recorded in 8K resolution at 24 fps or in 4K at 120 fps. Switching between lenses while a video recording is in progress is possible. However, the color temperatures between the main and wide-angle cameras are poorly matched.

The OnePlus 10 Pro comes with an 80-watt modular power charger, a data (or charging) cable, a protective cover and a SIM pin, as well as a quick guide and warranty policy. However, USB 3.1 functionality requires a separate data cable that supports the standard. A USB 2.0 data cable is included in the delivery box.
OnePlus offers other accessories for the flagship smartphone in its web shop, including headphones and protective cases. A 24-month warranty is provided to those making their purchase in Germany.

A 6.7-inch LTPO AMOLED display with a refresh rate of up to 120 Hz comes into play here. The resolution is 3,216 x 1,440 pixels (QHD+), which results in a high pixel density of 525 PPI. The refresh rate of the LTPO 2.0 panel is adaptively controlled by the system between 1 and 120 Hz. Alternatively, it can be manually set at 60 Hz.
OnePlus does not achieve a big leap in luminance. The manufacturer specifies the HDR10 Plus-certified AMOLED panel at 1,300 nits, which we cannot confirm with our measurements. We measured a maximum brightness of 799 cd/m² for the APL50 - the APL10 still leaves room for improvement, but our test device did not reach the advertised 1,300 nits with our measurement protocol. The competition from Xiaomi or Samsung is clearly ahead here.
For brightness control, the flagship phone uses pulse width modulation (PWM) at a rather high frequency of 343 Hz. We could not find a DC dimming mode in the settings, but fluctuations in amplitude are much smaller at a low brightness.

OnePlus uses Qualcomm's best chipset in the smartphone sector to date for the 10 Pro. The Snapdragon 8 Gen. 1 is a 4 nm SoC and is based on ARM's v9 architecture. The Kryo series CPU consists of three clusters made up of a prime core (Cortex X2), three power cores (Cortex A710) and four power-saving units (Cortex A510). The processor can also utilize the integrated Adreno 730 for graphics acceleration.
We completed our benchmark package in high-performance mode. Similar to Huawei devices, OnePlus has been throttling the performance of the Qualcomm chipset ex-factory since the last Oxygen iteration. In "normal" mode, the Snapdragon 8 Gen. 1 clocks at a lower rate, resulting in around 20 percent lower benchmark values.
Otherwise, the Snapdragon SoC in the OnePlus 10 Pro works at the level of a Xiaomi 12 Pro or Oppo Find X5 Pro, whereby the poor scores in AImark and the GFX onscreen results are noticeable. Even if high-performance mode is active, the BBK smartphones from Oppo and OnePlus lock up at 60 fps.  
In everyday use, the flagship phone nonetheless makes an excellent impression without high-performance mode. But gamers should not go without the extra power. The loading times of applications are very short, while the read rates of the UFS 3.1 storage should be somewhat higher.