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Specs and performance
The Oppo R17 Pro is equipped with the octa-core Snapdragon 710 processor and comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, along with Android 8.1 and Color OS 5.2.
It's a bit strange that a high-end Android phone in 2019 still comes equipped with Android 8, but more than Android, it’s about Color OS which is a custom skin by Oppo that makes the phone look a lot less like stock Android and more like iOS.
There's nothing wrong with that - in fact, many people prefer a customized version of Android over the stock look - but Android fans won't be keen on the lack of an app draw and the refusal to put any notification icons from apps in the notification bar at the top of the screen.
There is space to the left of the notch on the R17 Pro, but Oppo has opted to stick with colored circles on the app icons to denote something new is going on.
What's slightly more alarming is the fact the Oppo R17 Pro has a non-flagship chipset, while its competition all boast top-end power under the hood. During day to day usage it isn't particularly noticeable, but heavy lifting tasks take longer. Our Geekbench 4 test produced a multi-core score of 5,910, which shows the processor’s age when paired against other arrivals in the market.
The phone also took a fraction of a second longer to switch between apps when we had more memory-intensive apps running in the background, so despite having adequate RAM, the R17 Pro's slightly dated processor is the culprit here.
Audio quality
The Oppo R17 Pro has a single loudspeaker at the bottom of the phone, which - while loud - isn't that great. Audio sounds very metallic, and music sounds average at best. It's good for a quick conference call where you need more volume than nuances in the audio, but for trying to enjoy music or videos you're better off plugging in headphones.
Call quality is very good, with no call dropouts or interruptions on either side.
Final verdict
The Oppo R17 Pro (RX17 Pro in some regions) is a good phone that’s almost flagship material. It has a great camera, a beautiful design and a large, gorgeous screen with a small notch.
We didn’t notice any major performance issues either even though it’s not running the highest-end processor. The extra RAM probably makes up for the phone's snappy performance.
But the pricing is on the higher side, for which you would expect a top-of-the-line processor for that price tag. For that much you can check out Samsung’s Galaxy Note 9, and for a little less than that there’s the Huawei P20 Pro and OnePlus 6T.
While Oppo has created a good phone with the R17 Pro, there isn’t anything about it that demands the price it’s asking for.
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