OnePlus Nord
OnePlus’ handset is stylish and packed with tempting specifications – especially if you want 5G
SCORE
PRICE 128GB, £316 (£379 inc VAT) from oneplus.com
OnePlus made its name by squeezing top-specification components into keenly priced products, but that philosophy went bythe wayside as it attempted to elbow its way onto the top table alongside the big names. The Nord is an attempt for OnePlus to rediscover its “true north”, as founder Carl Pei put it in a Instagram post.
With more brilliant budget phones on sale than ever before, however, jumping back in and winning costconscious customers over is no simple task. Assuming that 5G is on your must-have wishlist, its obvious rival is the Moto G 5G Plus ( see issue 312, p68), which comes with the same chipset, 64GB of storage and a similar array of features for £300.
Glassy design
Where the OnePlus Nord immediately wins versus the Moto is style: with both the front and rear of the phone clad in Gorilla Glass 5, it not only looks good but should resist fingerprints, scuffs and scratches. The screen fills most of the front of the phone, with narrow bezels above, below and to either side, and is punctuated only by two cameras, punched into a flatsided oval in the top-left corner.
The Nord is just as attractive from the rear as it is from the front. It’s available in two colours: the striking Blue Marble seen here and Grey Onyx for those who prefer a more businesslike appearance. Both hues have a pleasant, metallic sheen, with the design offset by the phone’s four cameras arranged in a vertical stack in the top-left corner.
OnePlus’ trademark do-notdisturb slider sits on the right, but don’t bother looking for a 3.5mm jack. Nor is there wireless charging or an IP rating, although OnePlus says it has undergone unofficial testing at a depth of 30cm for 30 seconds. There’s also an in-screen optical fingerprint reader.
On a charge
Inside is a 4,115mAh battery and Snapdragon 765G chipset, with the latter already proving frugal: it helped the Moto G 5G Plus reach 22hrs 50mins in our video-rundown tests, and the Nord lasted a similarly positive 20hrs 22mins. In real-world use, that should translate to a comfortable day’s worth of heavy use, and you may even be able to stretch it to two full days. The phone also benefits from
OnePlus’ rapid charging, the committee-named Warp Charge 30T, with a compatible charger included in the box – this can charge the phone to 70% in 30 minutes.
OnePlus also gives the Snapdragon 765G chipset an extra chance to shine by including more RAM than rivals, with the results on p61 for the model we tested with 12GB of RAM. This doubles the storage to 256GB, but with a price hike to £469. If you buy the 128GB version, which includes 8GB of RAM, we’d expect its results to drop a little closer to the Moto G 5G Plus. Note there isn’t an SD card slot.
Yet, in terms of speed, dropping to 8GB of RAM isn’t a problem. Those graphs show that the Nord and Moto G have a clear lead over the Google Pixel 4a ( see p60), but what really matters is that this phone is fast: the Nord feels so nippy that you start to wonder why anyone spends more on a phone.
Sharp and focused
One reason that it feels fast is the 90Hz screen, which lends Android and supporting apps (such as Instagram) a level of smoothness that 60Hz can’t match. It’s a great screen in other respects too, which is no surprise as it’s the same as that of the OnePlus 8 ( see issue 309, p61). A 1,080 x 2,400 resolution and 6.44in diagonal results in a sharp image, while AMOLED tech delivers its usual punchy colours.
Colour accuracy is excellent. In both the phone’s Display P3 and sRGB colour modes, the Nord returned average Delta E scores of below 1.5, and both modes almost perfectly matched their target colour spaces.
While a maximum brightness of 304cd/m2 with a full white screen seems disappointing, this reached 771cd/m2 in video playback with a small patch of white against a black background. That hinted at great HDR performance and so it proved, with eye-searing highlights and a rich colour palette.
Such a wide gamut coverage bodes well for photographers wishing to check the colours captured by this phone’s cameras, and with six arrayed across the front and rear of the phone the Nord isn’t short on options for the photo-obsessed. At the front, there’s an eight-megapixel (f/2.4) ultrawide camera with a 105° field of view, and a high-resolution 32-megapixel camera that can capture 4K video at 60fps.
At the rear, the main camera is a 48-megapixel (f/1.75) Sony IMX586 module with a 1.2in sensor that takes 12-megapixel stills by default. That’s another piece of hardware borrowed from the OnePlus 8, and wisely so: in good light, images are packed with detail with pleasingly neutral colours. Indoors, in low light, OnePlus’ image processing softens images but they remain usable, while its Nightscape lifts extra detail and colour in dim or dark scenes.
The main camera is on a par with the superb Apple iPhone SE ( see issue 310, p76) but, given that you also have the option of ultrawide (eightmegapixel, f/2.2) and macro cameras (two-megapixel, f/2.2), plus an extra ultrawide selfie camera at the front, you can do far more with the Nord. My only caveat is that the extra cameras are best reserved for good light, and in truth I was disappointed by the grainy and sometimes blurred results from the macro camera.
“What really matters is that this phone is fast: it feels so nippy that you start to wonder why anyone
spends ends more on a phone”