OnePlus is taking a swing at the mid-range smartphone market with the OnePlus Nord. Is it any good? Find out in our OnePlus Nord review!
OnePlus was known for high-quality, speedy smartphones that cost much less than the equivalent flagships from Apple, Huawei, Oppo, and Samsung. The young company challenged the status quo with “flagship killer” phones. However, over the years OnePlus slowly raised prices until its devices cost almost as much as the competition. The current OnePlus 8 family is hardly more affordable than the best phones from LG or Samsung. In a return to form, however, OnePlus decided to take a real swing at the fiercely competitive mid-range with the OnePlus Nord. The OnePlus Nord is the firm’s answer to the likes of the Pixel a-series, the Galaxy A family, the Realme X50, or the LG Velvet. With a downgraded processor and a suitably reduced price, is the experience also watered down? OnePlus Nord review notes: I used the OnePlus Nord over a period of two weeks. The phone was running Android 10 with OxygenOS 10.5.1. The Nord looks and feels very much like its competitors. It’s a Gorilla Glass 5 sandwich with shiny plastic rails. The bezels are thin with a double punch hole in the top left corner of the display. There’s a volume rocker on the left edge, and a power button and ringer switch on the right. Microphones are on the top and bottom of the chassis, and the bottom is where you’ll also find the speaker, USB 2.0 Type-C port, and a dual-SIM card tray. On the rear is the typical pill-shaped, multi-camera module in the top left. In the hand, the OnePlus Nord feels solidly made. There aren’t any creeks or rattles when applying pressure to the device, and the plastic rails feel strangely metallic. The buttons and mute toggle feel tight and tactile. The feedback is surprisingly crisp for a mid-range smartphone – it might sound a bit crazy, but feedback is very important; it adds a sense of quality to a device and can be hard to get right. There’s no official IP rating, so don’t expect the Nord to survive a dunk in the pool. This hardware is very much what you expect from a 2020 mid-range smartphone. Continue reading: The best cheap smartphones of 2020 The OnePlus Nord comes in two colors: Gray Onyx and Blue Marble. The latter, which I reviewed, is striking to look at. It’s vibrant and features a metallic sheen in certain lighting conditions. The shiny blue rails complement this cool colorway. The OnePlus Nord’s display is one of the better examples in the mid-range smartphone market. This high-contrast AMOLED has inky blacks and punchy colors. It makes for a much nicer display than what we typically see in this segment, where companies seem to want to push ever-higher refresh rates rather than quality basics. Speaking of refresh rates, the Nord sports a 90Hz display, which is integral to its speedy user experience. It’s smooth and responsive, and is complemented by short animations in OxygenOS. This makes the phone feel snappy. The 90Hz refresh rate is also great for supported games, making them more engaging and immersive. See also: 90Hz display test: Can users really feel the difference? The in-display fingerprint scanner was quick and accurate in my two weeks with the device. About every 10-12 tries it would get me to re-scan to unlock. This is better than what I’ve experienced with other mid-range smartphones with in-display fingerprint scanners. The OnePlus Nord comes with a sub-flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G chipset, enabling good performance, as well as sub-6GHz 5G support. This is the first time that OnePlus has used anything but a flagship processor in one of its devices. This translates to slower performance compared to the OnePlus 8, though that’s to be expected. Lagging and hangups were a bit more common with the OnePlus Nord due to its sub-flagship chipset.
