The OnePlus Nord 2T offers most of what we loved about the OnePlus Nord 2 in 2021, which is both a good and a bad thing.
’s OnePlus Nord 2 was a superb addition to the sub-£400 smartphone market, providing near-enough-flagship performance and camera capabilities for a much lower price. It was so good, OnePlus didn’t even bother releasing a OnePlus 10 this year. The lines had seemingly become too blurred to warrant a separate lower-flagship release – or at least that’s how it seemed. Now the OnePlus 2T is here with an extremely minor spec bump, and while it’s a fine phone to use, we’re a little puzzled as to why it exists. With reports suggesting that the OnePlus Nord 3 is still very much on the cards, its position in the wider range seems rather precarious. With much the same 6.43-inch 90Hz AMOLED display as the Nord 2, almost identical performance, and exactly the same camera and battery systems, this is a revision rather than a wholly new model. It’s not quite identical to the Nord 2, though. OnePlus has brought across the speedy 80W charging from the OnePlus 10 Pro, as well as a slight faster and more efficient Dimensity 1300 processor. But we really are talking about marginal gains here. Perhaps the biggest and most interesting advance relates to the pricing. With a new £369 (around $460/AU$655) price tag, the OnePlus Nord 2T instantly becomes one of the best all-round options in the mid-range category. Its tidy design, clean software, crisp photographs, and accomplished all-round performance leave many a £500 and £600 phone looking precariously overpriced. All in all, the OnePlus Nord 2T leaves us rather conflicted. While it’s undoubtedly a very good mid-range smartphone indeed, there’s no escaping the fact that it’s an incremental upgrade at best. At worst, it could be viewed as flat-out unnecessary. The OnePlus Nord 2T hits shops on May 24, 2022, with two hardware variants on offer. The entry-level model comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage at a price of £369 (around $460/AU$655). The step-up model will give you 12GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage, and costs £469 (around $580/AU$830). This represents a slight price decrease here in the UK, where the OnePlus Nord 2 started from £399 back in July 2021. At this price, the OnePlus Nord 2T also stands as a direct rival to the Redmi Note 11 Pro Plus 5G and the Realme 9 Pro Plus. It’s fair to say that we weren’t blown away by the OnePlus Nord 2’s by-the-book design, and the OnePlus Nord 2T barely makes any effort to change that perception. Once again it feels nice enough to hold, with Gorilla Glass to the front and rear surfaces and a metal-effect plastic frame. But the design language itself is pretty dull. Even the new Jade Fog (which we tested) and Grey Shadow (essentially black) shades seem a little muted. The main difference here seems to come from the revised camera module, which is slightly squatter, and which increases the size of the circular sensor frames to something a little more interesting. We say ‘interesting’, but the effect of the ultra-wide sensor being pushed up to the top of its mounting leaves the phone looking a little cross-eyed. It’s almost exactly the same size as the OnePlus Nord 2, give or take the odd fraction of a millimetre, with dimensions of 159.1 x 73.2 x 8.2mm. It weighs just a single gram more at 190g. Of course, all of this means that the Nord 2T feels relatively compact in the pocket. Together with a familiar curved rear, it sits just as well in the hand, though our Jade Fog model seems prone to displaying all of your sweaty finger smudges.
