ONEPLUS NORD REVIEW

Subhrojit Mallick | 28 Jul 2020

DIGIT RATING

69 /100

DESIGN
68
PERFORMANCE
75
VALUE FOR MONEY
50
FEATURES
79

PROS
Compact form factor
OxygenOS UI offers smooth usability
HDR-supported display

CONS
Small screen not cut out for gaming
Snapdragon 765G only offers 10-12% improvement
Half-day battery

VERDICT

The OnePlus Nord is a compact smartphone that offers the smoothest smartphone experience at this price, even with the compromises OnePlus had to make to lower the price.

BUY ONEPLUS NORD

AVAILABLE

₹27999

ONEPLUS NORD DETAILED REVIEW

It’s rare to see a smartphone get the world hooked to its arrival unless it’s one made by a certain Cupertino-based giant. But the OnePlus Nord is certainly an exception. It’s a smartphone that’s cheap and just works. At Rs 29,999, the beefed-up 12GB RAM variant of the OnePlus Nord we received for review is quite compact for today’s standards, but underneath the glass is a well-oiled machine that’s tuned to get the job done without distractions. That’s essentially what this OnePlus device embodies. And for OnePlus loyalists, the entry price of Rs 24,999 in India makes it even more pragmatic. So we put it through our test process that involved watching episodes while taking a dump, losing three consecutive rounds of Call of Duty: Mobile, and taking the lethal risk of going out of the house to take photos. How does the OnePlus Nord shape up? Let’s find out —

ONEPLUS NORD PERFORMANCE

The OnePlus Nord may not have the best silicon inside, but it feels just as fast as its flagship siblings launched this year. It’s like using a shrunken OnePlus 7T because of a similar flat 90Hz display and the OxygenOS UI.

A lot of the credit goes to the Snapdragon 765G. Its spec sheet has more in common with the flagship 8-series chips than the 7 and 6-series silicon. However, benchmark scores show a paltry 10-12 per cent gain in performance over the Snapdragon 730G on the Poco X2, which makes me wonder whether OnePlus could have just avoided the expensive 5G modem and stuck to an older chip with just a minor downgrade in performance. Then again, 5G is something OnePlus needs to offer in markets in Europe, so the Snapdragon 765G seems like a feasible choice. Here’s what the benchmarks say —

When compared against the best mid-rangers before this (Poco X2, Realme 6 Pro), the OnePlus Nord is indeed ahead, but as stated before, only by around 10-12 per cent. Which isn’t groundbreaking for this segment, like how the Snapdragon 730 was last year.

And when pitted against the high-end offerings like the OnePlus 8 and the Realme X3 SuperZoom, the gap between mid-range and flagship remains just as wide, and even though Qualcomm touts the 765G as bridging that gap, we don’t really see that play out in action in these synthetic tests.

Then again, benchmarks only tell us part of the story. In reality, the OnePlus Nord feels nothing like a budget smartphone. And that’s partially because there’s more RAM in my review unit than there normally is, and the deep-seated optimisations OnePlus are known for which makes this thing run silky smooth. It takes a little more than a second to unlock and reach the home screen, open up Instagram and zombie scroll a few posts, or do a quick Google search. Launching the camera is ever so slightly slower than the OnePlus 8 Pro.

We also ran a CPU throttling test where an app parses complicated code on the cores continuously to see if there’s a dip in performance over a period of 30 minutes. The Nord fared really well on this test with the CPU only throttling to 89 per cent of its performance during the 30-minute sprint.

Having said all this, it will be interesting to test how the variant with 6GB RAM and 64GB storage fares in daily usage.

ONEPLUS NORD GAMING

The Snapdragon 765G is also cut out for gaming, with some of the Snapdragon Elite Gaming features trickling down from the flagship platform. And gaming is something the OnePlus Nord can handle fairly well, in terms of performance. Popular games like PUBG Mobile and COD: Mobile run at 100% stability. And that means, no frame drop.

Call of Duty: Mobile ran the best with everything maxed out. The phone clocked 60 FPS with 100 per cent stability and high graphics. I could move around with ease, but aiming and shooting on the small screen took time, especially after using the ROG Phone III as my gaming phone.

PUBG Mobile didn’t allow the HDR graphics to kick in, however. Which is weird because this has an HDR screen and the chip supports HDR-gaming. So the frame rate is locked to 30 FPS at the highest settings while dialling it down will take it to 40 FPS. But you still get 100 per cent stability in all.

However, we can’t really say the OnePlus Nord is cut out for gaming. The compact form factor is particularly a hindrance to high-octane gaming. You have less space for your button layout and even lesser space to nail the aim. The touch response, on the other hand is really good. In general, the touch sampling is set at 120Hz, but when you start a game like COD: Mobile, the touch sampling rate shoots up to nearly 240Hz which is real handy in quick scoping an enemy with a sniper. So while the form factor is more geared towards non-gamers, you can get the gaming performance you so desire, should you choose to.

ONEPLUS NORD SOFTWARE

It’s not the spec-sheet that particularly interested me when the OnePlus Nord arrived. I was more excited to try out OxygenOS decoupled from a flagship processor for the first time. A part of me actually wanted this to feel slower than the software on the flagship OnePlus devices. I mean, it’s surely logical for a Snapdragon 765G to run the same OxygenOS build with at least some compromises. Turns out, that’s not the case here.

OxygenOS on the OnePlus Nord is the same as the OnePlus 8 and the OnePlus 8 Pro. Every little feature that’s there on the 8 and 8 Pro, is also there on the Nord. Well, everything except for the Phone and Messaging app, which remains unexplained. But all of it works just as well as it does on its flagship devices. And that is essentially what most people buy into when getting a OnePlus device, and one where the Nord nails it.

Speed, customisations, and minimalist aesthetics are all ensured, even with a slower processor in hand. The bugs that are present on the OnePlus 8 Pro are ironed out in this one. The 8 Pro still freezes while browsing apps like Instagram, Facebook or Chrome. The Nord has no such issues.

More than the benchmark scores, it is the overall experience of using the OnePlus Nord that makes this a pragmatic choice for long term use. Having said that, I’ve only had the phone for around ten days, and in this little time frame, we’ve faced no issues whatsoever.

ONEPLUS NORD CAMERA

OnePlus built up a lot of hype around the camera, but the spec-sheet is simply the same as what you’d expect on a mid range phone. That includes an OIS-stabilised Sony IMX586 48MP camera, along with an 8MP ultrawide lens, and two 2MP cameras for macro and portrait shots. Now, on the face of it, there’s nothing extraordinary about the camera system. We see the 48+8+2+2MP stack all the time in the mid-range segment. Oh, and there are two more cameras on the front. OIS is certainly useful, but I fancied a telephoto lens in the mix.

There are also a few weird misses. For one, the OnePlus Nord cannot do 4K at 60FPS from the rear camera, but can do so from the front. When asked about it, OnePlus said there are issues with thermals when 4K@60FPs is enabled. Once that’s figured out, the feature will arrive via an update. Also weird is the inclusion of a 2MP macro camera when the brand can very well do so using the primary camera, like it does on the OnePlus 8 Pro. The results are also far better from the 48MP lens, and OnePlus could’ve shaved off costs by excluding the fourth camera.

Using the camera over a period of ten days shooting things I see near my house, the OnePlus camera feels well-tuned but not extraordinarily good. The details are what you’d expect from a 48MP camera, and the colour reproduction is quite natural — you get what you see. The best performance is delivered by the 48MP primary camera where the details and sharpness are good enough for viewing on the small screen. The 8MP ultrawide lens comes a close second with perhaps the best dynamic range in this segment. The other two lenses bring the overall camera performance down, however.

The Nightscape mode is also quite well tuned and you get images that look sharp in lowlight, provided you don't zoom in. Portraits come out a little softer on details but gets the colours quite right. As for videos, the OnePlus Nord doesn't suffer from the focusing issues we experienced in the OnePlus Nord.And the 1080p at 60 FPS output is just about decent as compared to the mid-range phones in this segment.

You can check out our camera review where we pitted the OnePlus Nord against the Realme X3 SuperZoom and the OnePlus 8 series.