(gentle music)
- The OnePlus Nord is an important moment for OnePlus.
For years OnePlus has basically stuck to flagships.
Nowadays it likes to do them two at a time
but they're both designed to sit more or less
at the top of the market.
Now it's expanding with the Nord, its first serious attempt
at a mid-range phone in years.
Launching a mid-range phone means making some tough
decisions about what the OnePlus name means to people.
It still needs to have those features that people buy
OnePlus phones for in the first place but it also needs
to make some compromises.
Not just because it needs to make it cheap
but also so that once it is cheaper it doesn't end up
so good that people choose it over your flagship phones.
It needs to draw a line between OnePlus features
and flagship OnePlus features.
It's a balancing act where if you get the balance
slightly wrong you could end up with the same kind
of flagship killer that OnePlus liked to call
its phones back in the day.
Only now OnePlus has flagship phones of its own
that risk getting caught in the crossfire.
So what does a mid-range OnePlus phone look like?
Which flagship features do you get to keep
and which do you lose?
(gentle music)
So this is it, the OnePlus Nord.
The model I've been using has 12 gigabytes
of RAM and 256 gigabytes of storage and costs 469 pounds
or 499 euros.
But there's also a step down model with eight gigabytes
of RAM and 128 gigabytes of storage which costs 379 pounds
or 399 euros.
So it's a mid-range phone sitting in a similarish
sort of price category to this year's entry level,
419 pound iPhone SE or the 429 pound Galaxy A51 5G.
Both models are releasing in Europe and India but OnePlus
is only planning a limited beta launch in the US for now.
At either price you're getting what is on paper
quite a well specced device.
There's a 6.4, four inch OLED display
with a 1080p resolution and a 90 Hertz refresh rate,
a quad rear camera array based around the same 48 megapixel
sensor that OnePlus used for the 8, dual selfie cameras,
including one with an ultra wide lens, and you're getting
support for sub six gigahertz 5G.
Now the trade-off, on paper at least, is that the Nord
is powered by a Snapdragon 765G processor which isn't quite
as fast as the flagship processors OnePlus used in the 8
and the 8 Pro.
But specs can't tell you how premium a device feels to hold.
And the OnePlus Nord's design is one of the more obvious
indicators of it's lower price point.
That said, I still really like it.
I like the simplicity, there's no messing around
with screens that curve round the edges of the device.
Instead you're gonna get a flat screen with a smallish
hole-punched notch for the Nord's dual selfie cameras
and what I'd call reasonably small set
of bevels around the edge of the screen.
Generally the whole design does feel less premium
than the 8 but not in a way that feels cheap,
it's just more utilitarian.
Battery life is also good.
Now I'll admit that it's still quite hard to gauge this
given the amount of time I'm spending at home right now
and I'll also caveat this by saying that I was connected
to 4G rather than 5G networks.
But I was getting between eight and 10 hours
of screen time between charges from the Nord's
4,115 million power battery.
And that includes everything, from watching copious amounts
of YouTube to keeping in contact with friends and colleagues
over Slack and WhatsApp, taking photos
and of course browsing plenty of Twitter.
There's no wireless charging but there is support
for OnePlus' Warp Charge 30T standard which the company says
should get you about 70% of your charge back
in half an hour.
So good battery life doesn't seem to be exclusive to OnePlus
flagships, it's more of a universal OnePlus feature.
Now we already know you're not getting exactly the same
display on this as you did on the 8, it doesn't have
that same curve for example.
It's also a little bit smaller at 6.44 inches
compared to 6.55 inches with the 8.
But honestly if you hold them next to each other
you barely notice the difference.
So it's a very similar screen which means it's pretty great.
It's OLED so blacks are lovely and deep, colors are vibrant,
it's still 1080p and hey, it's also got
that 90 Hertz refresh rate display.
Now I've said it before and I'll say it again
but high refresh rate displays deserve to become
the new standard.
But there is a caveat and that's that the slightly less
powerful processor on the Nord means that it doesn't feel
exactly as smooth as the 8.
I mean it's fine if you're scrolling through something
simple like the app drawer but scroll through Twitter
with its numerous videos and images
and it does start to stutter, if only a little.
It's a little bit hard to show on video but trust me
when I say it is there.
It's still better than a 60 Hertz display
but it just doesn't feel as smooth as what we've seen from
flagship phones with 90 Hertz displays.
It's an acceptable trade off for the price but it's also
something that's worth bearing in mind.
Oh, and by the by, I found it hard to fault
the in-display fingerprint sensor.
It works basically every time and I've barely
had to think about it.
So a high-end display seems to be a OnePlus staple
and not something that's exclusive to its flagships,
even if you're not getting exactly the same performance.
Audio isn't a strong suit of the Nord.
There's a single downward firing speaker here which means
that there's no stereo and while it gets plenty loud enough
there's just not that much base there.
So I guess good speakers are a flagship exclusive.
(upbeat music)
So far we've been trying to work out what features OnePlus
thinks all of its phones need to have and which it wants
to keep for its flagships.
But cameras are a bit trickier to categorize here
because they've never been one of OnePlus' core strengths.
They've been good, but never best in class.
Now the good news is that the Nord's cameras are in a very
similar ballpark to the OnePlus 8 and the better news
is there's at least one feature here
that is exclusive to the Nord.
Now the Nord has a lot of cameras.
I mean on the back there's four.
There's a 48 megapixel main camera, an eight megapixel
ultra wide angle camera, a two megapixel macro camera
and a five megapixel depth sensor.
And on the front, there's two.
There's a main 32 megapixel camera
and an eight megapixel ultra wide
with a 105 degree field of view, a neat little exclusive
for the Nord.
Now that's a lot of hardware.
So here's what OnePlus actually does with it.
In daylight I think you get very similar quality photos
to the 8 with the Nord.
I mean check out this photo from my living room.
And if I didn't label the photos I think you'd have a hard
time telling me which phone took which photo.
Sometimes the OnePlus Nord decides to add
a little bit more saturation to photos than the 8 does
but most of the time you can barely tell the difference.
It's the same when it comes to faces.
There's more of a difference when it comes to wide angle
shots though where you really miss the extra resolution
on the 8's ultra wide camera.
The Nord seems to overcompensate with a little too much
image processing sometimes.
But, it's probably acceptable at this price
and I'd rather it was there than not at all.
It's the same deal with the wide angle selfie camera.
Sure, it's images are a little softer
than the main 32 megapixel sensor and the selfie camera
in general seems to make my face a bit weird
and bright looking but it's super useful for group selfies
or I guess couple selfies if you're socially distancing.
Whatever, I like it.
While we're talking extra cameras let's run down
the other two that are on the back of this device.
There's a macro camera and the camera for sensing depth.
Both are kind of a mixed bag.
I mean take the macro camera, it's certainly managed
to focus on this amoeba that yes, I know, I always use
to test macro cameras but try as I might my shots ended up
looking muddy and blurry.
Same with these flowers.
It's not something I'd ever choose to use.
Likewise with this depth sensing camera I think
it did a decent enough job generating a convincing
background blur on this photo of me in low light
but in this shot of my flatmate it completely beefed
the hair on the top left of his head.
It quite a nice shot overall but once you notice the hair
you can't un-see it.
And speaking of low light shots, well, if you watched
my review of the 8 then you probably have a good idea
of what to expect here.
It's acceptable, but nothing amazing.
So, like the 90 Hertz display, the Nord has a lot
of hardware but I don't necessarily think it gets the most
out of it that it could.
It's in a very similar league to the 8 and I just don't
think that either are the phone to get if you want
the absolute best camera available.
That said I think those trade offs are far more worth it
at this price point than they were on the 8.
(gentle music)
I think the Nord is a really solid mid-range phone
but it's not perfect.
It's well specced, yes.
I mean, it's got lots of cameras, it's got that nice big
high refresh rate display and of course it's got
that big battery.
But the reality of what it gets
from that hardware sometimes leaves a little bit
to be desired.
I mean it's got lots of camera lenses
but overall performance ends up only being okay.
And it's got that high refresh rate display
but sometimes its processor seems to let it down.
They're compromises but I don't think they're unreasonable
at this price point.
Picking a mid-range phone is normally a matter
of choosing the battles.
You have to pick which features are most important to you
because no mid-range phone is gonna be able to completely
deliver on all of them.
But you sort of can't do that with the Nord,
it's too well-rounded,
which means there are no serious pitfalls.
There's also no one area that it completely delivers on.
That's not a bad thing at all, it just kinda makes it hard
to unreservedly recommend this phone
to any one group of people.
On the flip side though it does mean that I can
sort of recommend this phone to almost anyone.
OnePlus made a decent mid-range phone.
But look, it's no flagship killer.
Hey, so thank you so much for watching guys.
If you're looking for another video to watch
then obviously I just recommend watching this one again
'cause it's kind of great.
But if you must have some variety in your life
then Becca reviewed the OnePlus Buds last week
which are the new true wireless earbuds
that go along with this phone.
So if you like OnePlus give it a watch.