In front of us we have a OnePlus smartphone – not the OnePlus 9 though, or the OnePlus Nord 2.
This guy is called the OnePlus Nord N200, and it's ridiculously inexpensive, which is probably why
OnePlus doesn't really mention it. Speaking of inexpensive, if you've ordered one of my
Jerryrig knives in the last few months, they are still coming. The shipment is just delayed until
probably September. The world is still waking up from Covid. Link is down in the description.
Where was I? Oh yeah. The Nord N200 is a full fledged OnePlus phone that only costs $230, which
is incredibly cheap for a brand new OnePlus. So today we're going to find out what this thing is
really made of. Inside the box we get a standard USB-C charging cable, and an 18 watt fast charger.
The phone itself is a pretty low key Satin Blue color. Sometimes mid range and budget phones have
a little more drip, if you catch my drift. But that doesn't seem to be the case here. OnePlus
is playing it safe. So how does OnePlus make an entire phone for $230? I'm going to assume there's
a lot of plastic involved. But there's only one way to find out for sure. Let's get started.
[Intro]
Right off the bat I think I found one of the reasons why this phone is so cheap. These rear
cameras are minisual. I'll talk more about the specs in a second, but a good rule of thumb is
that the bigger the sensor, the nicer the camera. And while this Nord N200 has really big lenses on
the outside, the camera in the center is just a pinprick of glass. They are much smaller than the
cameras we find on full fledged flagships. We'll have to dig more into that during the teardown.
Let's start with the scratch test. At $230 I would not be surprised at all if this guy
had a plastic screen. What is surprising though is that this N200 isn't even the
cheapest phone that OnePlus sells. They also have an N100 that costs about $150 bucks,
but it caps out at 4G. This N200 is 5G internally, and externally we're seeing scratches at a level
6, with deeper grooves at a level 7. So the screen is indeed made of glass. Nice work so far.
A soft plastic display would get scratched up pretty quick.
The front facing 16 megapixel camera is protected under the front glass. The earpiece grill is made
from plastic and won't be falling out on it's own. And then, of course, about what we expected,
the frame of the N200 is made from painted plastic soft enough that my razor blade can shave out
large chunks. There is a side mounted capacitive fingerprint scanner which can also be scratched.
Then up at the top we have more painted plastic. Over here on the left side we have more plastic,
including the volume buttons, everything is plastic.
We're also missing the mute slider which is pretty much a staple on every other
OnePlus phone. Kind of sad to see it didn't make it onto the N200.
The SIM card tray is pretty much the longest and largest we've ever seen.
The N200 does have expandable storage, but no rubber ring around the SIM opening,
which means there probably isn't any water protection on this guy either.
The bottom of the phone has it's USB-C port, along with a loudspeaker and a headphone jack. Nice.
The back of the phone feels as smooth as glass at first, but in reality it's also made from plastic.
Plastic isn't bad, of course...well on cell phones at least. Single use plastics from restaurants,
grocery stores and gas stations are pretty much destroying the planet. I mean it's kind of strange
to think that every toothbrush you've ever used is still sitting in a landfill somewhere.
But that's a video for a different day. Plastics on cellphones doesn't mean it's inherently weaker.
We've had just as many metal phones snap in half as plastic phones have. Here on my channel
it could go either way...just a roll of the dice. And we're here to see which way it falls.
Moving up to the camera lens durability, we have the main 13 megapixel camera up top,
then a 2 megapixel macro camera, and a 2 megapixel depth camera. And if you're keeping track,
that means the camera with the most megapixels is actually on the front. That's strange.
The rear camera also only films in 1080p. And they're still all protected by the comically
large camera lens circles that are pretending to be something they aren't...like a V8 decal
on your truck, or a spoiler on a Civic, the larger circles always look more expensive
and costumes are fun. You can't blame OnePlus for trying to spice things up at this price point.
If you really want to use a costume to spice things up though, I recommend my Teardown Skin
from dbrand. It takes the dress up game to a whole new level by showing off the internals
of your phone safely from the outside. I'll leave a link down in the description. We carry the skin
for pretty much every popular phone nowadays and it does a pretty good job of hiding scratches,
or better, keeping scratches from even happening in the first place.
Even though this is a $230 smartphone, OnePlus has managed to slip a high 90hz refresh rate
onto the 6.5 inch 1080p screen. And we can tell by the way the pixels go black and turn off
that the display is IPS. After about 10 seconds when the flame is removed, the pixels do return
back to normal. Lastly, before the bend test, let's check the fingerprint scanner.
It's over on the side and doubles as the power button, which I do prefer.
Making the scanner the power button is just one less button push if the scanner happens
to fail the scan...which does happen fairly often on underscreen fingerprint scanners.
Adding some very deep scratches to the capacitive power button doesn't seem
to deter the scanning capabilities too much. I'll give it a thumbs up.
Now for the bend test. The regular OnePlus Nord, which is about twice as expensive as
this Nord N200, failed my durability test last year. The phone itself survived, but the display
underneath the glass cracked, rendering the phone unusable. With the first bend of the
N200 we do get some flex, but no catastrophic damage just yet. When bending from the back,
something does indeed snap, but whatever it is is not visible from the outside, nor does
it inhibit the overall function of the device. The Nord N200 is still intact and still alive.
We'll have to see what popped during the tear down. The N200 survives my durability test.
Interesting to see a $230 smartphone survive where $1,000 smartphones could not. Nice work, OnePlus.
I can see why you'd want to keep this one a secret. If too many people find out about it
they might prefer it over the flagships. Don't worry, your secret's safe with me. Besides the
little cameras pretending to be big cameras, it's a pretty solid unit. I'm curious though, for
those watching this video, when you go to buy a smartphone how much are you willing to spend? Let
me know down in the comments. I'll leave a link for my Teardown Skins in the video description.
And come hang out with me on Instagram and Twitter. Thanks for watching. I'll see you around.