OnePlus Nord Review

OnePlus has carved a niche for itself in the smartphone segment.

The brand that initially started with budget Android smartphones in the mind has successfully upscaled itself to the premium category.

OnePlus managed to dethrone Samsung in the premium segment and this is no small feat.

Premium Android Smartphone buyers that once had Samsung Note or S series in their bucket list have now been levelled with OnePlus series.

OnePlus in its latest strategy, wants to capture a sizeable pie or even dominate the ever hotter than before, mid range segment. Hence the OnePlus Nord, the latest iteration from the brand out there.

The mid range segment is defined by smartphones with price tag >25,000 & until now has been mostly dominated by Samsung, Vivo, Oppo and Xiaomi, Realme to some extent.

Smartphone manufacturers have recently been targeting this segment as they could notice a shift in the buying potential of the Indian consumer.

OnePlus being a major player in the industry has also stepped in with its OnePlus Nord.

The Nord has high stakes as it aims to take the brand legacy forward like its elder siblings, the one plus 8 & 8 pro which are the premium offerings from the brand’s stable.

Here we shall have a detailed look at the OnePlus Nord. We shall cover every aspect starting from the Price, design, display, camera, specs to concluding with the flaws & rating from our side.

OnePlus Nord Price

Oneplus has priced the Nord competitively with its rivals. Prices start at

24,999 for 6+64Gb

27,999 for 8+128Gb

29,999 for 12+256Gb

Considering the segment we do not have any major gripe regarding the pricing and OnePlus surely has done a great job in the pricing front.

OnePlus Nord Design

The OnePlus Nord just like its elder siblings has a beautiful architecture. The smartphone boasts of a Unibody Glass Design that not only looks good but also feels premium too.

Both the front and back of the device is held together in a plastic frame, though a metal brushed aluminium frame was preferred for a more sturdy and premium build, the plastic frame does not at all reduce the exquisiteness of the device. You can live with that.

On the right hand side you can find the Power key as well as an Alert slider button, the Volume rocker buttons are placed on the left.

On the top you can find the secondary microphone and the bottom houses the primary microphone, Dual Nano Sim card slots and a USB 2.0 Type C port.

OnePlus Nord does not have an expandable memory which is a downside if you consider the base variant that comes with only 64Gb of storage.

OnePlus Nord Variants

OnePlus Nord will initially be available in 3 variants. It will be available in 6+64, 8+128 & 12+256Gb configurations.

6+64Gb will be available from September while the rest will be available from August 4 onwards.

OnePlus Nord Colours

The OnePlus Nord is available in two colours as of now, A sober Gray Onyx and a flaunty Blue Marble.

Grey Ash colour of the One Plus Nord may be available in October.

OnePlus Nord Dimesions

·  Height: 158.3 mm

·  Width: 73.3 mm

·  Thickness: 8.2 mm

·  Weight: 184

OnePlus Nord Headphone Jack

OnePlus Nord sadly misses out on a regular 3.5MM headphone jack and hence a bit let down for audiophiles.

OnePlus Nord Display Specifications

OnePlus Nord has a beautiful Full HD+ Fluid AMOLED Display. The Display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5 technology both at the front and the back.

The Nord also comes with HDR10+ certification, has a wider P3 colour Gamut and does support sRGB colour rendering.

Other display features include Reading Mode, Night mode and video enhancer mode.

OnePlus Nord comes with Widevine L1 certification, so you can enjoy your favourite shows on Netflix and Prime in the full screen mode without any compromise.

OnePlus Nord Display Size & Aspect Ratio

OnePlus Nord features a 6.44” FHD+ Fluid AMOLED display with a resolution of 2400*1080 pixels and an Aspect Ratio of 20:9.

OnePlus Nord Display PPI

OnePlus Nord not only has an iconic Fluid AMOLED display but also packs in it a pixel density of 408 pixels per inch, no doubt the texts and images look incredibly sharper owing to this high PPI.

OnePlus Nord Brightness

OnePlus Nord has 2048 levels of automatic brightness that makes for smoother brightness transitions and greater eye comfort level. No matter if you are browsing your social media or looking at a beautifully designed page, you will surely want to stare at it.

Though it is not the brightest screen out there, Visibility outdoors is good, thanks to the AMOLED display.

OnePlus Nord Refresh Rate

OnePlus Nord’s display has a high refresh rate of 90Hz. Hence the scrolling is smoother and swiping snappier. Overall everything feels responsive with the 90Hz display.

OnePlus says once you get 90Hz there is no turning back to anything less.

OnePlus Nord Camera Specifications

The OnePlus Nord simply steals the camera from its elder sibling, the OnePlus 8. So the camera works with the same calibre without any compromise.

The Nord is powered by a Hexa Camera setup, 4 Rear Cameras and 2 Dual Front Cameras.

The Nord sports in the rear a :-

• 48 MP Primary Rear Camera with OIS, Aperture: f/ 1.75, Pixel Size – 0.8µm
• 8 MP Ultra Wide Angle, Aperture: f/2.25, FOV- 119⁰
• 2 MP Macro, Aperture: f/2.4

&

• 5 MP Depth sensing, Aperture: f/2.4

The Rear Camera supports Video recording upto [email protected] & [email protected]&30Fps.

Slow Motion video at [email protected] & Time Lapse Video at both 4k & [email protected]

Nord includes a Dual LED flash at the rear.

Other Camera features include CINE aspect ratio video recording, Ultrashot HDR, Nightscape, Super Macro, Portrait, Pro mode, Panorama, AI Scene detection, RAW image & Quick share.

The Dual Selfie Camera in the front come with a:-

32 MP Primary one with EIS, Aperture- f/2.45, Pixel Size – 0.8µm

&

8 MP Ultra Wide Angle, Aperture: f/2.45, FOV- 105⁰

Strange to see that the Front Camera of the Nord supports Video Recording upto [email protected] while the rear is capped at [email protected]

Front Camera also has additional features like Time Lapse, Face Unlock, HDR, Screen Flash & Face retouching.

The Nord comes with built in OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) and EIS (Electronic Image Stabilization). This helps in eliminating handshake/blur during photo and helps in stabilizing the video.

OnePlus Nord Camera Sensors

The Nord’s Primary 48MP Rear Camera comes with a Sony IMX 586 sensor and the Primary 32MP Front Selfie Camera comes with a Sony IMX 616 sensor.

Though the camera sensors included in the Nord is also found in most phones under 20000, they do perform really well.

OnePlus Nord Camera Review

In the outdoor condition the rear camera does perform pretty good. The skin tone is absolutely spot on, the colours do not get oversaturated and rather maintains a balanced profile.

In the portrait/bokeh mode, it also does the job efficiently. The background gets a nice blur and edge detection was done superbly. Detailing is also fairly good in the portrait mode and the skin tone was also balanced.

The Ultra Wide angle rear Camera is pretty impressive too. The colour reproduction was natural, though the ultra wide angle lens lacks on detailing.

Macro Camera though not excellent but is good and considering the 2MP macro resolution, the details captured were good. We could not ask more from that.

What left us spellbound was the HDR mode of the Nord. The Dynamic Range that the Nord provided impressed us a lot. The colours of the sky were clearly distinguishable from the background and details in the shadows was retained well.

In the artificial lighting conditions or during low light, the camera also performed outstandingly. Colours were great and overall the sharpness of the picture was great. Nord, by far has one of the best camera that performs brilliantly in low lighting conditions.

In some scenarios we noticed the colours from the rear camera was a bit oversaturated. This wasn’t happening in most cases but during certain conditions the camera boosted the pictures.

This may be a flaw in the camera firmware and can easily be fixed via an OTA update.

The dual front Selfie cameras also were equally good as the rear one’s. The Colours, Sharpness, Detailing were good both in the indoor and outdoor lighting conditions.

Overall the Hexa cam setup in the OnePlus Nord gets a big Thumbs Up from our side for ticking all the right boxes in the camera department.

OnePlus Nord Performance

The Nord is targeted at the upper mid range segment and hence gets a processor from the same lineup.

The OnePlus Nord  comes with Oxygen OS based on Android 10 & is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G Octa Core processor based on the 7Nm architecture.

The 765G is a future proof chipset as it supports 5G connectivity too. The Nord is ready to take on the future with the 5G band.

OnePlus also assures its users a definite 3 year of software updates and 5 Year of Security updates.

The Nord comes in 3 LPDDR4X RAM variants; 6, 8 & 12Gb Configuration and you can choose one as per your requirements.

Heavy users can always opt for the higher 12Gb RAM variant.

The Nord gets 3 UFS 2.1 Storage options 64, 128 & 256Gb variants. Though we would recommend you to ditch the 6+64Gb variant and opt for the 8+128Gb or the higher 12+256Gb variant, so that you get a balanced performance and have apt storage space.

The Nord gets a Adreno 620 GPU clocked at 750Mhz and hence fairs good in the gaming department.

OnePlusNord Gaming Review

With promising specs, the Nord does not let down the gamers among you. You can play PUBG at the maximum of HD Graphics and High Frame rate setting.

The Vivo X50 that is priced at 50,000 gets the same specifications but plays PUBG in the HDR and Ultra setting. We don’t know why the Nord has been limited to HD only.

PUBG in its highest setting played well in the Nord without any major hiccups, though we could notice slight frame drops here and there.

Asphalt 8 played buttery smooth without any issues of frame lags or drops.

Gaming experience with the Nord was neither excellent nor outstanding but it does fairly good in the gaming department.

OnePlus Nord Fingerprint Technology

The Nord comes with an under display fingerprint scanner and is pretty fast to unlock. Face unlock is fast too.

OnePlus Nord GeekBench Score

Not the best in class score but the Nord managed to get a decent single core score of 613 and multi core score of 1961 in our tests.

OnePlus Nord Battery

The Nord comes backed by a non- removable 4115Mah Powerhouse and should last a day in casual use. However if you are a heavy user or an avid gamer you may need to top it up 2 times a day.

We got an average screen on time of 6hrs on the 90Hz setting and around 7hrs with the 60Hz setting.

OnePlus Nord Charging Time

The Nord comes with Warp Charge 30T (30W charger) and promises a 0-70% charge in just 30 Minutes. In our test it took just 62 Minutes to charge from 0-100%.

The Nord also managed to keep itself cool during heavy use and rapid charging.

Unfortunately despite having a glass back the OnePlus Nord does not support wireless charging.

OnePlus Nord Waterproof Rating

It has become a norm in today’s smartphones to be water resistant but sadly the Nord does not come with any kind of water resistant certification.

So you might have to be a bit careful in the rains or by your swimming pool.

OnePlus Nord Sensors

It was good to see that OnePlus did not drop any sensors in the Nord. You get all sensors like

·  In-display fingerprint sensor

·  Accelerometer

·  Electronic compass

·  Gyroscope

·  Ambient light sensor

·  Proximity sensor

·  Sensor Core

OnePlus Nord Manufacturing

·  Manufacturer: OPPO Mobiles India Private Limited

·  Manufacturer Contact: PLOT-NO.1, SECTOR ECOTECH-VII, GREATER, NOIDA, UTTAR PRADESH, India-201306

·  Country of origin: India

OnePlus may have its origins in china but is locally assembled and manufactured in our country.

OnePlus Nord Offers

You get amazing offers on the OnePlus Nord. You get a flat 2000 discount with American Express Cards and an additional 6 months extended warranty with the Red Cable Club Benefits that comes bundled in the box.

OnePlus Nord Cons

• Base variant gets only 64Gb Storage
• No Micro SD card slot
• NO 3.5MM headphone jack
• Does not support Wireless Charging
• No waterproof rating
• Battery Backup could be better

OnePlus Nord Review/Rating

The Nord is the jack of all trades smartphone in the mid range segment. It ticks all the right boxes in our list from a great design, fluid rich AMOLED display, capable Processor, Amazing Camera & blazing fast Warp Charging.

Though competitors like Redmi K20 pro and Realme X3 provide better specifications they do not offer balanced performance. K20 pro and X3 are for gamers and for everything else the Nord comes out with flying colours.

Besides Redmi and Realme are no match considering the brand value of OnePlus.

Despite the missing features of expandable memory and 3.5mm jack,  we would give the Nord a strong rating of 8.5/10 for the sheer performer it is.

Should you upgrade to the OnePlus Nord ?

Yes, you should consider the Nord a worthy upgrade if you are looking for a notch above the budget segment and if you club it with the American Express offer it simply becomes irresistable . To book your OnePlus Nord click here.

Do let us Know if you have any query regarding the OnePlus Nord or if you would like a comparison with its rivals.