Is the OnePlus Nord 3 the best premium flagship out there?
OnePlus Nord series has been the most popular range of smartphones in the premium mid-range segment and with each iteration, OnePlus brings a lot of improvements. The premium mid-range segment has been very competitive with all smartphone manufacturers launching a bunch of smartphones competing against each other and now finally OnePlus has brought in the 3rd generation of the Nord.
The OnePlus Nord 3 brings some very good upgrades over its predecessor i.e. OnePlus Nord 2 (Review) which in fact was a very well-rounded smartphone that brought some very good specifications like a premium build and design, a powerful MediaTek Dimensity 1200 chipset, a 50MP triple camera setup, a 90Hz AMOLED display, a 4500mAh battery with support for 65W fast charging.
But this year OnePlus has brought in some upgrades in terms of completely newer design, The display now has a 120Hz refresh rate, the Mediatek Dimensity 9000 chipset is at the heart, a 50MP triple camera with a newer sensor on the main camera, the battery is slightly larger at 5000mAh and has support for 80W fast charging. So is the OnePlus Nord 3 worth the upgrade over its predecessor?
Let's find out in the full review.
OnePlus Nord 3 Design:
In terms of build and design, the OnePlus Nord 3 sports a slightly newer design which is a departure from the creation of the OnePlus Nord 2. The OnePlus Nord 3 has a flat back with slight curves around both sides and is not as curved as the back of the OnePlus Nord 2. There is no dedicated camera module present so you get two cameras along with an LED flashlight on the back making it look premium.
The back of the smartphone has a smooth matte finish the Tempest Gray coloured model whereas the Misty Green model has a glossy finish at the back that does catch some fingerprints. The OnePlus Nord 3 weighs around 194 grams making it 4 grams heavier than the OnePlus Nord 2 and is also thicker at 8.1mm. The back of the OnePlus Nord 3 has an IP54 rating making it splash and dust-resistant.
Around the sides, there is a polycarbonate frame instead of the aluminum frame which would have been better. To the right side, there is the power key and just on top of it is the OnePlus's signature alert slider that is used for controlling volumes where you can set it to Ring, Vibrate and Silent. The left side of the smartphone has the volume buttons only.
At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a secondary loudspeaker, a primary microphone and a dual SIM card slot. On the top, the smartphone has an IR Blaster, a primary loudspeaker, and a secondary noise-cancelling microphone only. On the front, the OnePlus Nord 3 has slimmer bezels compared to its predecessor i.e. OnePlus Nord 2.
Overall, the build and design feel premium for daily usage.
OnePlus Nord 3 Display:
The OnePlus Nord 3 sports a 6.7-inches Full HD+(1080x2772 pixels) Fluid AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9. The display is now slightly larger compared to the 6.43-inches display on the OnePlus Nord 2. Also, the bezels are very slimmer making it look premium. There is a single punch-hole camera located on the top at the centre.
Also compared to the 8-bit display of the OnePlus Nord 2, you now get a 10-bit display on the OnePlus Nord 3. The display on the OnePlus Nord 3 has support for a 120Hz refresh rate which is a good upgrade over the 90Hz refresh rate present on the OnePlus Nord 2. The refresh rate is a standard instead of an adaptive one where you have three options to choose from - High, Standard and Auto-Select.
Switching to either the High or Auto-Select option, the display refreshes around 120Hz for most of the applications but some applications like Netflix, Prime Video, etc. refresh around standard 60Hz whereas switching to Standard mode shows a 60Hz refresh rate only. Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, you get 240Hz touch response for faster responses while multitasking.
The display of the OnePlus Nord 3 has punchier colours and excellent viewing angles. Since it has an AMOLED display, there is an optical in-display fingerprint scanner present that works accurately and is faster. Talking about the brightness, the display of the OnePlus Nord 3 can reach a peak brightness of 1450nits which is good but mostly the display brightness hovers somewhere around 500-600nits of brightness.
Under direct sunlight, the display can reach around 1000nits of brightness and has good visibility. There are three different screen colour modes to choose from - Vivid, Natural and Pro mode which further consists of the Cinematic and Brilliant where switching to the Vivid colour provides punchier colours on the display thus covering the DCI-P3 colour gamut space.
There is a Bright Video mode which increases the brightness while playing HDR videos. On the other hand, the Natural mode provides realistic colours with slight off-white tones and covers the sRGB colour space. Similarly, the Brilliant provides deeper blues and blacks and on the other hand, the Cinematic mode provides DCI-P3 gamut scale.
The display of the OnePlus Nord 3 has support for Widevine L1 so you can stream HDR content on OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime, etc. Currently, there is no support for HDR on Netflix but you do have support for HDR10+ on YouTube. Overall, the display on the OnePlus Nord 3 is great for multi-media consumption.
OnePlus Nord 3 Performance:
The OnePlus Nord 3 sports a newer and powerful MediaTek Dimensity 9000 chipset which has a 1x3.05 GHz Cortex-X2 core with 3x2.85GHz Cortex-A710 cores with another 4x1.8GHz Cortex-A510 cores coupled with a powerful Mali-G710 MC10 GPU. This chipset is based on an efficient 4nm process. In terms of all sorts of daily tasks, the smartphone handles all of them very well.
In games like Call Of Duty Mobile, Asphalt 9 Legends, BGMI, etc., the smartphone handles all of the games easily without breaking a sweat. In BGMI, the OnePlus Nord 3 could easily run at HDR graphics with Extreme frame rates and there were no frame drops or stutters noticed playing. In terms of CPU throttling test, the OnePlus Nord 3 reached a sustained performance of around 75-80 per cent with minimal throttling present.
After 3-4 hours of gaming continuously, the back of the smartphone did not feel warmer due to the dedicated liquid cooling system underneath that dissipated heat quite faster. In benchmarks, the scores come out really good. The OnePlus Nord 3 is available in two different storage variants - 8/12GB LPDDR5X RAM with 128/256GB storage variants having UFS 3.1 storage speeds.
In terms of network connectivity, there is support for good carrier aggregation and also support for 9 bands of 5G. Overall, the gaming and performance feel good for usage daily.
OnePlus Nord 3 Software:
The OnePlus Nord 3 runs on the latest OxygenOS 13.1 based on Android 13 out of the box. So you all the OxygenOS 13.1 features like Omoji Library, music applications like O-Relax app, and Zen Space app and now the Gaming Assistant has additional features like Championship mode and music controls. These are minor upgrades over the OxygenOS 13.
As with OxygenOS, you get a lot of customizations where you change icon shape and size, change different colours and fonts, different themes and wallpapers are available, there are different animations present for the fingerprint and Always-On display, etc. The Always-on display also has support for Spotify which shows the current music being played and you can change tracks.
The Zomato application also shows the delivery updates on the Always-On display. The notification panel is simplistic and the user interface does not have any kind of bloatware present. The Android 13 features are present like media controls, a Privacy Dashboard where you can set the permissions for the applications using the camera, microphone and location, etc.
Other features include a Smart Sidebar which shows a list of applications in the form of shortcuts that you can use and also customize when required, flexible windows where you can use two applications simultaneously where you can minimize the application to a floating window and use whenever required. There is also a RAM Expansion feature present where you can increase an extra 4GB of RAM.
In terms of software updates, this time for the first time, OnePlus has improved the software update policy for its Nord series as the OnePlus Nord 3 will be receiving another three years of AndroidOS updates and four years of security patches which is very good compared to the previous software update policy of two years of AndroidOS updates and three years of security patches.
OnePlus Nord 3 Cameras:
The OnePlus Nord 3 sports a triple camera setup that includes a 50MP f/1.8 Sony IMX890 sensor for the primary camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera and a 2MP f/2.4 macro camera. The front camera is of 16MP f/2.4 Sony IMX471 sensor. The main camera is similar one found on the OnePlus 11R.
The images from the primary camera come out with details that look sharper and the dynamic range is good. However, there is some amount of oversharpening taking place but the colours look well-saturated. The level of noise is slightly less in the background. The 2x zoomed images look good as they come out with high contrast, good dynamic range and less noise.
However, the details do look slightly softer but still, these 2x digital zoomed images look great. All the images are saved at 12.5MP by default and you can use the 50MP mode for taking images where there is some amount of noise present but the dynamic range remains good as you get crisper details. The images taken during the night come out with sharper details and good dynamic range.
The noise is less in the background since there is OIS present. The exposure is well maintained and colours look well saturated without any oversharpening. Even the 2x zoomed images have plenty of details, less noise and good dynamic range but all these results were achieved with the Auto Night Mode turned on which is always turned on automatically.
With the Auto Night Mode turned off, the images have good details but there is some amount of noise introduced and the dynamic range is not as wide as the one with the Auto Night Mode turned on but the colours look accurate with no oversaturation. The images from the 8MP ultrawide camera come out with good details that look sharper and have a good dynamic range with less noise in the background.
The colour saturation is slightly dull and at times does look overprocessed though. Around the edges, there is some amount of distortion but you do get a larger 119-degree field of view. At night, the ultrawide camera takes some very good images with sharper details, good dynamic range and colour look saturated with less noise in the background.
Just like the primary camera, the ultrawide camera also gets Auto Night Mode which triggers automatically and without the Night Mode, the images have adequate dynamic range and good contrast though the details look slightly softer. The macro camera is just a fixed focus one so as a result, the details look softer, the dynamic range is poor, the colours look washed out, and there is a lot of noise present.
In terms of portraits, the main camera does a good job as with humans, the skin tones look natural and have good contrast and dynamic range. The edge detection is very well implemented and the background blur is perfect with not too much blowing away highlights in the background. These portraits have less noise and colour saturation is perfect.
On the front, the 16MP camera does a good job in terms of selfies. The selfies come out with good dynamic range and contrast with sharper details and less noise in the background. The selfies are shot at 4MP by default with natural-looking skin tones. Also in terms of portraits, the selfies have good edge detection and a proper amount of background blur with good dynamic range and less noise in the background.
In terms of videos, the primary camera can record 4K videos at 30fps and the videos have good dynamic range and details look sharper with almost less noise present in the background. The colours look natural and even in low-light scenarios, the videos have sharper details and good dynamic range with almost no noise present as the OIS is present and the Auto Night Mode is triggered automatically.
The primary camera can also record 1080p videos at 30fps and 60fps where the EIS along with OIS works perfectly and the videos come out with sharper details and good dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours come out realistic and the videos have good contrast.
The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with good details but the dynamic range is average and there is some amount of noise present in the background. However, colours look well saturated without any oversharpening. The videos from the front camera come out with good dynamic range and details look sharper with less noise but still the videos can be recorded at 1080p at 30fps as there is no support for 4K.
OnePlus Nord 3 Battery Life:
The OnePlus Nord 3 sports a larger 5000mAh battery which is 500mAh more in capacity compared to the OnePlus Nord 2. With the newer MediaTek Dimensity 9000 chipset based on a 4nm process and OxygenOS 13.1 optimizations, you get great battery life as with normal usage that includes casual web browsing, streaming social media, playing games for a few hours, etc. the smartphone easily lasts for two days.
With heavy usage that includes playing games like Call Of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc., rendering videos, taking images and recording videos using the camera, attending calls continuously for longer hours, etc., the smartphone easily lasts for a single day with some charge left with the display set to 120Hz. The standard screen-on time with normal usage was around 6-7 hours which is good.
With heavy usage, the standard screen-on time was around 4-5 hours which is great considering the size of the battery. The OnePlus Nord 3 is bundled with a faster 80W SuperVOOC charger which was also seen on the OnePlus Nord 2T (Review). This charger takes around 35-40 minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent which is very fast. Overall, the battery life and charging speeds are better than its predecessor.
OnePlus Nord 3 Audio Quality:
The OnePlus Nord 3 sports a dual stereo speaker setup with the sound coming out 60:40 from the top speaker and the bottom speaker. The audio output is clear and even at the highest volume settings, the sound does not feel distorted or muffled. There is also support for Dolby Atmos for enhanced sound output. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack present.
Verdict:
Overall, the OnePlus Nord 3 is a very strong and well-packaged smartphone that gets all things almost right as it provides a premium build and design, a great 120Hz AMOLED display with stereo speakers for multi-media consumption, a powerful MediaTek Dimensity 9000 chipset for daily performance and gaming, good set of cameras, good battery life with faster charging.
The icing on the cake has been the software experience which is by far one of the best as OxygenOS is feature-packed and does not come with any sort of bloatware. Also, the software update cycle has been refresh on this smartphone which is really great. However, there are some minor improvements needed as the CPU does throttle at times while doing heavy tasks and it does need some optimizations in games.
The selfie camera and ultrawide performance could have been better and also support for 4K recording on both could have been better. Other than these two reasons, the OnePlus Nord 3 is a complete all-rounder that will definitely fit all the requirements of buying a premium mid-range smartphone as it builds upon the trust of OnePlus by providing a very solid package and with all the smaller improvements, we think it is worth the upgrade over its predecessor thus making it worth buying.
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