Is the OnePlus Nord CE the best affordable OnePlus device?
OnePlus Nord has been one of the most hyped and popular smartphones since its launch. It was a great premium mid-range smartphone that had almost all the specifications of a flagship at an affordable price. This year with the OnePlus 9 series, the company has significantly increased the prices and there was no cheaper OnePlus smartphone other than the OnePlus Nord and the OnePlus 9R (Review).
Now OnePlus has finally heard the consumers and has entered into the mid-range segment by crafting out the OnePlus Nord CE where CE stands for Core Edition. This OnePlus Nord CE is priced slightly lesser compared to the OnePlus Nord and offers good value. However, it does come with certain compromises but the base variant of it now ships with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage instead of 64GB storage on the OnePlus Nord (Review).
The OnePlus Nord CE packs in some good features which were already present in the OnePlus Nord which includes a 90Hz AMOLED display, the slick and smooth software experience in the form of OxygenOS, and faster 30W Warp charging. Is the OnePlus Nord CE worth buying or should you spend some extra and go for the OnePlus Nord? Let's find out in the full review.
OnePlus Nord CE Design:
In terms of design, the OnePlus Nord CE looks almost the same as the OnePlus Nord except that the back has a triple camera setup instead of the quad-camera setup found on the OnePlus Nord. Since this is the cheapest OnePlus smartphone, the back is made up of polycarbonate instead of glass used on the OnePlus Nord. Even the back has a smooth matte finish instead of the glossy finish on the OnePlus Nord.
This ensures fewer fingerprints and smudges. The back does change some colors especially if you consider the Blue Void color as there are some hues of purple and green when light strikes at different angles. Other color options include Charcoal Black and Silver Ray. The base variant is only present in the Charcoal Black color.
The OnePlus Nord has Gorilla Glass 5 both on the front as well as the back but here on the front, OnePlus has gone for DragonTrail Glass for protection which is a cross-cutting done. The front of the OnePlus Nord CE has a single punch-hole camera instead of two on the OnePlus Nord.
Like the OnePlus Nord, the OnePlus Nord CE also has a plastic frame that houses the dual SIM card tray and the volume buttons on the left side, whereas the power button is located on the right side. However, it does miss out on the alert slider which has been the signature feature of OnePlus smartphones so sound profiles need to be managed manually.
At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a primary microphone, loudspeaker grill, and thankfully, there is a 3.5mm headphone jack which was a big miss since the OnePlus 6 in 2018. The top houses the primary microphone and there is no microSD card slot for storage expansion. The back has P2i coating though and since the back is made up of polycarbonate, the smartphone weighs 170 grams only.
This makes it lighter to hold and the matte finish gives it a good grip while holding it in hands. It is also 7.9mm thick around the sides making it slightly slimmer than the OnePlus Nord. Overall, the build and design are just average considering other competitors from Xiaomi, Realme, etc. are providing glass backs and the most significant miss of the alert slider is a bit of a letdown.
OnePlus Nord CE Display:
The OnePlus Nord CE houses a similar display as the OnePlus Nord i.e. 6.43-inches Full HD+(1080x2400 pixels) Fluid AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9. And since this is an AMOLED panel, you get good color reproduction and the viewing angles are great. There were some green tint issues noticed on the OnePlus Nord but here there is no issue as such.
On the front, there are minimum bezels to the sides whereas the top and the bottom have slightly thicker bezels. Like the OnePlus Nord, this display also supports a 90Hz refresh rate which makes scrolling through webpages, playing games, and also provides a faster touch response. You do also have a standard 60Hz option and switching to it brings in better battery life.
Talking about the brightness, the OnePlus Nord can only go up to 607nits which is its peak brightness where you switch it to the Auto-brightness mode under direct sunlight. This is not the brightest as some other smartphones such as the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max (Review), Realme 8 Pro (Review) which can achieve around 1000nits of peak brightness. Still, the legibility of the display is good under direct sunlight.
There are different color temperatures to choose from which include Vivid, Natural, and Advanced wherein Advanced there are three different color modes that include sRGB, Display P3, and AMOLED wide gamut screen color modes. This display also supports HRD10 content and has support for Widevine L1, so steaming HD contents from OTT platforms is a hassle.
And since this is an AMOLED display, there is an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that is fast and accurate. The face unlocks work faster also. Overall, the display feels good considering this is an AMOLED panel which is great for media consumption but if there could have been Gorilla Glass protection it would have been much better.
OnePlus Nord CE Performance:
The OnePlus Nord CE is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G chipset which is a good mid-range chipset and we have seen this chipset in smartphones like the Galaxy M42 5G, Xiaomi Mi 10i, etc. This chipset is slightly less powerful compared to the Snapdragon 765G chipset used on the OnePlus Nord but if you compare both, definitely, the OnePlus Nord is slightly better.
The Snapdragon 750G chipset has 2x2.2 GHz Kryo 570 (Cortex-A77) cores and another 6x1.8 GHz Kryo 570 (Cortex-A55) cores built on an 8nm process and is coupled with Adreno 619 GPU. All tasks like scrolling through webpages, multitasking between applications, playing games felt smoother but there were some UI stutters noticed most of the time.
In terms of gaming, all heavy games like Call Of Duty Mobile, Asphalt 9 Legends, etc. ran well at the high frame rate settings but there were slight lags and frame drops noticed while pushing the game hard. Genshin Impact had some very noticeable lags and all these games take a longer time to load. This smartphone also supports 5G but in India, we get only the N78 band of 5G.
Other countries like the USA and Europe get multiple 5G bands. The OnePlus Nord CE is available in three configurations which include 6GB/8GB LPDDR4X RAM with 128GB storage and another 12GB RAM with 256GB storage and the storage speeds are UFS 2.1 on all models. There is no support for microSD cards but still, the base model having 128GB storage is quite adequate for usage.
In terms of benchmarks, the smartphone scored around 641 and 1812 in single and multi-core tests and 291003 in Antutu v8 which are some good scores. But still, if you want better performance and gaming, then you can consider the POCO X3 Pro (Review) which ships with a Snapdragon 860 chipset and is priced lesser compared to the OnePlus Nord CE. But still, the performance and gaming are good on the smartphone.
OnePlus Nord CE Software:
The biggest strength of any OnePlus smartphone is the software experience which comes in the form of OxygenOS. As a result, there are no ads present, no unnecessary notifications, and no third-party applications pre-installed except Netflix. The user interface looks cleaner and has a more OneUI look as seen on Samsung smartphones.
With the latest OxygenOS 11 and Android 11 out of the box, the OnePlus Nord CE is having the latest June security patch. OxygenOS provides a tone of customizations ranging from icon look and color, animations for fingerprint unlocking, multiple colors for horizon light (the sides of the display lights up when a notification arrives), and different ambient display clock style looks.
Some other features include Zen mode which when enabled refreshes the mind with soothing music, OnePlus's enhanced GameTurbo application for enhanced gameplay, and other handy features like a quick reply in the landscape mode, App locker, Parallel apps, etc. Other features are a system-wide dark mode, Digital Wellbeing and since it has Android 11, every conversation is in the form of bubbles.
In terms of software updates, the OnePlus has not been so good but still for this smartphone, they will provide another 2 years of Android updates and 3 years of security patches. Still, it is behind Samsung which provides 3 years of Android OS updates and 4 years of security updates for its mid-range and premium smartphones. Still, the overall software experience remains excellent in class.
OnePlus Nord CE Cameras:
When it comes to cameras, the OnePlus has not been so great but this year some things have improved with the Hasselblad partnership as seen on the OnePlus 9 (Review) and the 9 Pro (Review). With the OnePlus Nord, we had good cameras as the 48MP main camera has OIS, and also on the front, we have dual selfie cameras. But with the OnePlus Nord CE, there have been certain compromises to keep costs low.
The OnePlus Nord CE has a triple camera setup that includes a 64MP f/1.8 OmniVision sensor for the main camera, an 8MP f/2.3 ultrawide camera, and a 2MP depth camera useful for portraits. On the front, there is a single 16MP f/2.5 camera which is a downgrade from the 32+8MP camera on the OnePlus Nord. The camera hump is not protruded much like the OnePlus Nord that a slight hump.
The images from the main camera come out with good details as it shoots default at 16MP but the subjects do not look much sharper. The dynamic range is good but there is a lot of oversharpening noticed and the colors do not look accurate. The noise is quite present and when you switch to the 64MP resolution, the details are better but there is a lot of noise present.
At night, the images do have softer details and the dynamic range is average here. The colors look slightly oversharpened and there is a lot of noise present. The highlights in shadows are crushed and the dedicated Night Mode does restore some details and also improves the dynamic range. The images look more contrasty and the noise is reduced by a very little margin as the lack of OIS hurts.
Without Night Mode:
With Night Mode:
The 8MP ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details and dynamic range. The 119-degree field of view ensures wider aperture images but there is a lot of noise and the around the edges there is a lot of distortion. The details do look softer when you zoom in and the colors look oversaturated and are not as good as the main camera.
At night, the images have decent details and dynamic range. There is a lot of noise in the images lack focus also. The dedicated Night Mode does restore some highlights and the dynamic range does improve by a little margin. In some areas, there is increased contrast and oversaturated colors. The highlights in shadows also seem to be improved.
There is a 2MP monochrome camera that takes images in black and white color. The images have good details and dynamic range but instead of this OnePlus could have provided a macro camera for close-up images. In terms of portraits, the images have good edge detection but the dynamic range is not so good. The skin tones look slightly oversaturated and the bokeh effect needs some improvement.
On the front, the 16MP camera may be downgraded from the 32MP camera on the OnePlus Nord but still has good details and dynamic range. The skin tones look natural with very little noise present in the background. Even at the night, there is a dedicated Night Mode for selfies that come out good. The portrait selfies have good dynamic range and edge detection but look slightly oversharpened.
In terms of videos, the OnePlus Nord CE can record 4K videos at 30fps which is the highest and the video footage has good details and dynamic range. There is a lot of noise in the videos as it does not have OIS, but for more stabilized footage, you can switch over to 1080p at 30/60fps where EIS kicks in thus resulting in stabilized videos with good color reproduction and better dynamic range.
The front camera can record videos up to 1080p at 60fps which is a slight disappointment as the OnePlus Nord can record 4K videos at 60fps from the front camera. The videos have a good dynamic range, but colors do look slightly oversaturated and the dynamic range is also good. The videos taken at night do have some noise and the details are not sharp but the noise well under control.
OnePlus Nord CE Battery Life:
The battery on the OnePlus Nord CE is an impressive 4500mAh compared to the 4115mAh battery on the OnePlus Nord. With normal usage and the display set to 90Hz, the smartphone can easily last for two days and if you are a moderate user, then the smartphone can easily last for one and half days. With heavy usage that includes gaming for 3-4 hours, watching videos, etc. the smartphone easily lasted one day.
With the ambient display turned off, you could achieve better screen-on time figures and with normal usage, we got a standard screen-on time for 6-7 hours. OnePlus has a feature called Optimized charging which enables a healthy battery life by optimizing the charging cycle and enables efficient charging of the battery during the night.
The OnePlus Nord CE has support for 30W Warp Charge 30T Plus which can charge the smartphone from 0 to 70 percent within 30 minutes. In our tests, the 30W fast charger took around 65 minutes from 0 to 100 percent and the first half an hour took the smartphone from 0 to 60 percent. So in terms of battery life, the OnePlus Nord CE is a good package and an improvement over the OnePlus Nord.
OnePlus Nord CE Audio Quality:
Like the OnePlus Nord, the OnePlus Nord CE gets a single speaker at the bottom which is adequately loud and clear. At the highest volume settings, there was some distortion present. Even while you hold the smartphone in a landscape position, the speaker is blocked and the sound feels muffled. OnePlus could have provided a stereo speaker setup which sounds much better on other smartphones.
Thankfully, the OnePlus Nord CE has a 3.5mm headphone jack and the sound output through it is really good as there is Dolby Atmos for enhanced sound and Dirac Audio Tuner is present which provides scenarios for audio that includes Dynamic, Movie, and Music. The call quality was good over 4G but the haptics needs some improvement.
Verdict:
The OnePlus Nord CE proves to be a good budget smartphone from OnePlus with all the basics right. However, it does feel short in most areas but the thing that really makes it stand out from the crowd is the OxygenOS which is feature-rich, has no ads or bloatware, and provides almost a Stock Android-like experience.
The areas where the smartphone excels are in terms of the display as you are getting a 90Hz AMOLED display, good performance and gaming, and great battery life with fast charging. And talking about the software experience, OxygenOS is its biggest strength, but still, in terms of software updates, it is not as good as Samsung smartphones. Plus it also has a 3.5mm headphone jack for streaming music.
Though OnePlus has built a good mid-range smartphone, there are a lot of compromises. The build and design are made up of polycarbonate and no Gorilla Glass protection compared to last year's OnePlus Nord that had a glass back. Talking about cameras, they are good but still many of its competitors like the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max and the iQOO Z3 come with better 108/64MP cameras.
The performance is good and there is support for 5G but when you consider gaming, then it would handle all games with ease but still, it is not a gaming smartphone. The audio quality is not so good as there is a single speaker present and the smartphone lacks an alert slider which is the biggest letdown if you have been using a OnePlus smartphone.
So to sum it up, the OnePlus Nord CE is targeted at consumers who want a budget OnePlus smartphone which gets the basics right with a decent build and design, a good display for media consumption and playing games, a decent performance, and the most important of a smooth and slick software experience in the form of OxygenOS. This is the most affordable OnePlus smartphone right now.
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