A few nifty upgrades over its predecessor provide more value!!
OnePlus Nord series is one of the most popular segments for OnePlus as it creates a huge chunk of brand sales. Its two different series cater to two distinct segments. One of them is the Nord CE segment which aims to provide a well-balanced smartphone but there are a few omissions to make it separate compared to its flagship number or the regular Nord series.
However, OnePlus has changed things, as it is almost closing the gap between the regular Nord series and the Nord CE series. This year, OnePlus has released its fourth offering in the CE series, the OnePlus Nord CE 4, which seems to be a good deal in the mid-range segment. It also brings some noticeable upgrades over its predecessor, OnePlus Nord CE 3 (Review).
Just like the OnePlus Nord CE 3 was a big upgrade over its predecessor, the OnePlus Nord CE 4 follows a similar direction. But considering the mid-range segment has grown so huge, there are other smartphones from different brands that can provide cutthroat competition to the OnePlus Nord CE 4. So, is the OnePlus Nord CE 4 worth considering in the mid-range segment, and is it worth the upgrade?
Let's find out in the full review.
OnePlus Nord CE 4 Design:
The OnePlus Nord CE 4 brings a slightly newer design compared to its predecessor where at the back the camera module is a capsule shaped that houses two cameras vertically with an LED flashlight below the cameras inside the module. This resembles close to the original OnePlus Nord CE and looks very different compared to its predecessor.
The camera module is slightly raised which does reflect the marble design on the back. The OnePlus Nord CE 4 is available in two different colours - Celadon Marble and Dark Chrome. The back is made of polycarbonate with a marble pattern on the back if you consider the Celadon Marble variant. But if you consider the Dark Chrome, the back has a shiny gradient look to it.
Both the variants are glossy and do catch a lot of fingerprints. At the back the edges are curved and the sides are flat which makes it easier to hold in hands. OnePlus has also provided an IP54 rating which does make it splash and dust resistant up to some extent. The smartphone weighs around 186 grams which feels lighter while holding in hand and is thicker at 8.4mm around the sides.
Around the sides, there is a polycarbonate frame that houses the power button with a set of volume buttons on the right side whereas the left side remains completely clean. Like all OnePlus Nord CE series, there is no signature alert slider which is disappointing considering it's a OnePlus smartphone. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a primary microphone, and a dual SIM card slot.
The dual SIM card slot is hybrid. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack. On the top, there is a secondary noise-cancelling microphone, a secondary speaker outlet, and an IR Blaster that controls various devices' functionality. On the front, there is a punch hole located on the top to the centre with minimum bezels around the display. The display is flatter to the sides.
Overall, the design looks good but the polycarbonate build and the absence of an alert slider do let it down considering other smartphones in this segment that come with a premium glass back.
OnePlus Nord CE 4 Display:
The OnePlus Nord CE 4 houses a larger 6.7-inches Full HD+(1080x2412 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9. The display is a 10-bit one and provides great colour reproduction with deep blues and blacks and also has good viewing angles. Just like its predecessor this display also has support for 120Hz refresh rate which makes things feel smoother in the display while multi-tasking.
Talking about the refresh rate, there are three different settings to choose from - Auto Select, Standard, and High. Choosing the Auto-Select mode lets the display refresh at different levels - 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz, or 120Hz depending on the content in the display whereas selecting the High mode refreshes the display at 120Hz for almost all applications but still applications like Netflix and YouTube are capped at 60Hz.
If you set the display at Standard, the display refreshes at 60Hz only which is good for longer battery life. Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, you get a 240Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses. In terms of display brightness, the OnePlus Nord CE 3 display can reach a peak brightness of 1100nits which is a slight improvement over its predecessor.
Under direct sunlight, the display has good visibility and in high brightness mode, the display brightness hovers around 900nits of brightness. However, the display does show a dip in brightness outdoors where most of the time the display is visible only when the brightness is turned to full. There is also a setting where the display brightness increases while viewing the content in HDR on the smartphone.
The display has two different modes to choose from - Vivid and Natural where setting the display to Natural provides slightly off-tone colours that look almost natural and cover the sRGB colour space whereas the Vivid mode provides punchier colours in the display thus covering the DCI-P3 gamut. Other than that, the display has an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that works accurately and is faster.
In terms of protection, the OnePlus Nord CE 4 comes with panda-reinforced glass for protection instead of any Gorilla Glass. The display of the OnePlus Nord CE 4 has support for HDR on YouTube and also there is Widevine L1 so that you can stream HDR content on OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime, etc. Currently, it is good to see the smartphone supporting HDR on Netflix.
Just like its elder siblings, there is the Aqua Touch technology which allows using the smartphone when there are some spashes of water on the display or during the rain. However, the 4K video playback on YouTube does stutter quite a bit which is very disappointing still the display is great for multi-media consumption except for some things that need to be fixed with a software update.
OnePlus Nord CE 4 Performance:
The OnePlus Nord CE 4 sports a newer and powerful Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset which has an octa-core chipset that includes a 1x2.63GHz Cortex-A715 core with 4x2.4 GHz Cortex-A715 cores and another 3x1.8 GHz Cortex-A510 cores coupled with an Adreno 720 GPU as it is based on a 4nm process. This chipset is a good upgrade over last year's Snapdragon 782G chipset on the OnePlus Nord CE 3.
In terms of all activities whether it is scrolling through web pages, playing games, streaming social media, rendering benchmarks, etc. the smartphone handles all of these activities easily without breaking a sweat except for a few stutters noticed while playing 4K videos on YouTube or any OTT platform. There have been a few animation stutters while opening a few applications in the user interface.
However, when it comes to gaming, currently in BGMI, the smartphone could easily run at Smooth graphics with Extreme frame rates but there was no option for 90fps which is disappointing. The gameplay was good with the graphics set to HDR and frame rates to HDR. While playing games like BGMI, Call Of Duty Mobile, etc. for longer hours, there were some frame drops noticed especially in HDR graphics.
In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone could achieve a sustained performance of around 80-85 per cent with minimal throttling noticed. However, the back does not get warmer after longer hours of gaming i.e. 3-4 hours which is really good as the vapor chamber does help in dissipating heat faster. In terms of benchmarks, the scores came out well but still not as high as other competitors like the POCO X6 Pro (Review).
In terms of network connectivity, there is support for good carrier aggregation and around 7 bands of 5G support. The OnePlus Nord CE 4 is available in two different variants - 8GB LPDDR4X RAM with 128/256GB storage both of which have UFS 3.1 storage speeds. Overall, the performance is good but it is not the best smartphone for gaming in this segment and OnePlus needs to optimize especially while playing 4K videos.
OnePlus Nord CE 4 Software:
The OnePlus Nord CE 4 runs on the latest OxygenOS 14 which is based on Android 14 out of the box. So you get a lot of customizations where you can change the icon shape, size, and colour. The Always-On display has various styles to choose from and also there are different animations for the fingerprint scanner. With OxygenOS 14, there is a new AOD Called Go Green AOD that shows the carbon footprint on our planet.
Other than that, there are quite some handy features like Smart Sidebar where you can keep a bunch of favourite applications and can access them by either swiping from left or right according to where you have placed the bar, then there is a Smart Cutout feature in the gallery which works well when you long press a subject and in an image and can share it across different platforms/ applications in the UI.
Like the Dynamic Island in iPhones, OnePlus has its own application called Fluid Cloud, which shows notifications within the punch-hole. There is also a File Dock feature, which works for quick access to recent or frequently used applications/files. In the gallery application, there is a feature called Auto Pixelate 2.0 which works in cases where you need to send sensitive information and it automatically hides the sensitive contents.
Since it is a OnePlus smartphone, one can expect no bloatware but OnePlus includes a few third-party applications which is slightly disappointing considering its clean software experience. In terms of software updates, the OnePlus Nord CE 4 will receive another two years of AndroidOS updates and three years of security patches which is good but still not the best in class.
OnePlus Nord CE 4 Cameras:
The OnePlus Nord CE 4 houses a dual camera setup with a 50MP f/1.8 Sony LYT600 sensor for the primary camera and an 8MP f/2.2 Sony IMX355 sensor for the ultrawide camera. There is no 2MP dedicated macro camera as on its predecessor i.e. OnePlus Nord CE 3. On the front, there is a 16MP f/2.4 camera for selfies.
This camera setup is slightly different from its predecessor, the OnePlus Nord CE 3, which came with an identical 50MP f/1.8 camera but a Sony IMX890 sensor. The primary camera does a good job of details that look sharper and have great dynamic range. The colours look natural without oversharpening, and the white balance is handled very well.
The images taken in 50MP mode come out with sharper details and good dynamic range but there is some amount of noise present as the images do crop in a bit but do provide saturated colours without any oversharpening. At 2x digital zoom, the images have a good level of detail and colours look great with slightly narrower dynamic range.
At night, the primary camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper but there is some amount of noise present in the background and the colours look slightly washed out. The exposure is well handled in low-light scenarios and the dynamic range is wider but the details in shadows look crushed out. With the Night Mode, things do improve a bit but it tends to apply some oversharpening.
The 2x digital zoom images look good with sharper details but do introduce some noise in the background. The 8MP ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper with a good dynamic range that is wider and the colours look saturated without any oversharpening. There is some amount of distortion around the edges and very little noise is present in the background.
Similarly, at night, the ultrawide camera struggles in terms of details that look softer but still, the dynamic range comes out good. The colours look good but could have been brighter. OnePlus could have provided a dedicated Night Mode here. There is no dedicated third camera which is good as OnePlus has discarded the not so useful macro camera usually found on many smartphones around.
In terms of portraits, the primary camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper and have a good dynamic range. The edge detection is perfect for any subject placed in the background and the background blur is also well-tuned resulting in some great portraits. Even the noise is almost barely present in the portraits. But while taking an image with HDR mode, the skin tones do brighten up more.
On the front, the 16MP selfie camera works well for human subjects resulting in natural-looking skin tones and a good dynamic range which is wider. There is a fair bit of noise in the background which is not much of a problem. The exposure is handled well and the white balance is near to perfect. The portrait selfies look great with proper edge detection and background blur.
In terms of videos, the primary camera of the OnePlus Nord CE 4 can record 4k videos at 30fps as there is no option for 60fps support. The videos come out with sharper details, have great dynamic range, and colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening in the background but there is a lot of distortion and a slight amount of noise present as it lacks OIS.
However, you can switch to 1080p video recording at 60fps which results in great details and dynamic range with almost no noise in the background since the Ultra Steady Mode kicks in for better results. The ultrawide camera can only record 1080p videos at 30fps resulting in sharper details and good dynamic range with less noise in the background.
On the front, the selfie camera can record 1080p videos at 30fps as there is no support for 4K video recording. The 1080p videos from the selfie camera come out with good dynamic range and sharper details with slight oversharpening present in the background.
OnePlus Nord CE 4 Battery Life:
The OnePlus Nord CE 4 sports a larger 5500mAh battery which is slightly larger in capacity compared to its predecessor i.e. OnePlus Nord CE 3 which has a 5000mAh battery. In terms of normal usage which includes streaming social media, browsing webpages, attending phone calls, casually gaming, etc. the smartphone easily lasted for two days with some battery left.
The standard screen-on time with normal usage came around 7-7.5 hours which is really good. With heavy usage that includes playing games like Call Of Duty Mobile or BGMI for 3-4 hours continuously, rendering videos, etc. the smartphone easily lasted for one day and a half which is excellent since the chipset is based on a 4nm process and you get great optimizations for battery life with OxygenOS 14.
With heavy usage, the standard screen-on time came around 4-4.5 hours which is great. In terms of charging, the smartphone is equipped with a 100W SuperVOOC charger which takes around 30-35 minutes to charge from 0 to 100 per cent completely. With each generation of the OnePlus Nord CE series, the battery life is getting better and it is no different here.
OnePlus Nord CE 4 Audio Quality:
The OnePlus Nord CE 4 sports a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds adequately louder and has a good level of bass and treble. The sound does not feel muffled at the highest volume level. The sound output comes out slightly louder on the bottom-firing speaker compared to the earpiece at the top. There is support for Dolby Atmos for enhanced sound output. You do miss out on the 3.5mm headphone jack.
Verdict:
The OnePlus Nord CE 4 is a great mid-range smartphone that provides the right balance of specifications which includes a good-looking design, a good display along with stereo speakers for multi-media consumption, good performance in daily activities, a decent camera experience, solid battery life along with faster charging. The big icing on the cake has to be the cleaner software experience.
When compared to its predecessor i.e. OnePlus Nord CE 3, the design is newer, the performance is slightly better, the battery life is better with faster charging, the camera experience has been improved, and the display brightness has been increased which does look like a decent upgrade but there are few areas where it has its own shortcomings that could or need to be addressed.
When it comes to build, it is still polycarbonate instead of a glass back, though the performance is good and the smartphone handles everything smoothly it struggles in terms of the gaming experience when you compare it with the POCO X6 Pro which provides superior gaming performance. The camera performance in low light from both cameras needs a few improvements.
Though OxygenOS provides a cleaner software experience, here still there are very few third-party applications present that OnePlus should avoid providing to maintain its reputation in the market. Even the software update cycle policy could have been better as brands like Samsung offer a longer software update cycle for their smartphones in the mid-range segment.
So as an overall product, the OnePlus Nord CE 4 definitely strikes the right balance for a proper mid-range smartphone though it comes with its own set of shortcomings. The OnePlus Nord CE 4 can be a good deal if you're willing to sacrifice the gaming experience and premium design, especially considering that other specifications, such as great battery life and smooth software experience, are in check.
0 Comments
Please do not enter any spam link in the comment box