Table of Contents
Build Quality
When you take this phone in your hand you will see that one thing catches your eye the most is this blue marble color which looks stunning, unless you are going to hide it with a hard case.
But OnePlus gives you this clear case in the box which is of good quality and it actually protects your phone very well.
The back is made out of corning gorilla glass 5 and the frame is made up of plastic but the buttons are of metal.
And the one thing that you will notice that it is light and the weight distribution on this device is done very well.
The vibration motor provided in this device is average and it has a dual sim card slot at the bottom and has this rubber sealing which means that it can protect your device in mild water or dust. How ever we don’t see any official IP rating from OnePlus.
It also features a mono speaker at the bottom and they sound just fine, when I compared it with the OnePlus 5, I noticed that the speakers on the Nord lacks a bit in terms of quality of the sound.
One important port which is missing in this phone is the headphone jack so you have to spend extra to get Bluetooth earphones. I think OnePlus should have provided the headphone jack as they are trying to target the budget segment but at the same time, it makes sense when you see that the new truly wireless OnePlus buds were also launched alongside the Nord.
Display
Moving on to the display, It has a 1080p 6.44-inch AMOLED screen which is made up of gorilla glass 5. It has rounded corners and the colors look vibrant and the screen gets bright enough. You can easily use it indoors as well as outdoors.
It has 90Hz refresh rate screen and you will notice it when using the phone, every thing appears a bit smoother and to show you the difference we have compared it with a regular 60Hz screen and in slow motion you can clearly see the difference. You can also turn off the 90 Hz option, if you want to save some battery power and set it to 60Hz.
Oneplus Nord has an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that is fast and works every time accurately.
Cameras
Now Let’s talk about the cameras on this device.
At the back it features a quad-camera setup.
It has a 8 mp ultrawide camera which has three different modes. The normal mode, the 2x mode and the ultra wide mode. And here you can see the difference between the ultra wide and the regular mode.
Then there is the 48 Mp main shooter with OIS which oneplus claims is taken from the Oneplus 8 which is actually not the case here.
It also has a 2 mp macro sensor which we will talk about later but first let us look at the portrait mode. It has a 5 mp depth sensor so I thought the portrait mode will work well but that is not the case, as you can see the edge detection is poor and it is the case with other images also. I think if oneplus improves this with a software upgrade then it would better but as of now, the portrait mode does not work that well.
Now lets, talk about the 2MP macro camera, these are some of the sample shots and I don’t think it adds something to the device because you can take much detailed shots with the 48Mp camera and just zoom it in.
Now let’s talk about the 2 cameras that you will be using the most.
Here are the sample shots.
The 48 mp camera takes more detailed shots than the 8MP sensor and the photos from the wide angle camera can feel a bit softer but it offer better dynamic range.
Here are some the night shots and the nightscape mode on the phone works well but of course lacks a lot of detail.
Here is a 4k 30fps video sample and ois works well, for comparison we have the oneplus 5 here.
You can see all these images and videos uncompressed in full resolution that we took from the oneplus nord on our website, Stuffboxtech.com.
What I feel about the cameras is that it can take great images outdoors or when It has an ample amount of light but it really struggles a lot when it comes to indoor or low light photography, you can see a lot of noise in the photos. Oneplus has advertised this camera setup as a flagship camera setup, but that’s not the case. It has a good dual camera setup but it definitely does not have a good quad camera setup. Overall it has great cameras but it won’t amaze you.
Talking about the front cameras, it has a 32 mp front camera and a 8MP ultrawide camera which is good to see and both the cameras take good images and won’t disappoint you at all.
Performance
The oneplus nord is powered by Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 765G 5G chipset coupled with adreno 620. Which I think is very well optimised for the phone.
It comes with 3 different ram variants 6,8 and 12GB. The one I am having is the 8GB variant with 128 Gb of storage.
And the ram management on the device is very well.
A major reason why people love the one plus phones is the software experience that they get and you are going to get the same oxygen os experience on top of the andoid 10.
And I think the UI and the software is a big plus point for the Oneplus Nord.
In day to day tasks, you won’t really notice any lag at all even if you have multiple applications open at the same time the device feels really snappy.
Now when It comes to gaming, the oneplus nord handles it very well but if you are buying a phone for gaming only then I would not recommend the nord because you can get better performance for the same price in the market. We will be making a separate video for gaming on the oneplus nord so stay tuned for that. That being said if you are not that fanatic about high graphic gaming on your phone then the oneplus nord won’t disappoint you in terms of performance.
Battery
Now let’s talk about the battery backup on this device. It has a 4115mAh battery coupled with 30W fast charging that I have to say works really well.
The phone will easily last you a day and for me even more than a day which is very impressive to see. It takes about 60 minutes to charge it from zero to hundred. As it does not have a bulky 6000mAh battery that makes this phone slimmer and lighter and coupled with fast charging you won’t need any thing more.
Conclusion
Now to conclude this review, would say that the Oneplus Nord is a great deal and I would recommend it as it has great design, display, performance and software experience the only down sides to this phone is the cameras in low light conditions and not having a headphone jack.
Thank you very much for reading this article if I missed out on any point or if you have any queries, comment down below.
OnePlus Nord discounts and best price: https://amzn.to/2CuLJbR
Watch our review on Youtube