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OnePlus
LifestyleGadgets

Review | OnePlus Nord review: flagship smartphone features at a mid-range price, with great main cameras

  • The OnePlus Nord looks and behaves like the Chinese brand’s flagship OnePlus 8 Pro, but sells for less than half the price
  • It has two amazing main cameras, and four that are below par, and a few minor compromises on hardware

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Why you can trust SCMP
The OnePlus Nord is the Chinese phone maker’s latest mid-range phone. It offers 90 per cent of flagship performance at less than half the price. Photo: Ben Sin. Photo: Ben Sin
Ben Sin

Despite its “Never Settle” brand slogan, the reality of early OnePlus phones was that they did, in fact, settle. But it was a formula that worked, and one that fans, well, settled for: top specs for an affordable price.

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But then OnePlus grew in ambition and scale, and from last year’s OnePlus 7 Pro to this year’s 8 Pro, one could make a strong argument that OnePlus phones were offering more power and performance than even the most expensive Samsung.
With that push to the top came a bigger price tag, and this year’s OnePlus 8 Pro caught a minor backlash for being priced closer to Samsung-level than ever before.

The just-released OnePlus Nord, then, is a return to the company’s original strategy: starting at around the US$420 mark, it gives about 90 per cent of flagship performance, but at less than half the price.

The OnePlus Nord features a 6.44-inch OLED screen that refreshes at 90Hz, with an in-display fingerprint scanner under the screen. Photo: Ben Sin
The OnePlus Nord features a 6.44-inch OLED screen that refreshes at 90Hz, with an in-display fingerprint scanner under the screen. Photo: Ben Sin

Design and hardware

To untrained eyes the Nord looks like yet another premium 2020 flagship phone. It’s got the same slim bezels and hole-punch design of a Samsung Galaxy; an almost bezel-less 90Hz OLED screen that pumps out vivid colours and smooth animations; and the same speediness and fluidity of the OnePlus 8 Pro.
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