OnePlus Nord CE 5G review: The well-rounded midranger

The headlines often tell stories about expensive flagship smartphones that innovate more and more each year. However, most people only read about flagships and then buy themselves smartphones they can afford. OnePlus Nord CE 5G is a mid-range smartphone that doesn’t innovate as flagships do, but it has “stolen” enough from them to be an exciting choice. Read this review and see why OnePlus Nord CE 5G might just be your next smartphone:

OnePlus Nord CE 5G: Who is it good for?

This smartphone is a solid choice for:

• People who want a good 5G smartphone
• Users who want a well-rounded smartphone at a reasonable price
• People who desire truly fast charging
• Users who want an Android experience without bloatware
• People who desire security updates for more than the standard two years

Pros and cons

There are many things we love about the OnePlus Nord CE 5G:

• The OxygenOS is a sleek and fast Android version
• Very few bundled apps
• Superfast charging for a smartphone in its price range
• Three years of security updates
• It has a headset jack
• It is lighter and thinner than similarly priced options
• Good quality protective case included
• Simpler camera system than competing models

There are some downsides too:

• No dust/water resistance
• The phone is slow at postprocessing 64 MP pictures
• No headset included in the box
• No microSD slot

Verdict

OnePlus Nord CE 5G is not perfect, but we like it a lot. It has a simple design with fewer cameras than its competitors, and that’s a plus in our book. Yes, postprocessing 64 MP pictures is a bit slow, but the primary camera works well, and this phone doesn’t feature a useless macro camera like most of its competitors do. The OnePlus Nord CE 5G is also thinner and lighter, and it delivers balanced performance and truly fast charging. If you don’t have the money for a flagship, the OnePlus Nord CE 5G offers a great bang for the buck, and you should look into it when you purchase your next 5G smartphone.

Unboxing the OnePlus Nord CE 5G

We received a special box for the OnePlus Nord CE 5G designed for the bloggers and tech enthusiasts testing this smartphone before its global launch. As you can see below, it is a large black box with the ONEPLUS logo written on it. OnePlus Nord CE 5G - the press kit was sent in a truly large box When we opened it, we found the actual box in which the smartphone is shipped to customers worldwide and four smartphone covers created by OnePlus for this phone. Unboxing the OnePlus Nord CE 5G press kit When you buy the OnePlus Nord CE 5G, this is the box in which you receive it. It is relatively large, all black, with the OnePlus logo and the Nord brand printed on the top cover. On the back, there is a sticker with details about the hardware configuration of the smartphone, the IMEI number, serial number, where it was manufactured, and so on. OnePlus Nord CE 5G - The retail box When you open the box, you find the smartphone itself, nicely packaged in a protective cover, the power adapter, the USB cable, and a smaller box that contains the protective case bundled by OnePlus. Unboxing the OnePlus Nord CE 5G In the smaller box with the protective case, you also find a welcome message to the OnePlus family, a pin for ejecting the SIM tray, the quick start guide, the safety information, and other leaflets. We like the protective case bundled by OnePlus. It is of better quality than what we’ve received with other smartphones. OnePlus Nord CE 5G comes with a protective case The packaging for OnePlus Nord CE 5G looks great, and the unboxing is a pleasant experience that makes you feel like you just bought a great quality device for yourself. We appreciate the high-quality protective case included in the box, but we are disappointed by the absence of a bundled headset.

Design and build quality

OnePlus Nord CE 5G is a relatively large 6.43” smartphone with rounded corners and the following dimensions: 6.2 x 2.8 inches or 159.22 x 73.5 mm in length and width. Also, it has a thickness of only 0.3 inches or 7.9 mm, and a weight of just 170 grams or 5.99 ounces, making it thinner and lighter than its direct competitor, Samsung Galaxy A52 5G, and one of the thinnest OnePlus smartphones in recent years. The smartphone’s back features the camera system, the OnePlus logo, and a sticker with the IMEI, serial number, and other information about your device. On the right margin of the OnePlus Nord CE 5G, you find only the Power button. OnePlus Nord CE 5G - the buttons on the right margin On the left side of the phone, there are the SIM tray and the Volume buttons. OnePlus Nord CE 5G - the buttons on the left side You find the headphone jack, the microphone for taking calls, a USB Type-C 2.0 port, and the speaker on the bottom bezel. OnePlus Nord CE 5G - the bottom bezel On the top bezel, you find only a microphone used during calls, probably for noise cancellation purposes and stereo sound recording. The back and the frames of the OnePlus Nord CE 5G are all made from plastic. It feels durable and pleasant to hold in your hands. However, the back is a fingerprint magnet and may need regular cleaning if you want it to look good. OnePlus Nord CE 5G - the top bezel One downside of the OnePlus Nord CE 5G compared to Samsung Galaxy A52 5G is that it doesn’t use Gorilla Glass for the display. It doesn’t have any certification for dust or water resistance. However, it is also a bit cheaper, and some users may care more about saving a bit of money. The OnePlus Nord CE 5G is available in three colors: Blue Void, Charcoal Ink, and Silver Ray. We tested the blue variant, which looks pretty cool, but we think most users prefer the Charcoal Ink color. OnePlus also has several protection cases for this smartphone, all pictured below. They look pretty good and appeal primarily to young audiences. Official protection cases for OnePlus Nord CE 5G Overall, the OnePlus Nord CE 5G is a good-looking smartphone. It’s thin, light, and with pleasant color variants that appeal to many users.

Hardware specifications

OnePlus Nord CE 5G has the same chipset as Samsung Galaxy A52 5G - an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G with two cores running at 2.2 GHz and six cores running at 1.8 GHz. The graphics chip is an Adreno 619 that is good for light gaming experiences and viewing multimedia content on your smartphone. Details about the OnePlus Nord CE 5G This smartphone comes in versions with 6 GB, 8 GB, or 12 GB of RAM, and 128 GB or 256 GB of storage space. Unfortunately, there’s no microSD card support for extending the storage, but we have a dual nano-SIM slot. The screen uses an AMOLED panel with a refresh rate of 90 Hz. It has a Full HD resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels and a pixel density of 410 ppi. One downside for the screen is that it isn’t protected by Gorilla Glass. OnePlus Nord CE 5G has a 90 Hz AMOLED display We like the fact that the OnePlus Nord CE 5G doesn’t promise a quad-core camera system that’s filled with useless cameras. Instead, this phone took a more straightforward approach, and it packs the following:

• A main wide camera on the rear, with 64 Megapixels, f/1.79 aperture, 6P lens, and a pixel size of 0.7 µm
• An ultrawide camera on the back, with 8 Megapixels, a 119° field of view, and f/2.25 aperture
• A depth camera on the back, with 2 Megapixels and f/2.4 aperture
• On the front, there’s a selfie 16 Megapixels camera with a Sony IMX471 sensor, f/2.45 aperture, and a pixel size of 1.0µm

The camera system features electronic image stabilization, and it can record 1080p video at 30 or 60 frames per second. The primary camera can also shoot 4K video at 30 frames per second. The cameras on the back One of the best aspects of the OnePlus Nord CE 5G is its 30 Watts Warp Charger that is a lot faster than what the competition offers at a similar price. The battery is nonremovable, boasting a capacity of 4500 mAh. The smartphone also packs good connectivity options: Bluetooth 5.1 support, GPS, and NFC. It works with 5G mobile networks, but it doesn’t have support for Wi-Fi 6. It can use only the older Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 4 standards. The 30 Watts Warp Charger In terms of sensors, the OnePlus Nord CE 5G has an in-display fingerprint sensor, an accelerometer, electronic compass, gyroscope, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, and a sensor core that monitors the other sensors inside your smartphone. If you want more details about all the features and hardware specs, visit this page: OnePlus Nord CE 5G Specs. Read the second page of this review for details about the smartphone experience offered by the OnePlus Nord CE 5G, its cameras, operating system, and bundled apps, as well as its performance in benchmarks.

The smartphone experience on the OnePlus Nord CE 5G

First of all, we love the software experience on the OnePlus Nord CE 5G. The operating system is very well optimized: no bloatware in sight and many usability tweaks that improve the Android experience. The 90 Hz AMOLED display complements the software nicely, offering a user experience that feels fast and smooth. Also, its brightness makes it pleasant to use both outdoors and indoors. OxygenOS is slim, fast, and fluid The essential apps that most people use work well on the OnePlus Nord CE 5G. Yes, this smartphone can’t compare to flagships in terms of speed, but it never feels sluggish. Gaming works reasonably well too, as long as you don’t want high-quality graphics. Watching movies is an enjoyable experience when you use a headset. However, the mono speaker on the OnePlus Nord CE 5G delivers an underwhelming experience for people who care about audio quality. Don’t set its volume to the maximum, as the high-frequency sounds will sound too loud and high-pitched. Watching movies on the OnePlus Nord CE 5G Phone calls made on the OnePlus Nord CE 5G are clear for both parties, and we didn’t encounter signal reception issues. However, we used it only in urban areas with good mobile coverage. On the OnePlus Nord CE 5G, we enjoyed slightly higher call quality than on other smartphones with a similar price. The suppression of ambient sounds works well indoors as long as there aren’t any loud noises around you, while voice calls using the built-in speaker work reasonably well. However, don’t expect to hear the other person well when you are far from your smartphone. Both the fingerprint sensor and the face unlock work fast and are precise. Decide which one you want to use depending on your personal preference. As you can see below, the fingerprint sensor is placed on the bottom of the display and not on the Power button, as is the case with other 5G smartphones. The fingerprint sensor is fast and precise The 90 Hz AMOLED display on the OnePlus Nord CE 5G needs a bit more power than other types of displays, so don’t expect this smartphone’s battery to last more than a day of regular use. However, fast charging is truly fast for an affordable mid-range smartphone. In just 30 minutes, the OnePlus Nord CE 5G charges from 0% to somewhere between 64% and 70%. In just one hour, it charges to 100%. OnePlus Nord CE 5G is a well-rounded smartphone that delivers almost everything you need, fast-unlock options that are precise and fast, and truly fast charging. All this at a moderate price that many people can afford.

The camera experience on the OnePlus Nord CE 5G

The OnePlus Nord CE 5G is advertised as having a high-quality 64 Megapixels main camera. However, the photos you take using automatic settings have only a 16 Megapixels resolution, and that’s for a good reason: when you take 64 MP pictures, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G chipset is a bit slow at postprocessing them. Therefore, you can’t take several photos in quick succession, and the picture-taking experience becomes slow and frustrating if you try that. Plus, all your pictures will take up a lot of storage space when using 64 MP without having a clear advantage in terms of quality. For this reason, we decided to take pictures using the default 16 MP resolution for this review. One upside is that the Camera app on the OnePlus Nord CE 5G is simple and easy to use for most people, and it includes a useful Pro mode. Turning on the 64MP pictures is a bit weird, but that’s about the only complaint we have about it. The Camera app on the OnePlus Nord CE 5G When it comes to picture quality, in good lighting conditions, the photos you take with the OnePlus Nord CE 5G are excellent, with good contrast and level of detail. The dynamic range looks good too. However, when we shot portraits, we noticed that the camera tends to misrepresent the colors. As you can check for yourself in the gallery below, portrait photos often have too much magenta in them, and they also feel soft. In more difficult lighting conditions, like during the night, the camera performs well enough for the average user that can’t afford a premium smartphone. Still, just like in portraits, night photos feel a bit too soft overall while having significant graininess and loss of detail in darker, more shadowy areas. The macro pictures we took are also pretty average: they feature good colors and a nice bokeh effect, but the focus is struggling when the subject is very close. For a better understanding of this smartphone’s camera performance, take a look at the picture samples below: Recording 4K videos on a smartphone with an affordable price like this one doesn’t make much sense. Its cameras just can’t compare to that of premium smartphones. That’s why it is better to record videos in 1080p resolution as we did in our samples. Shooting landscapes and more static videos works great on the OnePlus Nord CE 5G. In good lighting conditions, the videos have good contrast and well-represented colors. However, the sky and the clouds appear to be a bit oversaturated, which leads to a loss of detail. When recording video in low-light, there’s a lot of graininess and detail loss in the darker areas. Zooming in and out isn’t a smooth operation either, and we hope that OnePlus will improve this in future updates for the OnePlus Nord CE 5G. The electronic image stabilization does its job reasonably well, but it can’t compare to what you get from premium smartphones. OnePlus Nord CE 5G offers a reasonably well-balanced picture taking and video recording experience. On paper, its camera system may sound better than it is, but we aren’t disappointed by the results we obtained, as is the case with many mid-rangers.

Android 11 and bundled apps

OnePlus Nord CE 5G comes with Oxygen OS 11 - a custom operating system developed by OnePlus, based on Android 11. We’re fans of this operating system because it is very clean in terms of built-in apps. It has few personalization options outside the basics offered by Android, and all of them are only about improving the user experience. OnePlus will offer two years of software updates for OnePlus Nord CE 5G and three years of security updates to top things off. This support window is not as long as the one advertised by Samsung, but it is longer than many other manufacturers with similarly-priced phones. OnePlus Nord CE 5G comes with Oxygen OS 11 For the sake of transparency, alongside the standard Google apps that are found in Android, OnePlus Nord CE 5G comes with the following: There are very few preinstalled apps

• Community - an app where OnePlus users can get help, exchange tips and ideas, and access the OnePlus Store.
• File Manager - a helpful app for managing the files and folders found on your smartphone.
• Games - an app for optimizing the performance of your mobile games.
• Netflix - the popular movie streaming service that needs no introduction.
• OnePlus Switch - an app that helps you move your files and apps from another smartphone to your new OnePlus Nord CE 5G.
• Recorder - records audio and uses your smartphone as a microphone.
• Weather - we all need a weather forecast now and then. Most people are going to use this app too.

The Oxygen OS 11 on the OnePlus Nord CE 5G is a slim Android version, with few built-in apps and useful customizations on top of the standard Android experience. It has three years of security updates and two years of software updates. We’re fans of the approach taken by OnePlus with its software, and we hope that more manufacturers are going to follow their lead.

Performance in benchmarks

To evaluate the performance of this smartphone as objectively as possible and compare it with other phones, we ran several benchmarking apps. The first was Geekbench. OnePlus Nord CE 5G got 636 points in the Single-Core tests and 1884 in the Multi-Core tests, similar to what you get from a Samsung Galaxy A52 5G. OnePlus Nord CE 5G - Geekbench score We then used PCMark for Android to measure how well OnePlus Nord CE 5G fares in productivity tasks. The final score was 8190 points, proving that this phone has enough grunt for most apps people run on their smartphones. OnePlus Nord CE 5G - PCMark score In the 3DMark benchmark app, we ran the Sling Shot test. OnePlus Nord CE 5G rendered an average of 25.20 frames and 13.7 frames, respectively, and it had a score of 3876 points, which is almost identical to the Samsung Galaxy A52 5G. OnePlus Nord CE 5G - 3DMark score For mobile gaming, we also ran the Car Chase and 1080p Care Chase Offscreen tests from GFXBench. OnePlus Nord CE 5G rendered an average of 17 frames per second and 19 respectively, and it obtained scores similar to a Samsung Galaxy S9+, a flagship smartphone from 2018. OnePlus Nord CE 5G - GFXBench score To evaluate the autonomy offered by OnePlus Nord CE 5G, we used PCMark’s Work 3.0 battery life test with the display brightness set to Auto. The battery lasted 15 hours and 34 minutes, about four hours more than its predecessor, the OnePlus Nord N10 5G. OnePlus Nord CE 5G - Battery life Unfortunately, we don’t have 5G connectivity in our area, so we couldn’t test the mobile data speed you get with this smartphone. The benchmarks we ran confirmed that OnePlus Nord CE 5G offers solid mid-range level performance for general productivity tasks and good battery life. Although this smartphone is not a great choice for gaming, this is a complaint we can make about all smartphones in its price range.

Do you like the OnePlus Nord CE 5G?

Now you know what we like and what we don’t like about the OnePlus Nord CE 5G. In general, it is a good smartphone that offers a lot of bang for the buck, even though it has a few shortcomings. Before closing this review, tell us your opinion about it in a comment below.