OnePlus 9 Pro review: they were wrong By Alex Zhang

Yo, what's good, everyone welcome back to another video, so OnePlus just announced the OnePlus 9 series last week and I got my hands on the 9 pro in this morning. Missed color. I want to give a big thanks to OnePlus for sending this device out to me, but they did not review this video beforehand. So all the thoughts and opinions are my own. We got a lot of content to cover, so let's just get right into the unboxing immediately. You can tell that OnePlus wants this unboxing experience to be special.

The phone comes in a big red box that feels soft to the touch. The package. Design is second to none, not even Samsung or apple, come close to this level of packaging. The material thickness, textured finishes and foil. Accents are all on another level, and it fits in line with their current branding, because OnePlus isn't just a budget option anymore coming in and over a thousand us dollars.

OnePlus 9 pro is definitely positioning itself in that flagship space right next to the galaxies and iPhones. So, let's see what you get for the money and if this is really worth the price in the box, you are greeted with a phone right on top with some paperwork and stickers in the compartment under it, and just like pretty much every OnePlus phone, you will also get a bright red, USB c cable, and I'm very happy to see that a 65 watt power, brick is included. OnePlus states that you can charge the battery up to 70 percent in just half an hour. That's insanely, quick, and it means that you can top off pretty much any time during the day, and you're good to go. Some people may say a charger in the box is useless, and I agree a 5 or 10 watt.

Charger is just adding to the e-waste, but manufacturers should still give consumers the choice on whether they want to include a fast charger in the box. So I really appreciate that it came with the OnePlus 9 pro, and you just get a little more for your money. The OnePlus 9 pro feels really premium in the hand, and this design is one of the most elegant in the OnePlus lineup. The shiny, aluminum rails are sandwiched between two curved pieces of glass. Edges are smooth, and the seams are all uniform with no flex or creaking all the buttons feel solid and click.

The alert slider is textured and not loose at all. At the bottom. There is a single USB port, flanked by speakers and a sim tray. The morning. Mist color is stunning when it's clean, but it catches smudges and fingerprints really easily, but I just love this gradient design with a soft metallic silver at the top that fades to a mirrored finish at the bottom.

Now, on to the cameras, there has been a ton of hype around the cameras on the OnePlus 9 pro due to the collaboration with Hasselblad, and I was really excited to test out these cameras. However, some early review videos that I've seen were not too thrilled with the camera performance on this phone. My initial impressions are pretty positive, but I'll get more into that later on, the camera bump is minimal and the design of the unit is pretty attractive. The silver trim around the lenses pairs really nicely with the silver Hasselblad logo, and it gives it an elegant retro feel in addition to the four lenses, there is a dual tone: flash autofocus module and microphone. So, like I said, my initial impressions of this camera system is perfect.

The hardware is pretty much the best that you can get for the main and ultra-wide cameras. The colors are accurate, focus is quick and the pro mode is insanely, powerful and intuitive. I am working on a separate video dedicated entirely to an in-depth camera review kind of like what I did for the galaxy s21. So if you want to see that video give this a thumbs up and subscribe, so you don't miss it when it comes out on the OnePlus 9 pro, there are a ton of different shooting modes for both video and photo, but for photographers, like myself, the most valuable one is definitely that 12-bit raw here's an example of just how much you can do to a raw file. I will go into way more detail in the full, in-depth camera review video, but for now here are some sample images and videos taken with the OnePlus 9 pro.

So this is a microphone test using the front camera. Of course, I have a mask on so the sound is a little muffled, but this should still give you an idea of how clear it is. If you want to use this setup to vlog or anything like that. As you can see, there's also a lot of harsh light coming down on the phone screen. I can see a bit of blown out highlights, so you can see the auto HDR is not the best for this front.

Camera. Alright. So now is the sound test from the back camera. There is a microphone directly in the camera module, so I feel like this audio, should sound a lot better. There's also some light wind, and I'm using the ultra-wide angle camera to shoot this scene right now.

Of course, I can't see myself, but because it's such a wide angle, it should still capture everything in the frame. This is handheld at arm's reach. As you can see, the photos actually look perfect. I was pleasantly surprised because a lot of the other reviews say that this camera system is not that great. There are some inconsistencies between the three cameras and the processing does tend to over sharpen the images by quite a bit.

The telephoto is by far the worst in image quality and the selfie camera is pretty terrible too. There's also that weird image capture delay, like other reviewers, have mentioned, where the image you actually captured is a second after you click the shutter button. This is really annoying and should be easily fixed from a software update. However, this phone already got two updates, and this issue is still there. The screen on the OnePlus 9 pro is 6.7 inches with HD plus resolution and 120 hertz adaptive refresh rate. It gets really bright, and I didn't notice any accidental touches with the curved glass.

However, it does get a bit hard to see in direct sunlight. The AMOLED panel has a hole, punch cutout for the front camera in the top left corner. The bezels are thin and flow seamlessly into the side rails. It is safe to say that this is a top tier display and the best that OnePlus has ever used on a phone. One weird thing to point out is the placement of the fingerprint sensor.

It is really low pretty much just at the bottom of the phone, and it is an optical scanner. So it's not the most secure tech there's also phase unlock, which is pretty much instantaneous, but it's also not that secure this phone shipped with the latest version of oxygen OS on top of android 11. If you like a clean, minimal and near stock android experience, then this would be perfect for you. There is just enough customization to make it your own, and overall, the skin feels very lightweight and smooth navigating around the UI is quick with fluid animations and zero lag. However, compared to feature rich phones like Samsung devices, you might miss some of those customizable options compared to my galaxy s21, which has the same processor.

The OnePlus 9 pro just feels so much faster without any lags or stutters. The rest of this hardware is on par with other flagships. This device is specked with the snapdragon triple eight 12 gigs of ram and 256 gigabytes of storage. The stereo speakers can get really loud, but also sound a bit tinny. It has ultra-fast wireless charging and even has reverse wireless charging, so spec for spec.

It really is a flagship device. They didn't leave anything out this time, so some may say that the tech is worth the price, but I think OnePlus fans are just disappointed that the OnePlus 9 pro costs too much, but as a company, the original flagship killer model was just not sustainable and over the years OnePlus has grown and expanded. They now offer devices for as low as 200 dollars in the word lineup, and when you take a step back out of that OnePlus mindset, you realize that this phone actually offers a lot for the money compared to the iPhone 12 Pro max at 1199 and the Samsung Galaxy s21 ultra at 12.49, the OnePlus 9 pro is cheaper than both. Of course, prices vary by region, and you can get those other phones at a discount through sales and trade-in offers. Alright, so is the most expensive OnePlus phone worth it.

Well, if you're in the market for a premium android device, then I can fully recommend the OnePlus 9 pro. After all, there really are no other alternatives if you want a clean near stock. Android experience with the latest flagship, specs lg is out of the game and Sony phones are really expensive and not very popular in the US. So while the OnePlus 9 pro isn't a flagship killer, it sits comfortably among the best. That's it for this video and again, I will be creating a separate, in-depth camera review.

Video coming out soon so hit that thumbs up and subscribe. If you want to support my channel, I really appreciate it. This content takes a ton of time to create, so any form of engagement really helps out a lot. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time, peace. You.

Source : Alex Zhang