OnePlus Nord Impressions: Back to Budget! By Marques Brownlee

Hey, what's up guys MHD here and as some of you may have suspected, I have been using the OnePlus word for quite a few weeks now, actually maybe the longest I've ever used something pre-launch, but OnePlus is one of those companies where they have a separate impressions embargo for unboxing and stuff and then a reviews embargo which is smart because then you've created two separate waves of press about your product. I talked about this on a waveform podcast episode, so I get it. But that means that I can't share my full review of this guy with you guys quite yet, but nevertheless, here we are, they did their event it's unveiled now. So I figured I'd. Give you guys this quick video of all the official stuff about word in one place, so the spec, the design, the hardware and some important stuff like the availability and the price. So this is everything you need to know.

So we saw the design, of course revealed already in our exclusive, but here's a better crispy high resolution. Look at word, and these two colors here are blue marble and gray onyx, and it's not bad, but my take is pretty mixed on the design. So remember when Carl showed those prototype designs that they were considering before they scrapped them and then went with the more traditional design. I actually like those designs more than the one they settled on like these had a little more character. They had that matte finish.

They had a little more unique and identifiable features, but they ended up going back here to a more recognizable OnePlus design, which basically means the vertical camera module. On the back which fair you know, that's been an OnePlus thing for a little while, but I kind of think it takes away from the character. I mean look at this. This is not the word. This is the Oppo Reno 3 pro.

It just looks like yet another version of kind of the same phone, I'm just saying, but the point of the OnePlus word is to move down in price. So we've all heard the OnePlus story a thousand times, but they've been creeping up and up and up slowly in price. Over the years as they approach flagship status and use more and more expensive parts, and so people started to wonder, are they just leaving the whole cheap phone thing? Are they abandoning what got them so many fans in the first place, which was great phones for a low price, and so with word they're back at that, and, to be honest, it seems like this is about as good as an overall package as you're going to get for the price and that price is 3.99 euros specifically because this phone isn't available in the US or North America at all, but we'll get to that in a second? So for that price, you're getting a lot so in the spec department, that's a snapdragon 765g, eight gigs of ram and 128 gigs of storage, but there's also a 12 256 model and then up front is a flat 6.4 inch, 1080p, 90, hertz AMOLED display with the fingerprint reader underneath and 180 hertz touch sampling rate. That's pretty nice! For this price. Now you can tell it's not quite the hippy top flagship stuff.

We expect for higher prices. Of course, a 900 or a thousand dollar phone will have a higher refresh rate and even higher resolution, and just overall, better quality panels, but even at 1080p here, you're looking at over 400 pixels per inch and most people spending 400 bucks on a phone can't tell the difference between 90 hertz and 120 hertz and the whole thing gets pretty close to the bezels. Basically, this does not feel like a cheap phone screen at all, and it's also got the dual hole: punch, cutout at the front, and just overall it's a pretty nice display. The fingerprint reader from what I can tell is about the same as what I've seen in other OnePlus phones, it's optical, and it's pretty low on the phone. So it's actually easy to reach, and then behind that display powering everything is a 4 115 William hour battery, pretty good-sized battery, and it comes with warp charge, 30t charger in the box, so you're getting fast charging that we're used to with other OnePlus phones included at this price.

So that's like zero to 70 percent charge in half an hour. If you need it, that is always nice to have now. There is no wireless charging in this phone there's no official IP water or dust resistance rating and while we're at it there's a couple other places, they save money, uh they've used, UFS, 2.1 storage, and they've used USB 2.0 data speeds, even though you still have fast charging, so there are some places where they've cut it back, but if you've been paying attention, you've probably noticed something by now, which is unlike a lot of the other budget phones. I've reviewed especially lately. This doesn't go super all in on one spec and then kind of skimp.

On the rest, this definitely feels like a much more balanced package. The build quality is definitely here. You have metal and glass. You got that alert. Slider we're used to the 90 hertz OLED display is a great place to start.

You have a pretty good-sized battery with fast charging a pretty nice set of specs again, this isn't the review, but the 765g has some pretty good performance results so far and that's paired with plenty of ram. So maybe, with a budget phone you're hearing all this you're, like oh, I know so the camera's trash right- that's usually how it goes: cheap phone, cheap, camera, here's a scoop on the camera, so it is a quad camera system. So you start with a 48, megapixel main camera, an 8, megapixel, ultrawide camera and then a 2, megapixel macro camera and then a 5 megapixel depth sensor. So it's like okay, they can say it's a quad camera system, but most people are just going to be using the first two cameras and then the main camera is actually the same camera same hardware as the OnePlus 8, not the OnePlus 8 pro the OnePlus 8. So again, this isn't my review.

That review will have my photo samples and video samples from this camera system and the selfie cameras. You got a 32, megapixel, selfie camera and then a second 8 megapixel ultra-wide selfie camera up front. I got to be testing all those things, but a couple of things on the camera. One OnePlus has called it like a flagship quality camera. I wouldn't call it a flagship camera I'll say the OnePlus 8 pro has what I consider a flagship quality camera, because it's their flagship and that stays up to par with the Samsung and apples and Huawei's of the world.

The OnePlus 8 camerae. If you go back and watch that review was a step below that, but also OnePlus does have a pretty great track record, at least from my experience of improving camera quality over time with software updates. So while this isn't, you know the highest and most amazing camera. This is now a couple of months or multiple months into the development in this camera system. So it's going to be better than some of the garbage we've seen in other 400 android phones, and then I do like that.

They have dual selfie cameras up here. The one standard one ultra-wide, instead of like some borderline useless depth sensor. So if you're going to do the dual cutout, which this is the first time OnePlus has actually ever done, two cameras up front uh you might as well make use of it. So they got the pillbox cut out and two cameras. So my full analysis of these cameras of this new chipset and the performance and, of course, all the other stuff, the screen and everything that goes with it will be in the full review, so definitely get subscribed, make sure you're among the first to see that if you haven't already, but basically, if I'm remembering my first impressions well enough, it's that this is a pretty promising package.

They've kept up because of that balance, a lot of the fast and smooth stuff pretty well. So the most important thing left, then, is availability. So with this first word phone OnePlus is focusing on India, china and Europe. So it's not coming to North America. This is your list of launch countries here, so you can see if your country is or isn't on that list, not the widest launch ever, but we also learned at least from when I was talking to Carl in that interview, that there will be more phones later in the word lineup, with other names that may come to the United States or to North America, or to other regions that aren't listed in that graphic.

So most people who aren't in those regions probably won't get their hands on this phone probably won't be importing it because that's not something most people do and if you can't get your hands on a word which, let's face it, that's a lot of people. You definitely still have the option of these matte pastel skins, which are available across channel sponsor brand's entire device catalog for every device. So there's probably something in there for you, I'll link it below, and I'll. Just add that my favorite of these new colors is their new pastel orange. But there you have it.

That's everything you need to know about OnePlus word right off the jump. My take kind of like I've said is it's its that overall steady package of nothing too crazy, but not skimping on almost anything. A lot of phones in this price range like if we take out iPhone SC, because that's the other giant gorilla in the room at this exact price. This seems like one of those better well-rounded things you can get you're going to get a big battery fast charging pretty nice screen high refresh rate 5g compatibility. There's a lot of going here turns out the reason people wanted OnePlus to come back to this lower price and make a device in this space.

It's because they're pretty good at it, but anyway full reviews coming up bunch of other videos coming up right on the horizon. I feel like we are right about to descend into smartphone season like it's its rolling over the hill right now, you think you're, you think you're safe, but your sub box should be prepared I'll leave it at that. Thank you for watching catch. You guys next, one peace.

Source : Marques Brownlee