OnePlus Nord N100 review: When budget doesn't mean value By Android Authority

Many often misconstrued value for money with low cost, and that's where I think this phone gets a little dicey for 179 pounds in the UK or 199 euro in Europe or in the U. S. some unconfirmed pricing. The word n100 is completely the opposite of the high price high performance ultra flagships that we used to sing in 2020. It comes in at around half the price of even the Pixel 4a and OnePlus word. This is a proper budget.

Smartphone, let's get into it. What is the word n100? Well, it's a super cheap plastic smartphone with a gorilla class coated 720p display that's laid out in the similar kind of way as the word and the OnePlus 8t, both much higher end phones. As for the specs. Well, there's a snapdragon 460, 4, gigabytes of ram 64, gigabytes of storage, four total cameras, a 720p 90hz IPS display and a huge 5000mah battery. That's a very mixed spec sheet, but in short, not a lot of power, but a great battery.

OnePlus cuts a lot of corners to get this thing down to 179 pounds in the UK and the most obvious of which is definitely in its performance. It's not unusable by any means, but the n100 is markedly slower than the OnePlus word and the Pixel 4a, neither of which is particularly powerful zipping around the OS, with the snapdragon 460 and four gigabytes of ram. Isn't the smoothest experience in the world, and it does put the decision to use an ICS display into question when oftentimes is barely able to match 60 hertz the 64 gigabytes of storage is expandable, with a micro SD card up to 256 gigabytes, which is handy. This isn't a gaming phone, most games run on it, and they look okay, but they do stutter and lag rather often, especially the more demanding ones for games like clash, royale and eight-ball. You should be alright, though, but here's the thing- and I hark back to the start of this video, where we were talking about value for money versus budget sure this is a budget smartphone, but its value for money is questioned when the performance is slow.

Now, in six months, when the performance is degraded, is it even going to be worth keeping or are you going to want to upgrade at which point have you really saved any money if you're going to be buying two smartphones? However, because this chipset is such a power sipping component, the battery life is fantastic. I mean truly brilliant, with a mixture of LTE and Wi-Fi connections, high brightness, Spotify and YouTube usage and a lot of twitters and Reddit scrolling. I got two and a half days out of the Borden 100 as my main phone. That's eight hours total screen on time, and it was definitely not easy. It was hard to kill this thing and I put it through its paces, so a lighter user and with less usage.

I wouldn't be surprised if you were able to charge this thing just twice a week and the thing is its nice that you won't have to charge it so often because the 18 watt charger included in the box was it's not super. Slow does still charge this thing in just over two hours, so it actually does take a little while to charge it and it being a huge battery. It does make sense. This isn't a flagship. It's not got superfast charging.

I think it's rather respectable, but at the same time it's not going to help you in a pinch. Thankfully, you probably won't be in a pinch very often with a battery. That's this good oxygen OS, which runs on this thing, is outdated out of the box. Unfortunately, it's android 10, based instead of android 11, which the OnePlus 8t an older device came with, doesn't really make much sense there, and this thing is only likely to get one software platform update. What this means is the long-term software support isn't going to be very good with only one software platform update coming forward, and this isn't the most up-to-date version, meaning you're not going to get all the new features that the new oxygen OS allows for.

Another area in which value for money and cost really have not met is in the display. It's a 90 hertz 720p panel and while the sharpness or lack thereof, isn't much of an issue. I feel like the use of a full, HD or even standard HD 60hz panel would have been a better bet, see the word n100 doesn't really have the processing or GPU chops to consistently hit 90 hertz, which makes it kind of redundant spec from about 30 centimeters or a foot away from your face. The display is sharp enough, but sometimes you do notice the softness, which can be a little distracting. I actually think the better bet would have been to put a 60 hertz display in this thing and then use that extra budget to improve the performance or the camera and talking of cameras.

They were never going to be groundbreaking in a 179 pound phone, and I'm just going to tell you they weren't with the n100. However, they were considerably worse than what we've seen from the competing Redmi Note 9, and these images do look kind of weird, but before that, firstly, the two main cameras that you really need to know about are the 8 megapixel, selfie camera and 13 megapixel main rear camera. Those other two on the back are really just to fluff out the spec sheet. What you'll, really notice in these samples is that the typical OnePlus shadow crushing is here but maxed out to a whole new level, just look at how much the shadows are crushed in these outdoor shots and with such soft lighting. These are much easier conditions than the harsh direct sunlight in which this thing will perform even worse.

Another point of interest is the over saturation of the colors. They don't look awful, but they're, not exactly true to life, and probably the biggest thing to note is the lack of sharpness in any of these images. No, you don't need to wipe your screen. They really are that soft. Some might blame the 13 megapixel sensor, but since the pixel 5 has a 12 megapixel sensor, I don't think you can really blame resolution here.

Strangely, though, the selfies look a lot sharper than the main camera photos, they're, actually not bad at all. They're soft is, but nothing crazy. Skin smoothing just definitely isn't an issue here, even in harsh lighting conditions and in portrait mode. The n100 manages to do quite well. So should you go out and buy this thing? Well, if you're on a budget, you should consider it, but you should also consider like the Redmi Note.9 from Xiaomi is a fantastic smartphone that at least on paper and from reviews seems to be crushing this thing. It costs, maybe 20 pounds more, but gives you much more value for money.

However, if you can really stretch to it, I urge you to save a little more and try and get an OnePlus word or a Pixel 4a, because you're going to get better software support down the line, much better hardware, much later slowdown in terms of the performance, hugely better cameras, hugely better designs and hugely better overall user experiences and since you're less likely to upgrade those phones sooner. It means that you could actually be saving money by doing it. That way- and that brings us back to the start of this video, where I said that value for money and cost are typically misconstrued, see there is a point where spending too little won't give you as much value and the OnePlus word n100 is just an example of this. It cuts too many corners and seems like OnePlus attempt to grab another sector of the smartphone market anyway, guys, that's it from me and that's it for the OnePlus word n100 video. Thank you all so much for watching.

Please do check out the full article in the video description, which will have way more camera samples on there and more analysis. Since I can go into more detail in a longer form article whilst you're down there, please do hit like and subscribe to never miss a video like this one. I've been Ryan Thomas with android authority, and I'll catch. You later.

Source : Android Authority