OnePlus Nord 2T 5G hands-on review

Design

The design of the Nord 2T 5G is very similar to the Nord 2 5G. From the front, it's impossible to distinguish between the two phones and even the sides have the same glossy polycarbonate frame.

The main difference is on the back of the phone. The Nord 2T 5G has a larger camera design with bigger circular elements surrounding the lenses. However, if you look closely, the cameras are actually in the same place as they were on the Nord 2 5G. The only real difference is in the position of the flash and the ambient light sensor.

The back of the Nord 2T 5G has the same Corning Gorilla Glass 5 as on the front. The Gray Shadow variant we have here has a frosted matte texture to the glass that is meant to evoke the texture on the Sandstone Black OnePlus One. However, in practice, the texture on the Nord 2T 5G is a lot smoother and makes the phone very slippery.

The Nord 2T 5G is also available in a Jade Fog finish, which has a glossy back that offers a much better grip. Both finishes are designed to repel fingerprints.

Despite the relatively smaller size compared to flagship devices, the Nord 2T 5G still has a heft to it, which depending upon how you look at it makes it feel a bit premium or bulky.

Around the sides, there's a power button on the right along with the alert slider. On the left are the volume controls. The buttons are just a tad bit too high on either side, which makes you have to adjust your grip on the phone every time you use them.

The Nord 2T 5G does not feature any ingress protection rating. There is a rubber gasket around the SIM tray and it's possible the other outlets are sealed as well but without a confirmed rating, we cannot recommend using the phone in wet or dusty environments.

Display

The Nord 2T 5G has the same 6.43-inch, 2400x1800 resolution AMOLED display as the Nord 2 5G. It's an 8-bit display that supports up to a 90Hz refresh rate. There's also support for HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG.

OnePlus claims support for sRGB and Display P3 but there's no color management support in the OS, so apps cannot switch to the appropriate color space based on the content. Instead, you have to manually switch from the screen color mode setting on the phone, which also lets you manually adjust the color temperature.

The color accuracy is reasonable for casual use. The default white balance is on the cooler side and even adjusting it manually doesn't get it quite right. Having said that, the color reproduction still looks good for everyday use and there are no glaring issues with it.

The display has good brightness for indoor use. Outdoors, the Nord 2T 5G does not get as bright as the more expensive OLED smartphones on the market, which can occasionally make things difficult to see under an extremely bright sun. The display has good viewing angles with only slight color fringing when seen off-axis which is typical of consumer OLEDs.

Display settings

The HDR implementation is subpar. The phone employs a very aggressive dynamic tone mapping algorithm that is constantly adjusting the image on the screen, usually after a split-second delay when the shot changes. Aside from the delay, the changes are applied gradually to the image and are often quite aggressive, changing the entire look of the frame. On top of that, since there is no color management support in the software, the video player app cannot switch to the correct color gamut and EOTF, which results in an image that looks essentially the same as SDR content.

All of these issues combined result in a rather distracting and unpleasant HDR experience. Unfortunately, there is no way to simply disable HDR on the device, meaning any app that supports HDR would automatically switch to serving the HDR version of the content, triggering all of the aforementioned issues. Fortunately, at the time of testing, neither Netflix nor Amazon Prime Video supported HDR playback on the Nord 2T 5G, which meant the issues were limited to YouTube and local files.

The Nord 2T 5G supports 60Hz and 90Hz refresh rates. The 90Hz refresh rate may have been passable last year but seems a bit outmoded among the 2022 competition, most of which come with a 120Hz display. As with other OnePlus phones, several apps are still randomly limited to just 60Hz, which also includes almost every single game.

The display includes a built-in optical fingerprint sensor. The sensor worked well during our testing and was quick and reliable.

Battery and charging

The Nord 2T 5G features a dual-cell 4500mAh battery. The main new attraction is the inclusion of 80W fast charging, up from 65W on the previous Nord 2 5G.

Running our usual charging test, we found that the Nord 2T 5G charged up to 98% in 30 minutes. A full charge took 38 minutes. These numbers are more or less identical to what we got on the Nord 2 5G with the 65W charger.

Just to confirm our findings, we also swapped the chargers between the Nord 2 and the Nord 2T, and regardless of which charger was used on which device, the two phones posted results that were within test variance of each other. The bottom line is that the two phones charge at the same rate.

As we have seen in the past with other devices, going from 65W to 80W usually results in no real increase in charging speeds. That's just the unfortunate reality of the situation even if it seems a bit counterintuitive. Also, since the 80W Super VOOC charger lacks USB-PD found on the 65W Warp Charger that came with the Nord 2 5G, it has less utility outside of charging OnePlus devices.

For what it's worth, we still think the charging speeds are phenomenal but at the same time, we don't want you to go around thinking you are getting anything meaningfully extra over the old 65W charger. In fact, you're getting a bit less.