OnePlus 10R 150W hands-on review

Display

The OnePlus 10R has a 6.7-inch, 2412x1080 resolution AMOLED display. The panel features 120Hz dynamic refresh rate and 10-bit color. The touchscreen natively polls at 360Hz, but that number can be boosted to 720Hz in software while gaming.

The display lets you adjust the colors from the display settings. You can choose from Vivid, Natural, or Pro mode. From our previous testing, we know Vivid corresponds to DCI-P3, Natural is sRGB, and Pro mode lets you manually pick between Cinematic, which is Display P3, and Brilliant, which sets the display to its widest native gamut. You can also manually adjust the white balance for any of the presets.

While we didn't do any color testing, the OnePlus 10R display did seem to be reasonably well-calibrated after a quick inspection and compared against known reference displays. The phone also supports native color management, so the best option would be to set the phone to the Natural mode and let the phone handle the color management based on the content for the most accurate colors.

The display supports dynamic refresh rates up to 120Hz. The display can cycle between 120Hz, 90Hz, and 60Hz when set to the High refresh rate option. The adjustments are made based on user activity, display content, and whitelisted applications.

Display settings

For example, actively interacting with the display sets the refresh to its maximum most of the time but drops down eventually when the user stops interacting. Content like videos and maps can also cause the display to drop down to 60Hz. Lastly, some apps like YouTube, Google Maps, and most games are also locked to 60Hz.

Unfortunately, OnePlus' refresh rate heuristics are clumsy and rather poorly thought out. The OS does things like checking what percentage of the display is occupied by video to determine what refresh rate to use. Unfortunately, it can do this on the fly, which means apps like Instagram, which has static images as well as video content, can cause the display to rapidly fluctuate between 60Hz and 120Hz as you scroll through your timeline.

We highlighted this behavior in our OnePlus 10 Pro review and also in a dedicated PSA post recently. Unfortunately, the exact same behavior is observed on the OnePlus 10R as well. The behavior seems endemic to OxygenOS 12.1 as we haven't observed it on other OxygenOS versions, including OxygenOS 12.

Moving on, the phone also supports HDR10+ video. The HDR performance on the OnePlus 10R was poor; the phone would switch to a very cool and inaccurate white point, the colors would become oversaturated, and there was noticeable oversharpening applied. The entire experience is like watching a TV calibrated by an electronics store salesman.

Despite these niggles, the display on the OnePlus 10R is actually quite good. The issues are all software-related, which means, given adequate care and attention, they can be fixed. Whether or not that ever happens is up for debate.

Charging

The OnePlus 10R ships in two versions in India. The standard version features a 5000mAh battery with an 80W SuperVOOC charger. The Endurance edition ships with a 4500mAh battery and 160W SuperVOOC charger.

Even though the Endurance edition ships with a 160W charger, the phone itself supports up to 150W charging. As for why it has a smaller 4500mAh battery, OnePlus says it is purely for safety reasons. Their testing revealed that 4500mAh was the sweet spot for performance and the safety features they have implemented.

Our review unit was the 150W model, which allowed us to test OnePlus' claims, which state that you can go from 1-30% in 3 minutes and 17 minutes for a full charge.

Battery settings

In our testing, the phone took almost 4 minutes to hit 30% from 1%. Moreover, it took 20 minutes to reach full charge. So the numbers aren't quite identical to what OnePlus claims, but they are in the same ballpark.

Leaving aside the pedanticism, it's worth appreciating that the phone charged completely in just 20 minutes. That's 20 minutes to go from almost flat to a full charge. That is absolutely amazing and an incredible feat of engineering. We just hope OnePlus has done its due diligence and made sure all of this is safe for everyday use.

Loudspeaker

The OnePlus 10R has a stereo speaker system. The speakers can get quite loud but don't sound very good. They are a bit tinny, and the sound is congested in the higher frequencies, making it sound indistinct and muddy compared to something like the OnePlus 10 Pro. The sound is also biased towards the bottom speaker, which sounds much louder.

The OnePlus 10R is the first mainline OnePlus phone in a while to not have Dolby Atmos audio processing. Instead, it has Dirac audio, which is usually found on the Nord phones. For simple virtualization of sound, Dirac does the job, but you don't get the ability to decode the Atmos codec in media.