OnePlus 11 long-term review

Performance, smoothness

The OnePlus 11 performs like a champ on a day-to-day basis, as it should considering the fact that it sports what is still the highest-end chipset in the Android world. We were never left wanting for more performance with this device throughout our extended time with it, and we're willing to bet that neither will you. It's always fast and on point, it always feels like a flagship device.

However, last year's smoothness champ was the OnePlus 10 Pro, which is in effect, this phone's predecessor. So, understandably, we were expecting the OnePlus 11 to reclaim the throne for OnePlus, after it was taken away by Xiaomi with the 13 Pro just a few weeks ago, following a very long reign by the 10 Pro. But no. Unfortunately, the OnePlus 11 just isn't as smooth as the Xiaomi 13 Pro, and so that one remains the current champ.

Still, the OnePlus 11 is incredibly close. We'll put it like this: if you consider the Xiaomi 13 Pro to be at 100 (points, percentage, whatever) in smoothness, then the OnePlus 11 is around 95-98. It's the closest to the champ at the moment, as it is a tiny bit smoother than its predecessor, but it's not quite there.

All of the above discussion about smoothness is entirely moot for you if you're coming from any Samsung device, or a mid-ranger from any other brand. The OnePlus 11 will feel unreally smooth in such cases, we're just pointing out minute differences here for the people who are looking at both of these.

Battery life

The OnePlus 11 has impressed us with great longevity all-round, even though its screen on time numbers aren't record-breaking. It delivered consistent results, however, it was dependable without any random battery drain issues on some days. We'd put this battery life at "great", on a scale of (best to worst) excellent, great, very good, good, bad, horrible.

It will probably last most people through a day, but those with very demanding use cases will find they might need a midday top-up here and there. Luckily, the charging speed is on point to deliver that in a very stress-free manner (provided, of course, that you haven't forgotten your OnePlus charger and cable at home).

Battery life snapshots on different days

We almost never reached for a midday top-up, with our use case generally not being too much to handle for this device in one day. As a reminder, that's around 12-17 hours off the charger, with primarily Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, about an hour or so of 5G, Bluetooth always on, an hour or two of listening to podcasts via true wireless earbuds, an hour or so of phone calls via Bluetooth earbuds, location always on, and half an hour of GPS navigation via Waze. With this usage, we've gotten the screen on times you can see above (don't forget to pay attention to how much was left of the battery at those points too).

While OnePlus has decided to skimp on offering a case in the box, at least the charger is still there (who knows for how long, though) and capable of delivering 100W maximum. This results in a zero to 100% charge time of 22 minutes, which is funny because that's exactly the same as what the Xiaomi 13 Pro achieves in our testing with its 120W charger. So, in short, don't just look at the wattage of the power brick when you're searching for a new phone to buy - check our charge tests too, sometimes they may be surprising, like in this case.

There's no wireless charging on offer here, which may or may not be of huge importance to you. We're somewhere in the middle - it's a nice feature to have for sure, but not something we can't live without. And at this price, we won't fault OnePlus for not including it - corners did have to get somewhere, after all.