OnePlus 12R review

"The most advanced OnePlus display, ever"

The OnePlus 12R is equipped with what the company calls its best display ever, which is at least a little surprising, given that the R isn't the current top-end model. The 6.78-inch display here has a resolution of 1264x2780px in a 19.8:9 aspect ratio (or 2.2:1 if you're wired that way), which works out to a pixel density of 450ppi. The OnePlus12 non-R has a proper 1440p(+) resolution and a density of over 500ppi - a mostly irrelevant advantage, but just one way in which this isn't the best OnePlus display.

Anyway, the LTPO OLED panel supports a variable refresh rate in the 1-120Hz range. High-frequency 2160Hz pulse-width modulation (PWM) is used for dimming, so you shouldn't be seeing flicker at low brightness settings, while the touch sampling rate is specified at up to 1000Hz (do we still care about that?). Dolby Vision and HDR10+ are on the list of supported standards too.

OnePlus' outlandish claims for peak brightness on the 12 proved outside the scope of our testing methodology and we couldn't measure the 12R's promised 4,500nits either, though that has been the norm with the latest displays. The 1,600nits in high brightness mode remained elusive too, but that's not to say that the OnePlus 12R is lacking in brightness.

Quite the opposite. We measured just under 1,200nits in adaptive mode and a little under 800nits when adjusting the slider manually - excellent results, particularly for the 12R's price point.

Refresh rate

The OnePlus 12R has a couple of refresh rate modes and in the 'High' mode you can also set app-specific caps at 60/90/120Hz - handy if you want to enjoy the smoothness most of the time, but need to limit some app's battery consumption.

The adaptive behavior works as expected and the phone adjusts the refresh rate based on mode, app, touch input, and brightness and we did observe it go all the way down to the promised 1Hz. When it came to gaming, we tried a few of our usual titles, and the 12R proved capable of high frame/refresh rate gaming too, though it wasn't strictly for every game that we know is capable of it.

Streaming and HDR

Just like the 12, the OnePlus 12R supports all sorts of HDR standards, including HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. We got HDR streams from YouTube and Netflix, but the 12R, unlike the 12, still has the brightness in HDR linked to the global brightness setting. The 12R's display will remain in HDR mode when an HDR YouTube video is playing back in PiP mode, unlike the 12, which goes out of HDR in that case - we think the 12R's behavior is the correct one, though there could be a correlation between that behavior and the way HDR brightness is linked (or not) to global brightness.

The OnePlus 12R also supports HDR in photos in the gallery - Android 14's Ultra HDR functionality goes by ProXDR on ColorOS.

OnePlus 12R battery life

Our new Active Use Score is an estimate of how long the battery will last if you use the device with a mix of all four test activities. You can adjust the calculation based on your usage pattern using the sliders below. You can read about our current battery life testing procedure here. For a comprehensive list of all tested devices so far, head this way.

The OnePlus 12R is equipped with a 5,500mAh battery, the highest capacity ever on a OnePlus phone - not that it's a meaningful advantage over the 5,400mAh on the 12. Still, it's about the biggest battery you can get on a mainstream phone.

In our Active Use test, the OnePlus 12R performed rather well, just outlasting its more esteemed stablemate, and posting numbers way ahead of potential competitors.

Charging speed

The 12R ships with a SuperVOOC adapter that's rated for 100W when plugged into a 220V outlet or 80W if you're in 110V territory - same as the 12. That's been the case on previous OnePluses too - 100W/80W on the 11, 80W/65W on the 10 Pro.

In our testing, the OnePlus 12R took 25 minutes to reach 100% when starting from empty - a minute more than the OnePlus 12, which doesn't really matter. The 12R is neck and neck with the Xiaomi 13T Pro and the Moto Edge 40 Pro, but the rest of the competitors we can think of are nowhere near. The 12R is certainly one fast-charging phone.

There is no wireless charging capability on the OnePlus 12R - a bit of a blemish in an otherwise strong specsheet. The 12 does support it and so too do a bunch of the 12R's rivals, so that omission could disqualify the 12R from some people's shortlists.

Speaker test

The OnePlus 12R adopts the same speaker setup as the 12. A primary speaker outputs through a couple of openings on the bottom, and another one that fires forward through an earpiece slit and up through another small hole. In vertical orientation, the top one is assigned the left channel, while in landscape the phone will respect the orientation and switch channels to match. Either way, each speaker will also be outputting the opposite channel's track at a lower volume.

Bottom speaker • Top speaker • Earpiece

The 12R earned a 'Very Good' rating for loudness in our test, a notch up from the 12's 'Good' result. It's got a distinctly different sound profile though, and we do tend to prefer the 12's output to the 12R's. The 12R is missing some low-end presence and is a bid more mid-focused, but it still delivers clean sound all the way up to max volume. We'd say the OP12R has an edge over a Pixel 8 or a Xiaomi 13T Pro, but the Galaxy S23 FE has it beat.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.