OnePlus Nord 2 5G review

Flagship primary camera, mid-range companions

One of the most notable flagship treats the OnePlus Nord 2 5G offers is the flagship-grade 50MP primary camera on the back with a new Sony sensor and optical image stabilization. It is part of a tri-eyed setup with an 8MP ultrawide shooter and a 2MP depth sensor. A dual-LED dual-tone flash is also around.

The front camera for selfies is a 32MP Sony imager.

The OnePlus Nord 2 5G has a 50MP primary camera with Sony IMX 766 1/1.56" Quad-Bayer sensor with 23mm f/1.88 optically stabilized lens, 1.0µm pixels, and PDAF. This camera shoots by default in 12.5MP. Night Mode is available on this camera.

There is no lossless zoom available on the OnePlus Nord 2 5G.

Second is the ultrawide snapper with an 8MP Sony IMX 355 sensor behind f/2.25 lens. There is no autofocus. Night Mode works on this camera, too.

The monochrome depth camera uses a 2MP GalaxyCore GC02M1 sensor with f/2.5 aperture.

Finally, the OnePlus Nord 2 features just one selfie camera, while the Nord had a dual-setup with an ultrawide front shooter. So, the selfie on the Nord 2 is the same as the primary on the Nord 1 - a 32MP Sony IMX 615 (probably Quad-Bayer), 0.8µm pixels and 26mm f/2.45 lens. The focus is fixed.

The Oxygen camera app is the familiar Oppo/Realme one. Shocking, isn't it? It offers AI Scene Enhancement - it's like an advanced HDR mode, which may stack several images to offers even further improvements in the dynamic range, but the most prominent "improvement" is the higher color saturation.

The Expert mode works only on the main camera, and you get to tweak exposure (ISO in the 100-6400 range and shutter speed in the 1/8000s-32s range), white balance (by light temperature, but no presets), manual focus (in arbitrary 0 to 1 units with 0 being close focus and 1 being infinity) and exposure compensation (-2EV to +2EV in 1/6EV increments).

Night Mode is available, and it has an automatic Ultra Night Mode, which triggers in extreme low-light conditions, say 1 lux illuminance. There is also a switch for Tripod Night Mode, which uses up to 45s (simulated) shutter speed to make a sharper, more detailed and noise-free photo.

Camera app

Photo quality

The primary camera on the Nord 2 shots in 12.5MP resolution by default. We left the HDR on Auto, and it triggered for the first four scenes (first row of photos). The images look over-processed. They show incredibly high contrast, pretty wide dynamic range and accurate colors. The resolved detail is a lot although a bit hurt by the HDR.

The rest of the photos were taken without the "help" of HDR. They are nicely detailed with good sharpness and well-developed foliage. The colors are true to life, and we can only praise the contrast and the dynamic range.

In case you decide in favor of the Nord 2 and get it, we'd suggest that you disable the HDR option entirely. The photos look better without it.

Main camera, 12.5MP

OnePlus offers this AI Photo Enhancement toggle, also found on plenty of Realme phones. It can recognize up to 22 different scenes. It usually makes an HDR photo with eye-popping colors, depending on the scene.

When the algorithm detects Blue Sky, Buildings or Grass, you can clearly see the saturated colors. If saturated colors and processed looks are what you are looking for, then, by all means, you leave that thing on.

Main camera with AI, 12.5MP

The OnePlus Nord 2 5G doesn't offer lossless zoom even if there are 2x and 5x toggles on the viewfinder. They do pure digital zoom by crop and upscale, which is okay to look at on the Nord's display, but not good on a computer monitor.

Main camera 2x, 12.5MP

The Nord 2 can shoot in 50MP resolution, too. The high-res images look okay but are a bit noisy and not very detailed. Downscaling a 50MP photo to 12.5MP may yield slightly better results in more complex scenes - like better-defined foliage and more developed grass, bricks, building textures, but nothing that will be worth this manual and lengthy process.

And here are the original 50MP shots we took.

Main camera, 50MP

Most of our ultrawide shots look a bit overprocessed because of the Auto HDR. They are detailed enough, with good colors, and the dynamic range is lovely. We think that the contrast is unnaturally high, and the foliage looks sort of artificial.

On the other hand, the non-HDR photos aren't better per se - they do appeal with a more natural look, but they are less sharp, with better foliage yet much noisier. Such non-HDR photos are numbers 4, 8, and 11.

Ultrawide camera, 8MP

The 12.5MP portraits shot on the main camera with the help of the 2MP depth sensor are good - the subjects are nicely detailed and sharp, while the images come with true-to-life colors and great contrast. The simulated blur looks alright, too. Finally, the subject separation from the background isn't perfect - we've surely seen it done better - but it's fine for this price bracket.

Portraits, 12.5MP

Moving on to low-light. The regular nighttime photos from the main camera are great - they are detailed, with good exposure, incredibly low noise, and excellent color presentation. They look very natural even though some multi-stacking process was clearly at play.

Thanks to the OIS, there were no blurred photos among the bunch we shot. We are not sure if we believe the EXIF, though, as we can't really imagine such good photos to be taken at ISO 10,000 or similar.

Main camera, 12.5MP

We do recommend the Night Mode on the OnePlus Nord 2 as it takes magnificent photos. They are more detailed than the regular snaps, with proficiently cleared noise, even more saturated colors, and amazingly balanced exposure. These photos restore the blown highlights and reveal more detail in the shadows that matter - like bushes and skies.

Main camera Night Mode, 12.5MP

The 2x zoomed photos are cropped and upscaled from the regular photos, so don't expect spectacular sharpness.

2x • 2x Night Mode • 2x • 2x Night Mode

The 8MP photos from the ultrawide camera taken without Night Mode are usable, alright. They are pretty dark, but the noise reduction is balanced, and it stops with the noise cleaning just before it starts smearing fine detail. So, yes, these are usable photos, but showable - that's for you to decide.

Ultrawide camera, 8MP

But hey, there is Night Mode for the ultrawide camera, too, so why bother at all with the regular photos, right? Night Mode does a magnificent job by boosting the exposure and brightening to the otherwise dark scenes. The noise is cleared well, the sharpness is improved, and we can see more detail, and the colors are better as the sepia-like look is gone.

Ultrawide Night Mode, 8MP

If you have a tripod with you, then we suggest trying the Tripod Night Mode (there is a tripod trigger on the viewfinder). It uses longer exposure times but seems to be doing little to no multi-frame smart stacking than the usual Night Mode.

The results are pretty good - the Tripod Night Mode photos from either camera offer a much more natural look instead of the over-processed vibes you immediately get from the regular Night Mode. The images are noticeably more detailed and remarkably noise-free. The color are superb, too.

Tripod NM • Regular NM • Tripod ultrawide NM • Regular ultrawide NM

In extreme low-light conditions, an automatic Ultra Night Mode is triggered when using the Night Mode option. It literally makes the night as bright as day, and if we didn't tell you the UNM photos were taken in pitch dark, there was a good chance you'd decide they are in fact, daylight shots.

First, let's see the scenes through the lens of the ultrawide camera. Note that these two photos were taken with Night Mode, and you can still barely see anything.

UW Night Mode

And now let's see what the main camera can do. Yes, those are photos were taken at 1 lux or so conditions on a cloudy night. And the incredible thing is that the UNM photos are quite detailed with well visible colors. Wow!

Night Mode • Ultra Night Mode • Night Mode • Ultra Night Mode

And here are photos of our usual posters taken with the OnePlus Nord 2 5G. Here's how it stacks up against the competition. Feel free to browse around and pit it against other phones from our extensive database.

OnePlus Nord 2 5G against the Realme GT 5G and the OnePlus Nord in our Photo compare tool

The OnePlus Nord 2 now has only one selfies camera - it's a 32MP shooter with fixed focus. The first two photos were taken in ideal light conditions, and they are brilliant - sharp and detailed, with commendable quality across the board - contrast, colors, dynamic, rendition.

Then, for the last two, we moved a bit deeper in the office while still maintaining satisfactory daylight. Well, the ISO spiked dramatically, and the sharpness dropped a lot. These are still very much usable photos, but better take a couple, as the chance for a blurry photo increases exponentially.

Selfie camera, 32MP

You can take selfie portraits, too - the images are contrasty and with good colors, while the subject separation will be okay unless you have a complex haircut. The subjects aren't that detailed, though, but let's not forget these are 32MP images - just downscale them to 8MP and they'll look perfect.

Portrait selfies, 32MP

Video recording

The OnePlus Nord 2 5G captures videos with its main camera and ultrawide snappers. The main camera records video up to 4K at 30fps, and there's 1080p at both 30fps and 60fps. The ultrawide and selfie shooters are limited to 1080p@30fps video capturing.

You get the option to choose between the h.264 and h.265 codecs.

Electronic stabilization is available - it is always-on and applied across all cameras, on all resolutions and frame rates. The main camera also benefits from OIS.

The Nord 2 is quite generous with the bitrates - the 4K footage gets 50Mbps, while 1080p/30fps is allocated a similarly above-average 20Mbps when using the h.264 codec. The audio bitrate is about 160kbps for the 4K clips and 256kbps for 1080p. The sound is stereo.

The 4K videos from the main camera are excellent - they have plenty of resolved detail but with the right amount of sharpness and make for a very natural look. The noise is nicely low, the colors are true to life, and the dynamic range deserves praise.

Okay, we have used a couple of phones capable of more detailed and sharper 4K footage, but these devices are indeed extremely rare and often - more expensive.

The 1080p videos shot with the ultrawide camera are nice. The detail is okay, the noise is rather low, and the dynamic range is impressive. The colors are a bit washed out, though.

OnePlus can do AI Night video - just hit the AI button when shooting video in low-light conditions. It is shot in 1080p at night and does look good. It highlights the light sources giving them a slightly better look and color saturation.

The 1080p AI video does look brighter than the regular 4K clip. The other benefits - gains in sharpness and lower noise are because of the lower video resolution.

Finally, here is the OnePlus Nord 2 5G in our video comparison database.

2160p: OnePlus Nord 2 5G against the Realme GT 5G and the OnePlus Nord in our Video compare tool