OnePlus Nord 2 long-term review

Performance, smoothness

Both OxygenOS and ColorOS currently offer generally very smooth software experiences, and the MediaTek Dimensity 1200 SoC in the OnePlus Nord 2 may not be on par with Qualcomm's latest and greatest, but it's still a plenty-capable upper mid-range chipset which for anything but intense gaming should feel indistinguishable in use. But this phone's problem is its screen's refresh rate, which is what keeps its smoothness at a level below even cheaper devices with 120 Hz panels.

Sure, it's one of the smoothest experiences you can have with a 90 Hz display, but physics is physics and 90 < 120 any day of the week. So for what it has to work with, the Nord 2 puts out some outstanding smoothness levels. But because of what it has to work with, it will never be above the middle of the pack in our unofficial subjective smoothness rankings. While a 120 Hz screen is no guarantee a phone will rise to No.1 in there, not having 120 Hz is guaranteed to keep it at a low standing.

Performance, as we hinted at earlier, is great. The refresh rate notwithstanding, for 99% of daily activities on the phone that aren't intensive gaming, you won't feel that this isn't a 'proper' flagship SoC powering the Nord 2. It's very, very fast, and honestly, it feels as good as a Snapdragon 870 or 888 - these three are pretty much indistinguishable from each other in day-to-day mundane tasks unless you're really trying to push the envelope. The Nord 2 definitely didn't need a better chipset, it needed a higher refresh rate screen.

Battery life

Battery life has been very good on the OnePlus Nord 2, and when you factor in the battery's good but not record-breaking capacity in the calculation "very good" turns into "outstanding". There's also no possible way to overstate how much of a game-changer the extra fast charging is in day-to-day use scenarios.

A quick top-up replenishes the battery much more than you'd think if you've never used 60+W fast charging before, and means that even if your regular use case is much more intensive than ours, so much so that you'd need midday top-ups, these will be quick and efficient. This is one area where the Nord 2 absolutely rules its price point; competitors just can't touch it. Think about it - 0 to 100% in 31 minutes! Of course, you'll have to use the provided charger to achieve the top speeds, but that's the way it's been for years now when it comes to VOOC/SuperVOOC/Warp Charge.

With our use, we found that it was always possible to achieve six hours of screen on time in a day, with seven hours being very likely as well. On some days, we could have even pushed for eight, but that's kind of the maximum of what you can expect from this phone with a use case similar to ours (and you shouldn't expect to reach eight hours every single day). These are commendable results for a battery that's just 4,500 mAh, matching in longevity a lot of devices with 5,000 mAh cells (or thereabouts).

Battery life samples

The screenshots above give you an idea what to expect - again, if your usage is anything like ours. Otherwise, your mileage may vary, you know, the usual caveat applies.

The Nord 2 doesn't have wireless charging, which is not surprising at its price point, since this feature is still confined to more expensive phones throughout the mobile world.

For this long-term review, we were using the Nord 2 about 12-16 hours each day off the charger, with the Ambient Display set to always-on during that time, primarily Wi-Fi connectivity, about an hour or two of mobile data, Bluetooth always on, about an hour or two of listening to music or podcasts via Bluetooth with TWS earbuds, location always on and about half an hour to an hour of navigation via Waze or Google Maps.

We like that there's a feature called "Optimized night charging" in Battery settings, which, if turned on, learns when you are likely to be asleep and, if you charge the phone during this time, controls the speed to avoid overcharging. This basically means it won't charge to 100% immediately, instead wait until the morning to go there. It's a welcome feature, and it pops up a notification when it's working so you can turn it off if you need a quick, full top-up at night for some reason.

Working in concert with this is "Sleep standby optimization" which, based on the same calculations on when you might be asleep, reduces the amount of background data used and shows you fewer notifications. You'll see if this is working if, when you pick the phone up in the morning, for a moment or so, it seems to have very few notifications waiting for you, but then many more start coming in at the same time.

Battery settings

We didn't mind leaving this on, especially as the DND mode never worked, this basically helped at least take down the sheer number of notification chimes going off while we were trying to sleep, if not suppress all of them altogether like DND mode should have done (our full rant about DND and all the other bugs we've encountered is in the Software section of this review).