OnePlus Nord 2 long-term review

Camera

The Nord 2 has an exciting camera package. The main sensor is the Sony IMX766, which is far from breaking any size records, but is still flagship-grade, and, in fact, used by both Oppo and OnePlus on higher-end devices. That's intriguing to see at this price point for sure, but understandably the ultrawide is less impressive (bill of materials cuts had to come from somewhere), with a low 8 MP resolution and no autofocus, while a telephoto is missing altogether.

We can't really fault the Nord 2 for the lack of optical zooming capabilities, since even more expensive devices are missing that. The missing autofocus for the ultrawide is also pretty much par for the course at this price point. However, this means no macro shots for you - and unlike most of its competitors, the Nord 2 doesn't even have a low-res dedicated macro shooter.

During the day, the main camera produces images that, while generally very good, unfortunately, don't always seem flagship-grade - some look great, some are just good enough. We expected more than "good for the price point" from this phone's main camera sensor with its top-of-the-line pedigree.

Anyway, you get high contrast, wide dynamic range, and accurate-ish colors (if oversaturated, as is generally the case in phones nowadays). Foliage is generally a mixed bag, and again - while these look good, we expected stunning. Oversharpening can sometimes be an issue. We stayed clear of the AI toggle, by the way, since it saturates colors way beyond what we think looks decent. We also shot with HDR set to Auto since that's the default, and we assume most people will never touch the defaults.

Daytime samples from the main camera

Moving on to the ultrawide, you generally get decent amounts of detail, good (if slightly exaggerated) colors, and good dynamic range. There's way too much contrast in a lot of scenes, though, while foliage never quite looks natural. Sharpness jumps around quite a bit from shot to shot. And while none of the images are bad per se, this unreliability isn't a good look (pun intended).

Daytime samples from the ultrawide

Despite the lack of a zoom camera, you get both 2x and 5x toggles in the viewfinder, and we experimented with both. This isn't any sort of magic zoom, by the way, just a simple crop and upscale digital zoom process.

Daytime 2x zoom samples

That means the 2x images will inevitably always look better than the 5x ones - the latter approaching and sometimes being fully into oil painting territory. Most of these are best left to viewing on phone screens and not anything bigger. Their imperfections (to put it nicely) easily shine through on a computer or, even worse, on a TV.

Daytime 5x zoom samples

At night in Auto mode, the main camera produces good images with nice amounts of detail, generally good exposure, low noise, and pleasant colors. Thanks to OIS, you aren't likely to get any blurry shots, and that's a huge plus at this price point - more competitors should definitely add OIS to their main cams.

Nighttime samples from the main camera

Night Mode makes things even better, which means you should probably use it as often as you can, once the ambient light levels go down. The Night Mode shots are more detailed, have even less noise, more saturated colors (though not to the point of cartoonishness), while the highlights are restored, and you can see more detail in the shadows. Overall, this is a very good Night Mode then.

Night Mode samples from the main camera

The ultrawide struggles at night, unsurprisingly, churning out constantly underexposed shots. Even so, at least the noise reduction doesn't go overboard as much as in other devices, and so it smears less of the fine detail.

Nighttime ultrawide samples

Night Mode makes things better for the ultrawide too, if only slightly, and provided that you can sit still while it does its thing. There's no OIS here, so any movement in your hands while it's capturing will result in blurriness. Provided you don't move for a few seconds, you'll get better exposure, and overall brighter shots, with better sharpness and more detail. Colors seem nicer too, but we still wouldn't call these pictures great.

Night Mode samples from the ultrawide

The 2x zoom shots at night aren't very good, as you might expect since it's digital zoom through and through here. We'd say these work in a pinch, for sharing on social media or something like that.

Nighttime 2x zoom samples

However, that definitely doesn't apply to the 5x shots, which, at night, are always solidly into oil painting territory, no doubts about that. So if you can, "zoom with your feet", as they say, since the main camera is plenty capable at night, as described above.

Nighttime 5x zoom samples

Night Mode works on the zoomed pictures as well, but there's only so much it can do given the quality degradation inherent to the digital zooming process.

Night Mode 2x zoom samples

This applies for 2x images, the 5x ones are made even worse by applying Night Mode.

Night Mode 5x zoom samples

Selfies are great when there's a lot of ambient light around. They come out sharp, with plenty of detail, good contrast, nice looking colors, great dynamic range. Whenever the light around you dips even a little, though, selfies will lose some of their sharpness, while still being okay.

At night, things wholly depend on how much light there is around you, and using the screen flash helps a lot in brightening up your face. Portrait mode shots are possible, and they have good colors during the day and great contrast. Subject separation isn't perfect, but will do if you really need a Portrait mode selfie. These are less detailed than the Auto mode selfies, though.

Selfies, day and night, Portrait Mode off/on

Going into this long-term review, we expected the Nord 2's main camera to rise above its price point, given its flagship chops, and it does do that at night for sure. During the day, it's less of a delta with competing devices at around the same price. It produces nice images, but the random oversharpening tendency is a bit baffling, while shots that would benefit from a good HDR algorithm are always slightly disappointing.

The ultrawide is better during daytime than we thought it would be, while at night it unsurprisingly isn't even close to the main shooter, and zooming on the Nord 2 should only be done during the day in our opinion, and only when you don't have any other option.