OnePlus Nord 4 review

Fully equipped 6.74-inch OLED

Coming from the previous Nord 3 generation, the newer Nord 4 retains the same 6.74-inch 120Hz OLED panel with 2,772 x 1,240px resolution, which is slightly higher than you'd expect from a phone in this class. Using the same display is quite alright as the Nord 3 had an excellent display anyway.

It supports HDR10+ content as well as Widevine L1 for high-quality streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime. You also get Ultra HDR functionality for displaying extra bright highlights in your photos in the Gallery.

When it comes to legibility, the display can be pretty bright when needed. In manual mode, we got up to 529 nits, while in auto mode, the system boosts up to 1,163 nits. That's enough for comfortable outdoor use, even on the brightest sunny days.

OnePlus claims that it can go beyond 2,000 nits, but that's probably when displaying HDR-ready content and on small patches on the screen.

Refresh rate

Refresh rate control isn't optimal, and we found some issues like last year. For instance, if you use the handset in Auto Select mode, it only goes as high as 90Hz in many of the apps, including Google Chrome and the default Gallery app. 120Hz is still available in system menus, though.

If you are not interacting with the display, it will dial down to 60Hz to save power. Same goes for video playback.

Battery life

The OnePlus Nord 4 offers a large 5,500 mAh battery and runs on a supposedly efficient Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3. The results show the device to be one of the best in its class when it comes to endurance, and we guess the software should also be commended for that.

Anyway, the Active Use Score of 14:41h is quite impressive and easily beats most of its competitors. The handset scores particularly well in our web browsing and video playback tests. The gaming score is about average.

Charging speed

The Nord 4 supports 100W SuperVOOC charging, which may not sound like a considerable step up from last year's 80W charging protocol, but it does make a difference.

The Nord 4 can fully charge in 28 minutes, which is impressive on its own and puts it ahead of most of its competitors too. But then again, the Nord 3 completes an entire charging session in 32 minutes with its 80W charger. In reality, those 4 minutes are unlikely to make any meaningful difference, but remember that the Nord 4 comes with a 10% bigger battery (5,500 mAh vs. 5,000 mAh). So not only does it come with a bigger battery, but it also shaves a few minutes off the charging time to 100%. Not bad at all!

Sadly, however, OnePlus doesn't provide the corresponding 100W SuperVOOC charger with the phone in Europe (Indian units do get the charger bundled), so you have to get one separately. USB Power Delivery chargers are supported too, but they might not be as fast as the proprietary protocol.

Speakers

The Nord 4's speaker setup is, as expected, hybrid. That means the left, or the top speaker, depending on the orientation, doubles as an earpiece. That usually leads to imbalanced sound, but both speakers, in this case, sound almost equally loud.

Speaking of loudness, the phone got -24.6 LUFS, which is enough to earn the phone a "Very good" score. That's also slightly louder than last year's Nord 3.

Quality-wise, it's more than decent. It has relatively full sound and pronounced bass, but the highs can get a bit squeaky at maximum volume. Vocals are always pretty clean.

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.