OnePlus Nord 4 review

Simple dual-camera setup

There's seemingly little change in the camera hardware compared to the Nord 3, but in reality, there's a notable difference between the new Nord 4 and its predecessor. And unfortunately, the change isn't for the better, at least according to the specs sheet.

The main 50MP camera now uses a Sony Lytia LYT-600 sensor, which is 1/1.95" in size - considerably smaller than the 50MP Sony IMX890 1/1/56" used in the previous generation. Perhaps OnePlus was able to offset that with better image processing?

• Wide (main): 50MP Sony IMX882 (Lytia LYT-600), 1/1.95", 0.8µm, f/1.8, 26mm, PDAF, PDAF, OIS; 4K@60fps
• Ultrawide: 8MP Sony IMX355 1/4.0", 1.12µm , f/2.2, 16mm, fixed focus; 1080p@30fps
• Front camera: 16MP Sony IMX471 1/3.0", 1.0µm, f/2.4, 24mm, PDAF; 1080p@30fps

The ultrawide unit remains the same, while the 2MP dedicated macro shooter from last year is gone - alas, it won't be missed.

The Nord 4 also retains the same selfie unit from last year. It's equipped with autofocus.

Daylight photos

Main camera

The new Nord 4 takes surprisingly good photos with its main camera during the day. It's not that we expected low quality, but we were skeptical about the newer, yet smaller 50MP sensor at first. However, the Nord 4 proved us wrong.

Main camera daylight samples

The photos contain a decent amount of fine detail, they are sharp without oversharpening and the dynamic range is pretty wide. Sure, some high-contrast scenes are a bit challenging for the Nord 4, but the system handles them pretty well regardless.

Colors are conservative but accurate. We weren't able to detect visible noise even in more challenging indoor environments.

Portraits: Normal • Portrait mode

This is in stark contrast to last year's Nord 3, which produced oversharpened, overprocessed stills with oversaturated colors. The Nord 4 is definitely a nice change of direction.

50MP samples

The results from the 50MP mode are not very good, though.

2x zoom

The 2x zoom crops are good for the most part. Despite the smaller sensor size, the Nord 4 delivers nicer 2x zoom crops from the main camera, compared to the Nord 3. They are decently sharp and close to medium-range objects look detailed, but distant ones are pretty soft. Also, there are some upscaling artifacts left behind as the camera struggles to resolve high-frequency patterns and details, such as foliage and grass.

Some of the stills came out with lower contrast too which is probably due to issues with the HDR algorithm.

2x zoom daylight samples

The rest of the processing is identical to the main camera, except, of course, that it's slightly less detailed and not as sharp.

2x zoom portraits: Normal • Portrait mode

Ultrawide camera

Compared to most 8MP ultrawide implementations, the Nord 4 is doing okay in this regard. The tiny sensor produces relatively detailed stills with good contrast and accurate colors, but with limited dynamic range and insufficient sharpness.

Ultrawide camera daylight samples

Low-light photos

Main camera

With the Auto Night mode on, you can expect it to kick in more often than not. But despite forcing the Night mode, the nighttime photos look pretty natural. There's no oversharpening or extreme post-processing. The shadows are also well-preserved, but with plenty of detail in them as well.

Main camera low-light samples

Detail is aplenty, but sharpness could be better in some cases. Dynamic range is impressive and noise is almost non-existent. The samples just look clean and lively.

2x zoom

Although the 2x zoom crops share the same processing with the standard 1x photos, there's a noticeable loss in sharpness and the ability to resolve fine detail. However, the pictures are relatively clean from noise. To be fair, it's quite expected that the 2x zoom crop mode will struggle after dusk.

2x zoom low-light samples

Ultrawide camera

We noticed that the Night mode takes a long time to take a single photo. In most scenes, we were forced to keep steady for at least 3-4 seconds. But that wasn't enough to salvage the photos. They are extremely soft, with low contrast and fuzzy even. Dynamic range is notably adequate, though.

Ultrawide camera low-light samples

Selfies

The selfie quality is pretty underwhelming. The photos we took are soft, albeit detailed, with low contrast, low color saturation and dynamic range that could use some improvement.

All in all, the images appear upscaled from a lower resolution, which might be true if the sensor is indeed a QuadBayer unit as we suspect.

Selfies

Video recording

The handset supports 4K video recording at up to 60fps with its main back camera and up to 1080p@30fps with its ultrawide camera due to the sensor's limited resolution. The front camera is also limited to 1080p@30fps.

Perhaps the biggest misstep is the lack of EIS when recording 2160p videos, even at 30fps. Good thing there's an Ultra Steady mode that mimics the action camera stabilization, but records in 1080p at 60fps.

You can check out the playlist below, which includes multiple video samples.

In any case, the 4K footage itself looks pretty nice. It's sharp, the camera resolves plenty of detail, the dynamic range is wide, and the colors are pretty close to natural. Maybe a bit of extra saturation wouldn't have hurt.

The low-light video is also quite impressive as it delivers a lot of fine detail, nice contrast, good dynamic range, for the most part, and a noise-free scene.

The ultrawide video lacks detail, colors are washed out, and dynamic range is somewhat limited. It's also pretty soft.

As we mentioned earlier, there's no EIS in 4K, so you will get quite shaky videos when walking and recording. The Ultra Steady mode looks quite smooth, but it's in 1080p.