OnePlus Nord CE4 hands-on review

GSMArena Team, 01 April 2024.

Display

The Nord CE4 has a 6.7-inch, 2412 x 1080 px resolution AMOLED display. The display can refresh up to 120Hz with a 240Hz touch sampling rate and 2160Hz PWM dimming. It supports full coverage of the sRGB and P3 color spaces, 10-bit color depth, and supports HDR10 and HDR10+ standards.

In terms of color performance, the display on the Nord CE4 does not impress, and that's down to the calibration. The default Vivid profile has oversaturated colors and cool-blue white tones. You'd expect both to be sorted by the Natural profile but all it does is clamp the color gamut to sRGB while the white balance remains too cool. Worst of all, the color temperature slider cannot make the display warm enough to hit D65 white point even at its warmest setting.

OnePlus Nord CE4 hands-on review

Peak brightness for the display is also lackluster. You can get by doing basic things like messaging or navigation but when taking pictures it can be hard to see much detail in your images as the display simply doesn't get bright enough.

The brightness issue also affects HDR performance. Never mind the lackluster color accuracy but instead of simply clipping highlights that are out of its limits, the phone instead compresses the entire dynamic range of the content to fit within its mediocre brightness range. This means even lower luminance levels such as 100 nits and 400 nits are duller than they should be and makes the entire image dull and indistinguishable from non-HDR content.

Moving on to refresh rate, there have been fewer things to complain about since OnePlus added the ability to set a custom refresh rate for apps on the device. You can set most (but not all) apps to either 60Hz, 90Hz, or 120Hz. This works fine in most cases but not for games.

Display settings - OnePlus Nord CE4 hands-on review Display settings - OnePlus Nord CE4 hands-on review Display settings - OnePlus Nord CE4 hands-on review
Display settings

When trying games we know to support high refresh rates, it didn't seem to matter what setting was manually chosen on the phone as all games we tried were limited to a maximum of 60fps. The display can still ramp up to 120Hz if you set it so but it doesn't matter if the game is still rendering at a locked 60fps.

Also, sometimes apps don't actually work at the refresh rate of your choice after they are installed. You may find some apps still refreshing at 60Hz even if set to 120Hz and you have to manually toggle back and forth a few times before they start working correctly.

Overall, the display on the Nord CE4 is fine for most use cases but the lack of good color calibration, limited peak brightness, poor HDR performance, and no high refresh rate gaming hold it back.

Charging

The Nord CE4 has a sizable 5500mAh battery with 100W fast charging. OnePlus claims 29 minutes for a full charge, which was replicated exactly in our testing. The phone also reached 69% charging in just 15 minutes. These are incredible results for any phone but especially one at this price point.

Charging speed

  • in 15 min
  • in 30 min
  • Time to full charge (from 0%)
OnePlus 12R OnePlus 12R
70%
5500 mAh 100W SuperVOOC
OnePlus Nord CE4 OnePlus Nord CE4
69%
5500 mAh 100W SUPERVOOC
OnePlus Nord 3 OnePlus Nord 3
61%
5000 mAh 80W SuperVOOC
OnePlus Nord CE3 5G OnePlus Nord CE3 5G
53%
5000 mAh 80W SuperVOOC
Motorola Edge 40 Neo Motorola Edge 40 Neo
50%
5000 mAh 68W TurboPower
Redmi Note 13 Pro Redmi Note 13 Pro
49%
5100 mAh 67W
Realme 12 Pro+ Realme 12 Pro+
49%
5000 mAh 67W charging
vivo V27 vivo V27
49%
4600 mAh 66W FlashCharge
Poco X6 Pro Poco X6 Pro
47%
5000 mAh 67W
vivo V30 vivo V30
39%
5000 mAh 80W FlashCharge
Nothing Phone (2a) Nothing Phone (2a)
29%
5000 mAh 45W
Galaxy A55 Galaxy A55
29%
5000 mAh 25W PD
Galaxy A35 Galaxy A35
26%
5000 mAh 25W Samsung PD + PPS
OnePlus 12R OnePlus 12R
100%
5500 mAh 100W SuperVOOC
OnePlus Nord CE4 OnePlus Nord CE4
100%
5500 mAh 100W SUPERVOOC
OnePlus Nord CE3 5G OnePlus Nord CE3 5G
98%
5000 mAh 80W SuperVOOC
OnePlus Nord 3 OnePlus Nord 3
98%
5000 mAh 80W SuperVOOC
Poco X6 Pro Poco X6 Pro
83%
5000 mAh 67W
Redmi Note 13 Pro Redmi Note 13 Pro
83%
5100 mAh 67W
vivo V27 vivo V27
82%
4600 mAh 66W FlashCharge
Motorola Edge 40 Neo Motorola Edge 40 Neo
82%
5000 mAh 68W TurboPower
Realme 12 Pro+ Realme 12 Pro+
81%
5000 mAh 67W charging
vivo V30 vivo V30
74%
5000 mAh 80W FlashCharge
Nothing Phone (2a) Nothing Phone (2a)
59%
5000 mAh 45W
Galaxy A55 Galaxy A55
55%
5000 mAh 25W PD
Galaxy A35 Galaxy A35
52%
5000 mAh 25W Samsung PD + PPS
OnePlus 12R OnePlus 12R
0:25h
5500 mAh 100W SuperVOOC
OnePlus Nord CE4 OnePlus Nord CE4
0:29h
5500 mAh 100W SUPERVOOC
OnePlus Nord CE3 5G OnePlus Nord CE3 5G
0:31h
5000 mAh 80W SuperVOOC
OnePlus Nord 3 OnePlus Nord 3
0:32h
5000 mAh 80W SuperVOOC
Redmi Note 13 Pro Redmi Note 13 Pro
0:42h
5100 mAh 67W
vivo V30 vivo V30
0:42h
5000 mAh 80W FlashCharge
Poco X6 Pro Poco X6 Pro
0:43h
5000 mAh 67W
Realme 12 Pro+ Realme 12 Pro+
0:43h
5000 mAh 67W charging
Motorola Edge 40 Neo Motorola Edge 40 Neo
0:51h
5000 mAh 68W TurboPower
vivo V27 vivo V27
0:53h
4600 mAh 66W FlashCharge
Nothing Phone (2a) Nothing Phone (2a)
1:03h
5000 mAh 45W
Galaxy A55 Galaxy A55
1:03h
5000 mAh 25W PD
Galaxy A35 Galaxy A35
1:26h
5000 mAh 25W Samsung PD + PPS

Audio

The Nord CE4 has a pair of stereo speakers. At lower volumes, the sound is a bit thin and lacking in low frequencies but sounds clear and natural. At about 70% volume, the sound gets extremely cluttered and muddy when playing music but is fine for spoken content like podcasts and YouTube videos.

OnePlus Nord CE4 hands-on review

The phone lacks Dolby Atmos or Dirac processing. Instead, it has Oppo's OReality Audio, which has presets for Movie, Gaming, and Music that have varying levels of spatialization. The Music preset also enables a 10-band equalizer. This is similar to what you get with Atmos except for the part where you cannot decode content encoded with the Atmos codec.

The headphone audio works well, both in wired and wireless mode, provided you bring your own adapter for wired audio (passive adapters are supported). Wireless audio gets all the modern codecs such as LDAC, LHDC, and aptX Adaptive.

Reader comments

  • meganekun
  • 14 Jun 2024
  • sHw

It seems like its probably sht so it really doesnt matter... but GSMarena could have at least dont the testing for all the other things like loudness & battery life hours

  • Shrek69
  • 26 May 2024
  • XN$

Then tell me what do you suggest. Give me example

  • Anonymous
  • 19 May 2024
  • utc

Please don't buy. Huge problem on connectivity and an duplicate product. My suggestion, do not see YouTube to buy phones like this.Its a waste of money.