OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G hands-on review

Battery

The OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G has a 4500mAh dual-cell battery. We didn't have time to do our full battery life testing - we will be saving that for our full review - but our first full charge lasted us for a day and a half, which wasn't too bad considering how much we used the device, especially for testing the camera.

OnePlus provides the 65W SUPERVOOC charger with the phone. A 15 minute charge with the supplied charger provides 48% battery from 1% and a full charge takes 45 minutes. The screen shows SUPERVOOC instead of Warp charge, even if you connect one of the older OnePlus chargers.

Conclusion

The OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G is a reasonably well-featured and well-performing phone for the price. It has an attractive design, good display, relatively clean and simple UI with good performance, good main camera quality, decent battery life with fast charging, and even includes a few bells and whistles that have become increasingly rare, such as a headphone jack and expandable storage.

On the downside, the phone ships with Android 11 out of the box, the single loudspeaker feels a bit outdated, the macro camera is a bit pointless, 4K video is incredibly shaky, and there's no high refresh rate support for most games. There is also no true HDR support for the display, despite the company claiming otherwise.

The phone is also basically just the Oppo Reno7 5G with different software. While that may have been a valid strategy in the past, with the software between the two companies merging even that one difference wouldn't really be relevant in the future. At which point, why even have the two phones in the same market anymore. Moreover, why should the customer pick one over the other?

These are questions OnePlus will have to answer at some point. But for now, the phone itself is just fine and is a worthwhile option if you're shopping in that price range.