OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G hands-on review

Software

The Nord CE 2 Lite 5G runs on OxygenOS 12.1 on top of Android 12, so you are getting the latest version of both out of the box even on this relatively budget phone. The company has promised two major Android updates and three years of security updates for this device.

We have aired our grievances about OxygenOS 12.1 in the past so we won't dwell on them much further. Aside from questionable design decisions, the OS is also buggy and we ran into issues almost every day while using this phone. It is something we have come to expect with every OnePlus phone now, and we would honestly be shocked if it actually worked normally for once.

In terms of pre-installed apps, there is the usual mish-mash of first-party and Google apps pre-installed. Both of these have grown in number over the past year and not all of them can be uninstalled. There are still two file managers on this phone, one each from OnePlus and Google, and the same goes for the gallery apps.

OnePlus is now also including a Themes store on its phones. Here, you can purchase wallpapers, ringtones, fonts, and themes for your device.

Since the phone does not have an OLED display, OnePlus has omitted the always-on display feature from the settings. You can just enable double-tap to wake to quickly see your lockscreen but there's no way to have a persistent clock appear on the screen.

OxygenOS 12.1 Launcher

The Nord CE 2 Lite 5G has a side-mounted capacitive fingerprint sensor. The sensor was very frustrating during our testing. Right off the bat, the setup process was annoying as it makes you move your finger around and doesn't realize when you do so. After setup, the sensor keeps finding dead spots on your thumb while scanning, even if you've scanned that area during setup. And if you just lift your thumb and put it back, the same area works fine the second time.

Eventually, something changed and the sensor started working normally but the first few days were deeply frustrating.

The Nord CE 2 Lite 5G also has a lesser quality vibration motor. The haptic feedback is very generic and imprecise, which makes it unpleasant to use. It's still fine for general vibration for calls and notifications but we had to disable it for all other haptic feedback.

Settings and features

OxygenOS 12.1 has a lot of gesture-related features. You can set up gestures to turn the display on or off or open specific features. There are multiple gestures for screenshots, which lets you take a standard, selected, or scrolling screenshot. The phone can also auto receive calls when you put it up to your ear or switch to the earpiece if the speaker is on.

OnePlus' gesture navigation remains poor. The phones have a hard time distinguishing between a swipe from the edge of the display or someone simply scrolling up and down, which results in a lot of accidental back gestures. We still recommend using navigation buttons on these phones.

Overall, OxygenOS 12.1 has a good amount of features built-in. However, it can still be quite buggy at times and the general look is far too similar to ColorOS on Oppo and Realme phones with very little in common with previous OnePlus phones. OnePlus has said it will be going back with OxygenOS 13 but we will just have to wait and see how that turns out.

Performance

The Nord CE 2 Lite 5G runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 processor. In India, you get a choice of 6GB or 8GB LPDDR4X memory but in Europe, you are limited to just 6GB. The storage is limited to 128GB UFS 2.2 everywhere, although there is microSD support for further expansion.

The performance during our testing was not very good. The phone does feel quite slow at times, which ironically is pronounced by the 120Hz refresh rate. There is a notable delay in opening or switching between apps and even just navigating through the phone's settings. When scrolling through apps, it almost feels like you have a slow internet connection as the phone takes a while to load and display new content.

Of course, all of this is a matter of perspective. We are used to more powerful devices so this delay is definitely noticeable to us. For someone upgrading from a lower-end device or even buying their first smartphone, this wouldn't really be that big of a deal.

However, our experience is on a new device after a fresh reset. The experience is bound to get worse as the device ages and the storage fills up. It's not something we can test but absolutely worth keeping in mind when making your purchase decision.

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE
  2832
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  2801
• Realme 9 Pro+
  2335
• Poco X3 GT
  2310
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G
  2157
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  2063
• Realme 9 Pro
  2020
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G
  1956
• OnePlus Nord CE 5G
  1812

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Realme 9 Pro+
  814
• Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE
  787
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  771
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G
  728
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G
  694
• Realme 9 Pro
  694
• Poco X3 GT
  693
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  688
• OnePlus Nord CE 5G
  641

AnTuTu 9

Higher is better

• Poco X3 GT
  578505
• Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE
  527663
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  506432
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G
  436640
• Realme 9 Pro+
  416031
• Realme 9 Pro
  401894
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G
  399306
• OnePlus Nord CE 5G
  391770
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  382902

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Poco X3 GT
  38
• Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE
  28
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  28
• Realme 9 Pro+
  23
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G
  19
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G
  17
• OnePlus Nord CE 5G
  17
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  17
• Realme 9 Pro
  16

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Poco X3 GT
  44
• Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE
  33
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  33
• Realme 9 Pro+
  27
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G
  24
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G
  20
• OnePlus Nord CE 5G
  19
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  19
• Realme 9 Pro
  19

GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Poco X3 GT
  68
• Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE
  49
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  49
• Realme 9 Pro+
  41
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G
  35
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G
  30
• OnePlus Nord CE 5G
  30
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  30
• Realme 9 Pro
  29

GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Poco X3 GT
  74
• Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE
  56
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  56
• Realme 9 Pro+
  45
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G
  40
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G
  35
• Realme 9 Pro
  35
• OnePlus Nord CE 5G
  34
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  34

GFX Manhattan ES 3.0 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Poco X3 GT
  97
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  69
• Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE
  68
• Realme 9 Pro+
  56
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G
  51
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G
  43
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  41
• Realme 9 Pro
  41
• OnePlus Nord CE 5G
  40

GFX Manhattan ES 3.0 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Poco X3 GT
  116
• Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE
  78
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  77
• Realme 9 Pro+
  68
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G
  61
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G
  48
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  47
• Realme 9 Pro
  47
• OnePlus Nord CE 5G
  46

3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Poco X3 GT
  3991
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  2491
• Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE
  2477
• Realme 9 Pro+
  2296
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G
  2036
• Realme 9 Pro
  1211
• OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G
  1209
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  1204
• OnePlus Nord CE 5G
  1103

The Nord CE 2 Lite 5G supports the virtual memory feature. This essentially uses a page file on the device storage to use as system memory when you run out of it and you can choose how much storage to allocate. While this may seem useful, we recommend against using it as you will notice a rather large drop in performance every time the device swaps back and forth between the much faster RAM and the significantly slower device storage.

The Nord CE 2 Lite 5G also has a performance mode that we have seen on OnePlus phones post-OxygenOS 11.3. This maxes out the clock speeds on the CPU at all times instead of ramping them up and down gradually based on demand. We didn't see any difference in performance when enabling this, neither in everyday use nor in benchmark results.

The Snapdragon 695 chipset has somewhat limited media capabilities. The chipset struggles to play 4K content so apps like YouTube are only limited to playing up to 1080p resolution. We tried playing some local 4K files and while files up to 24fps played okay, higher frame rates caused the player to drop frames.

Lastly, the Nord CE 2 Lite 5G isn't really suitable for gaming. The performance just isn't there and you are not going to have a good time with demanding titles. It is, however, perfectly adequate for simpler 2D games or older 3D games.