OnePlus Nord N300 review

Display

The 6.53-inch display is of the IPS LCD kind, and it features a water-drop notch that houses a 16MP selfie camera. The display is the most representative of the device's 'budget factor' with a 1616 x 720 px resolution that will be noticeable to the trained eye. Good enough for most, but it might turn off a tech enthusiast. The display has a pixel density of 269 ppi with an aspect ratio of 20.15:9.

The display does support 90Hz refresh rate. We confirmed that the display will ramp up to 90Hz when scrolling or tapping around but will switch down to 60Hz after a few seconds. We also confirmed that the display will not stay limited to 60Hz when watching a YouTube video in PIP mode, but the YouTube app itself is limited to 60Hz when playing a video and scrolling through the comments, for example.

There's a setting that lets you disable the higher refresh rate to where it will revert to the standard 60Hz.

High refresh rate setting

In the Display settings, you'll also find options for dark mode, hiding the notch, and you can set whether apps use the full screen or not. There's also an option for eye comfort (blue light filter), and video color enhancer.

Display settings

The Nord N300 gets decently bright. In our display test, the LCD panel output 511 nits with the manual brightness slider and pumped out 623 nits with adaptive brightness enabled. The minimum brightness dropped all the way down to 1.4 nits.

Don't expect a perfectly tuned display here. The Nord N300 yielded an average deltaE of 6.1 with a maximum deviation of 12.2. Remember, a deviation of 1 or 2 is indistinguishable to the eye. The display shows whites and grays with a bluish-magenta cast while colors all lean cool. Otherwise, the "Natural" color profile shows slightly less saturated colors, and while the accuracy is a little better in the numbers, it is still not very close to accurate.

The most accurate reading we managed was in the Natural mode, with the color temperature slider moved all the way towards "warm". Even then, whites and grays remain cooler than the targets.

None of this will matter to the average user. Are the pixels visible? If you know what that means, then yeah, they're visible. This, however, doesn't take from the fact that videos and photos look pleasing to the eye. Average users will have no issues watching YouTube videos or scrolling social media apps. Viewing angles are great as well, with no visible color shifting.

Battery life and charging

This device is packed with a 5,000 mAh battery, and it achieved great battery endurance scores. In our lab tests, the Nord N300 achieved a respectable 114h of overall endurance. 3G talk time was 40:16h with strong web and video scores as well: 20:36h and 18:32h, respectively.

With its large battery and power-efficient 6nm chipset, the Nord N300 will not disappoint when it comes to battery life.

The Nord N300 comes included with a SuperVOOC 33W power adapter for its 5,000 mAh battery. During the first half hour of charging, the Nord N300 reached 51% from depletion. It took 1:14h to fully recharge the battery.

30min charging test (from 0%)

Higher is better

• Oppo Reno8
  90%
• Apple iPhone SE (2022)
  61%
• OnePlus Nord N20 5G
  57%
• OnePlus Nord N300
  51%
• Oppo Reno7
  50%
• Realme 10
  48%
• Samsung Galaxy A23
  32%

Time to full charge (from 0%)

Lower is better

• Oppo Reno8
  0:42h
• OnePlus Nord N20 5G
  1:08h
• Oppo Reno7
  1:10h
• OnePlus Nord N300
  1:14h
• Realme 10
  1:16h
• Apple iPhone SE (2022)
  1:18h
• Samsung Galaxy A23
  1:43h

There is an "Optimized night charging" option in the charger settings, but keep in mind that this won't fully charge the phone until the next morning. You'll see a notification when Optimized charging is enabled, and you'll have the option to override it. There's also an option for "Sleep standby optimization" that reduces background usage overnight while you're asleep, and "High-performance mode" keeps the system in high gear.

Battery and charge settings

In the mid and entry-level price points in the US, fast charging of this caliber does not come standard - well... in the US market, at least.

Loudspeaker

Despite its price point, the Nord N300 is capable of outputting stereo sound. It combines the downward-facing loudspeaker, and the in-call receiver acts as the secondary speaker. The top speaker is always the left channel and doesn't flip when turning the phone the other way around.

As is the case with most loudspeakers with this setup, watching videos can sound unbalanced as the lower speaker is always louder than the earpiece. High-energy genres of music can sound distorted above 90% volume. Spoken audio sounds good and clear at maximum volume. Although we're unable to perform our usual loudspeaker tests outside of our labs at HQ, we can say that the Nord N300's speakers are loud enough.