OnePlus Nord 4 Review — The New Flagship Killer

Look I’ve never used more than one phone from OnePlus. That was the original Nord and it was a pretty decent budget to midrange device at the time. Decent for general use and a bit of light gaming but with excellent battery life and fast charging speeds.

Roll on to this absolute beauty and you quickly realise the Nord series is now WAY different to what it was back then. This is the OnePlus Nord 4, a metal unibody phone that gives me flashbacks to the Google Pixel 2 XL with its two tone design and camera placement.

But what truly makes this phone special as a midrange device, is that it blows some of the flagship phones we currently have out of the water. And I’m not just talking about the performance or the build, but even the main camera outclasses the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S24+ for instance.

A big thank you to OnePlus btw for sending me this as part of their Labs programme. You can check out the OnePlus Community website for more coverage of this and other recent launches from OnePlus. Not to mention some amazing photography and help from the members.

https://youtu.be/EXbBI672ZHs?si=cmMWRnW2seM9hQzo

We’ll get to the cameras a little later in the video but lets take a look at that beautiful rear first. I was praying that the colourway I was going to get would be the Oasis Green and I was in luck. Look..at..that! Don’t get me wrong the silver model looks fantastic too but I was happy with this. I love the way the gradient changes on the back but with it being a unibody design it also changes along the sides too. Such a small thing but adds so much to the look of it.

Specs wise it’s almost impossible to not be happy with it. Here are the highlights of the top end model:

• 6.74in AMOLED LTPO 120Hz screen
• Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 SoC
• 16GB RAM
• 512GB storage
• 5500mAh battery
• 100W charging
• 50MP+8MP rear/16MP front cameras
• Alert Slider
• Dual SIM

When you compare this to a flagship such as the Pixel 8 Pro you can see how good this phone is. It beats it in every area other than the cameras and even then the main camera of the OnePlus Nord 4 is quite excellent.

So as you can see this phone has quite impressive camera chops alongside the excellent hardware. The Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 powering this phone is quite the powerhouse. I’m going to use the Pixel 8 Pro as a comparison here again. When you benchmark this alongside the Tensor G3 you get very similar scores. The difference here is in efficiency. The Pixel 8 Pro and all Tensor powered phones are well known to have middling to poor battery life. The Nord 4 powered by the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 is nothing short of excellent. Sure the Nord 4 with its large 5500mAh battery is bigger, but I can push this phone to two days of use. You aren’t getting anywhere near that with the Pixel without some lighter use and battery power management. And the Pixel takes a long time to charge once you do decide to top it up at whereas the Nord 4 and its 100W charging is SO quick. No battery anxieties will befall you here!

There’s only one negative I can find with the OnePlus Nord 4 and that is not having a RAW mode for photography. I would also prefer a telephoto over an ultrawide, but that’s just a preference thing.

Overall the OnePlus Nord 4 is a stellar midrange device that deserves your attention. It puts the likes of Samsung’s Galaxy S24+ to shame and shows that there’s no need to spend silly amounts of money to get an excellent all-rounder device. Save yourself some cash and pick this up. I guarantee you won’t regret it.