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This week, OnePlus launched four new products in Milan. The Nord 4 smartphone, Pad 2 tablet, Buds 3 Pro earbuds, and Watch 2R arrived with a typically bombastic aplomb from the tech company that still commands an enviable, fiercely loyal following.
I was at the event and will review all four products in the coming weeks. You may have to bear with me slightly, however, due to the fact that every tech company on the planet appears to have picked July to launch as many products as possible.
The good news is that I’ve had my hands on the OnePlus Nord 4 for a couple of weeks. This isn’t enough time to give you an in-depth review, but I can give you my first impressions of what is a fascinating midrange device with one industry-first feature.
Nord 4 specs and pricing
The Nord 4 is the first smartphone to launch globally with the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 under the hood. There are two RAM and storage combinations – either 12GB and 256GB or 16GB and 512GB, respectively.
There’s a 5,500mAh battery powering the Nord 4 which is the biggest ever to enter a Nord device and which promises up to 17 hours of continuous YouTube viewing. It’s also capable of fast charging with a 100W feed filling the tank from empty in just 28 minutes.
On display duties, we have a 1.5K 6.74-inch AMOLED unit with a 120Hz refresh rate, 93.5% screen-to-body ratio, and 2,150 nits of peak brightness. The Nord 4 also includes Aqua Touch technology, which means that, in theory, you can tap away happily on the display in wet weather without all havoc breaking loose.
OxygenOS 14.1 sits at the heart of the Nord 4 and includes four years of software updates and a further two years of security updates.
Price-wise, the OnePlus Nord 4 costs £429 for the 256GB version and £529 for the 512GB version. As another journalist noted during the OnePlus summer event press trip, that is indeed “punchy”.
Design and display
The invite to Nord’s summer event was made from solid metal and the entire event itself was earmarked by copious amounts of shiny outfits worn by the staff. This was a reference to the fact that the Nord 4 is the first all-metal unibody smartphone of the 5G era.
There’s a reason most smartphones aren’t made purely from metal. It adds weight, and thickness, and presents huge issues with antenna reception. OnePlus addressed the latter concern by developing a U-shaped antenna system that sits at the top of the Nord 4. A happy side-effect of an all-metal design is that, when combined with the new antenna layout, the metal construction actually acts as an amplifier for the signal.
In practice, the signal on the Nord 4 is absolutely fine – whatever OnePlus has done during the research and development phase of this device has worked. More importantly (kinda) is the fact that the all-metal design of the Nord 4 feels more premium than its price point suggests it should. It’s also nowhere near as heavy as you might expect (they addressed that concern, too).
Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, and I’ve been in this game long enough to know that every smartphone design casts a pretty clean line through the middle of everyone’s opinion, but I’m a fan of the shiny Nord 4. My review unit is finished in Mercurial Silver, which has a sophisticated textured metal surface on the rear – something that’s missing from the Oasis Green and Obsidian Midnight colours.
The display is equally lovely. Bright, sharp, colourful, and fast, it’s yet another demonstration that Apple really does need to bring the base model iPhone 16 in line with the rest of the industry and add ProMotion. The display on the Nord 4 wouldn’t look out of place on a flagship phone. As for Aqua Touch, I need to test it, but the tongue-in-cheek demonstration at the launch event (where OnePlus drenched a member of the executive team in a makeshift downpour while he messaged the presenter) appeared to work well.
Nord 4 camera performance
The OnePlus Nord 4 camera system is highlighted by a 50-megapixel main lens hiding a Sony LYT-600 sensor. There’s also an 8-megapixel ultra-wide with a 112-degree field of view and a 16-megapixel selfie camera.
As always, I’ll drop a few images for you on this page so you can form your own opinion of the Nord 4’s photography chops, but I like what it produces.
The reach is limited, due to the reliance on digital zoom. This is to be expected on a midrange phone, and it’s unfair for me to complain about the absence of the eminently useable optical 5x zoom found on most flagships these days. Because they are much more expensive devices.
The images produced by the Nord 4 are considerately processed and appear to deal with both low light and high contrast situations admirably.
It’s a quick camera, too – I rarely experienced issues with the shutter lagging behind my request, and the Nord 4 captured key family moments admirably.
If you’re after the more processed look of a Pixel or Samsung device, you’re probably not going to get what you want out of the box from the Nord 4, but there are always filters and RAW processing for that.
As always, I’m conscious that photo performance is one of the most subjective parts of any phone review, so let me know what you think about these snaps in the comments section below.
Performance
As noted earlier, the OnePlus Nord 4 is the first device to ship globally with the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 chip. It’s also yet another example of a midrange smartphone with an extremely keen price point that delivers flagship-worthy performance for everyday tasks.
I have zero interest in benchmarks, and I don’t game on my smartphones, therefore my opinion of the Nord 4 performance is based on what I always refer to as ‘normal’ use. Web browsing, email, communication, social scrolling, taking photos, switching quickly between apps to get stuff done. For those tasks, the Nord 4 is every bit as fast and responsive as you’d hope.
For people upgrading from the Nord 3 and who do take a keen interest in performance, there are some impressive numbers being quoted by OnePlus. The Nord 4 is, apparently, up to 130% faster, graphics-wise, and enjoys up to 65% better CPU performance.
There’s AI stuff built into the Nord 4 and OxygenOS. Because of course there is. I haven’t had time to play with the features yet (testing AI, in my experience, is far more insightful when you encounter situations that require its input – which, in my life at least, isn’t very often). However, they include note summarisation, translation services, audio note summaries, various photo editing wizardry, and ‘Linkboost’, which is designed to help the Nord 4 reconnect to mobile networks quickly.
Box ticked.
Conclusion
The £429 256GB Nord 4 offers oodles of value. It really is an incredibly aggressively priced phone which should quite rightly tempt potential Pixel A-series and Samsung A-series purchasers away from the seemingly obvious options.
It’s an interesting phone, too. We’re in an era where manufacturers need something to catch the eye of the tech press while adding fuel for marketing campaigns. The decision to promote an all-metal unibody design above flatpack AI features should be commended and has resulted in a midrange phone which feels and looks far more expensive than it is.
We’re only halfway through the year, but the OnePlus Nord 4 is already a serious contender for the best value phone of 2024.
