The eagerly awaited Nord N20 aspires to embody the genuine essence of OnePlus phones: seamless performance and stunning design at an extremely reasonable price. The amazing Nord N10 from a year ago, which included a 90Hz display, 5G compatibility, and an ultra-wide camera, perfectly met this criteria. The Nord N20 achieves its objectives with a little less success. The phone seems quick and has a unique appearance, but its cameras aren’t particularly good. Because of its excellent imaging capabilities and software upgrade policy, the Samsung Galaxy A32 5G continues to be our Editors’ Choice award winner for low-cost Android smartphones. But the Nord N20 is a strong choice if camera quality is not your top priority. also you can check our article on OnePlus Nord N20 5G review.
OnePlus Nord N20 5G review: Design
The Nord N20 5G is a rather small, one-handed gadget while having a sizable display. It’s particularly beneficial for individuals who don’t desire a larger phone. The 173g weight of the Nord N20 5G finds a good balance to make the device feel more expensive than its asking price. The Nord N20 5G’s plastic does feel nice in the hand, albeit it is a bit slippery so a case may be required. It is not fashioned from metal and glass like flagship phones. Even though it is only available in one colour, Blue Smoke, OnePlus’ choice, looks fantastic and is a nice variation from the usual black and white selections. Two camera bumps on the rear of the phone stick out far enough to cause the device to sway when placed flat. The Nord N20 5G also lacks any form of IP rating, albeit interestingly enough, that only applies to the phone’s unlocked international model. The Nord N20 5G comes with IP52 water and dust protection if you purchase it through a carrier in the US.
Display
Even if the OnePlus Nord N20’s AMOLED display can only refresh at 60Hz, its 6.43-inch size nevertheless pleased us. The FHD+ resolution makes all content look fantastic. Even with the Nord N20’s Gentle colour calibration, movies like Blade Runner 2049 and the Thor: Love and Thunder teaser trailer are brilliant and colourful. When it comes to colour reproduction, the Nord N20 considerably outperforms the Moto G Stylus (2022), yet both phones’ maximum brightness is comparable. With the exception of direct sunshine, where it becomes quite challenging to see them, even with sunglasses, they are fairly visible in all lighting conditions. Comparing the Nord N20 to the Moto G Stylus (2022) and the iPhone SE, it received the lowest Delta-E colour accuracy rating (2022). IPS LCDs are used in both of those phones, but the Nord N20’s AMOLED panel produces deeper blacks.
OnePlus Nord N20 5G review: Software
The OS on this phone isn’t particularly impressive. The Oxygen OS skinned version of Android 11 with the March 2022 security patch isn’t all that dissimilar from plain Android phones from manufacturers like Google and Moto, as well as other OnePlus phones. Although it’s not exactly stock Android, it’s certainly close. Although there are many options for customization, we were still able to use most of the features we had grown accustomed to from our years of using Samsung Galaxy phones, including the always-on display, the ability to put the phone to sleep by double-tapping the home screen, and the manual rotate button that appears when you turn the phone sideways with rotation lock turned on. However, since the fingerprint sensor only turns on when you lift the phone, double-tap to wake is conspicuously lacking, and the always-on display can be awkward without it.
Hardware and performance
The N20 5G sports an in-display fingerprint sensor, which is uncommon among cheap smartphones. There aren’t many advantages to this, and optical in-display fingerprint sensors are actually a touch less secure than the rear-mounted fingerprint sensors you frequently see at this price. The sensor is exactly where your thumb would be, making it a little more comfortable and natural to unlock your phone this way. Or, at the very least, it would be if OnePlus hadn’t positioned it by the chin a bit too far down on the face. Because of this, one-handed unlocking the phone can occasionally be a little risky. The identical error was made by OnePlus with the OnePlus 9 Pro, however it was fixed in the OnePlus 10 Pro. Effectiveness is high. The processor was upgraded by OnePlus to a Qualcomm Snapdragon 695. also you can learn our article on OnePlus Nord N20 5G review. The phone is kept up to date and competitive despite the fact that this update may be the smallest possible. During our tests, the phone consistently exhibited punchy behaviour, whether it was in performance mode or power conservation mode. Although benchmark ratings were a touch conservative, they had no effect on usability in daily life. Even when playing GPU-intensive games like Asphalt 9: Legends or Genshin Impact, which require a lot of processing power, the cheap phone provided a generally fluid experience. Performance and efficiency are further balanced by OnePlus’ dedicated gaming mode.
OnePlus Nord N20 5G review: Camera
The Nord N20’s camera situation is straightforward: they work fine. Not bad or fantastic, but average. The other large sensor on the phone is a monochrome sensor for the phone’s black-and-white photo mode, so you’ll mostly be using the primary 64MP camera for photography. This option is mostly worthless because B&W images taken with or without that lens covered appear the same. Pictures taken with the N20 appear to be decent; in bright sunlight, the colours and crispness are present, but the highlights are sometimes a little bit overexposed. All of our test shots were captured in automatic mode, 64MP mode to obtain higher-resolution images, and “Extra HD” mode to discover what it was all about. In our tests, images captured in auto mode and 64MP mode are identical. On an FHD+ screen, any more detail obtained by the additional pixels won’t make a significant impact. However, some pixel-peeping exposes some artifacting and aliasing as a result of the phone’s post-processing. A few adjustments to the exposure, highlights, and shadows could transform these photographs from passable to excellent, therefore it’s a shame that this phone can’t record raw images. In the Extra HD mode, two 64MP photos are combined to create a 108MP image. This mode wasn’t constant for us. Most of the time, it merely appears as though the setting crushes shadows and blasts out highlights to create an extremely contrasted image. Additionally, because it needs to take two photos quickly after one another, it struggles to manage motion. The photos we took always seemed substantially differently in the viewfinder than they did once the phone had finished processing them, regardless of the setting in which we took the pictures. They offered an inconsistent sensation because they were frequently brighter and had enhanced shadows.
Battery life
With a 4,500 mAh battery, the OnePlus Nord N20 should have a great battery life. We went into this Nord N20 review with high expectations because OnePlus’ flagship, the OnePlus 10 Pro, is one of the Android flagships with the best battery life on our top phone battery life list. And our tests showed that we weren’t let down. you can read our article on OnePlus Nord N20 5G review. By turning the display of the phone to 150 nits and instructing it to continuously refresh web pages via a 5G connection, we evaluate the battery life of the smartphone. Even though it finished behind the Moto G Stylus by almost one hour, the Nord N20 produced a good performance (2022). But the Nord N20 earns a gold star because it lasts a remarkable four hours longer than the iPhone SE (2022). Just 20 minutes separate it from a spot on our list of the top phone batteries. With 33W of charging power, the OnePlus Nord N20 tops the list of the best budget phones. That completely outperforms the Moto G Stylus (2022). Just have a look at the Nord’s increased battery percentage over the Moto’s after 30 minutes: 56% versus 21%. The Nord N20 has a 33W charger, so you won’t have to spend any of the money you save on a separate charger.
Price and availability
The OnePlus Nord N20 5G costs $282, making it a reasonably priced phone even though it isn’t the company’s entry-level model. It’s exclusively available in the US, but OnePlus offers other Nord models that you might find interesting if you reside somewhere else. It is only available from T-Mobile, but an unlocked version is anticipated to appear later.
Conclusion
The OnePlus Nord N20 is a phone that comes with a few benefits and a lot of trade-offs. Overall, the update has given the hardware a more unique personality than some of the vanilla rivals. Despite having a 60Hz refresh rate, the screen is still adequate for a device of this kind. The phone has a great battery life, operates admirably on a daily basis, and charges rapidly. But the Nord N20 falls short of the competition in numerous areas, including its subpar haptics, fingerprint reader, camera, and mono speaker.
