OnePlus Nord N30 5G Review: Somehow Lesser Than Its Predecessors

The sub-$300 phone market is red hot at the moment, and OnePlus' Nord series has been a key contender in the budget division for quite a while now. Last year's Nord N20 was an outstanding device, sold at a very reasonable price point, and possessing few shortcomings. One of the ways it fell off was in the network restriction category, as it was only available on T-Mobile's Metro brand in the United States. Its successor, the creatively-titled Nord N30 5G, has no such restrictions.

It works with pretty much any network, barring some fairly obscure exceptions, and is priced at $299.99. Though the partnership with T-Mobile has continued in the form of discounted prices: with the phone starting at $264 on the carrier — and being available for free if you add a new line to your account. If you don't want to go through T-Mobile, the Nord N30 is available through Amazon, and through manufacturer OnePlus' own website where you can purchase it with the company's well-received Nord Buds 2 and a 12-month Google One subscription thrown in free of charge. In terms of appearance, you can have any color N30 you want as long as it's "Chromatic Gray." If you aren't too impressed by the color palette on offer, buckle up. The device's other features are just as outlandish and exciting.

OnePlus provided a Nord N30 5G for the purposes of this review. Before you get too deep, note that the OnePlus Nord N30 5G is literally a rebranded iteration of the Nord CE 3 Lite – so it's no shock that they're effectively identical — save carrier compatibility and charging speed.

As far as your average smartphone goes, the OnePlus Nord N30 is on the larger side of things. Across the diagonal, you're looking at a 6.72-inch screen which looks a lot bigger in real life than it does on paper. This is larger than most of the device's rivals, and it's also a few millimeters longer than the previous phone in this series, the Nord N20.

Despite the differences only being marginal, the Nord N30 genuinely feels and looks a lot larger. It's only when you lay the phones side by side you notice how it's only actually a little larger than the others. If you have average size adult hands (or larger), you should still be able to use this one-handed in a pinch. Folks with smaller hands will likely struggle as they always do, and should probably wait for their messiah to arrive with the tiny device of their dreams. Otherwise, if the extra size doesn't throw you off in terms of comfort, it is a pretty useful feature to have. It's great for working, watching movies, or playing games. Particularly as the screen itself is of decent quality. 

As with basically all modern devices, the touchscreen is about as responsive as you can get, instantly translating all of our swipes, prods, and gestures, into precise inputs. It doesn't look too bad either.

You can only expect so much at a sub-$300 price, and the Nord N30's screen is about as good as it gets for the money. Obviously, you can't expect a 4K Super OLED display in this range of devices. It's billed as "full HD" which translates to 1080p — effectively standard for a phone at this price. In terms of refresh rate, the N30 rocks a respectable 120hz — better than most phones and tablets released for less than several hundred dollars.

Apparently, the screen also has a maximum of 680 Nits of brightness, which should be enough to make it usable — even in harsh and direct sunlight. As you can see from some of our photos, the display is visible outdoors, but can be hard to use in bright conditions even with the brightness cranked up to the maximum. Our outdoor shots were taken in overcast and smoggy conditions, due to the testing location being directly in the path of the smoke generated by this summer's Canadian wildfires. The screen isn't quite as difficult to see in real life, but don't expect crystal-clear viewing on a bright day.

The Nord N30 has a fingerprint scanner, as you might expect, and that scanner is on par with the phone's peers. It's built into the power button, and contains all of the shortcomings you would expect from this kind of placement. Its smaller surface area makes it a bit pickier with print placement and harder to set up, and its location limits the number of digits you can comfortably put on it if you intend to unlock the phone one-handed. The phone's size also works against you here, as you're balancing a larger object while maintaining a very unorthodox grip.

What's really annoying is the fact that OnePlus has gone backwards with its choice of biometrics. The phone's predecessor, the Nord N20, had an under-screen fingerprint scanner. The kind of thing you tend to see on higher-end phones like those in the Samsung Galaxy S series. So OnePlus has previously shown us that they can put a very useful and very advanced feature in this class of phone. Then they snatched it away and traded it for what you might very well consider a lesser alternative.

The phone has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G Chipset inside — a two-year-old bit of hardware built on a 6nm process that obviously isn't the kind of thing you'll find in a new $1,000 flagship phone. That said, it is pretty solid at this price point. There's also technically 8 GB of RAM available, which means the N30 can handle some pretty intense tasks without slowing down. Despite the processor not being top-of-the-line, there isn't much you can really do within reason that will push it to its limits. 

In terms of what tasks this phone can handle, it has enough power to run pretty much anything in the Google Play Store. At the same time, due to its large display, capable processor, and competitive refresh rate, it could be argued that the N30 is a pretty nifty cloud gaming phone. Pair a controller via Bluetooth, rig up some kind of stand, and you could quite comfortably enjoy an Xbox game on this thing. Maybe that's how we should be judging things at the low end, especially now we've hit a kind of plateau with mobile gaming.

With the OnePlus Nord N30, you have the standard set of ports you'd expect to find on a lower to mid-range phone in 2023. The headphone jack, which has long since been abandoned by flagship devices, makes an appearance. A USB Type C port is used for both charging and connectivity. And you can always connect to things via Bluetooth 5.1 if you want to go wireless. Like its predecessor, the Nord N20, this phone is also capable of connecting to a 5G network — though it's long since hit the point where that's to be expected. 

Another feature you find in the N30's class of phones is expandable storage. You can slap a Micro SD card in there if the phone's own 128 GB or 256 GB of internal storage just isn't enough for you. Both expandable storage (via microSD) and a headphone jack used to be standard in high-end smartphones — now these features have been relegated to cheaper devices — which is good news for you if you're thinking about buying a phone for less than $1k in 2023.

Accidents happen, and something like a deeply scratched or broken screen can be an expensive fix. At this price point, some major damage may be enough to make you decide to replace the phone entirely instead of stumping up for a repair. With the N30 5G, OnePlus has delivered a more robust device than one might expect.

The device's screen is fitted with a screen protector. If you're somehow unaware of what a screen protector is, it's a transparent thin sheet that is attached to the phone with an adhesive. It doesn't look obvious in any way, and it won't impact the phone's touchscreen sensitivity. But if you drop or knock your phone, it will take the proverbial bullet for the device's display.

The back has a dense plastic layer on it, which adds grip and could no doubt take a knock if required. However, this does come with a bit of a downside. The plastic is particularly adept at picking up smudges, finger grease, dust, and other unpleasant marks from everyday life. It's also pretty hard to polish out if you want the phone to look spic and span again. Unless you've just finished lunch and your hands are particularly greasy, brushed aluminum and similar finishes don't do this. It's a bit of a shame because the N30 isn't a bad-looking phone at all, but a coating of smudges and fingerprints may give the device a dirty appearance. That coating is certain to appear, even with some light use. There's also no mention of dust or water protection, but both of those are rare for a phone this inexpensive.

The Nord N30 has a 5,000 MAh battery — which is likely larger than the phone you're using right now. While this is around 500 MAh more than you'll get in some flagships, don't expect old-school Nokia-level battery life from the OnePlus. During testing, the N30 could tolerate a day of moderate to heavy use before needing a recharge.

OnePlus tested this a little more thoroughly than we did, and can throw a few figures around. It claims a full charge can get you over eight hours of gameplay with something like PUBG over Wi-Fi, or over 17 hours of continuous video play. We used the phone as we would a daily driver, which included several extended browsing sessions when we should have been focusing on actual work. Brightness was close to full most of the time, and at the end of the day we had around 20% of the battery remaining — which we would say is a comfortable amount but still warrants an overnight charge. 

The charging process itself is pretty painless. The phone is capable of "50W SUPERVOOC fast charging" which can get you up to 80% within half an hour. The included charging brick and red cable has enough wattage to trigger this charging mode — and it is indeed speedy.

In terms of camera specs, the Nord N30's built-in cameras are effectively a metaphor for the presentation and quality of the phone in real-world use. They seem like they should be pretty decent, but they don't quite add in the end. 

Dave McQuilling/SlashGear

The company boasts about how many megapixels its camera has, in this case, it's 108 MP on the main camera. and hopes the general public isn't aware that megapixels alone do not dictate the quality of a camera. Photo quality is actually dependent on what's under the hood. 

Dave McQuilling/SlashGear

As you'll see in example photos above and below, the main camera takes pretty good photos in decent lighting conditions, and pretty bad ones at night — even when you use "night" mode. Just like every other device in this price range.

Dave McQuilling/SlashGear

This device can capture baseline quality photos in low light so long as you're able to keep the device steady and unmoving the entire time the device's shutter is open. It still gives a valliant effort without stabilization assistance, but it doesn't quite succeed. In order to take good photos with this phone's cameras, you need to have truly ideal lighting.

Dave McQuilling/SlashGear

We're also told this device can utilize "3x lossless zoom." The zoom capabilities of this device are practically nonexistent. They appear to be "lossless" only in some vague technical sense of the word.

Meanwhile, the video capabilities of this device's cameras are below average. Video chatting will Basically, there are marginally better cameras out there for general shooting, but don't buy this if you're planning on making lots of video calls.

Usually, the press materials that accompany phones like this are packed with claims about a variety of weird features. The Nord N30 only really boasted about two, its gaming capabilities and the "200% Ultra Volume Mode" you can blast through its dual stereo speakers.

The audio testing this time round came courtesy of The Arctic Monkeys, Oasis, and Pulp. This was enough to show us the bass didn't really stand out, and the sound was a touch tinny — even at lower volumes. The bass was also non-existent, so our sympathies go out to Nick O'Malley. It's not bad for a phone, but it's still quite obviously sound coming from a phone and not a dedicated speaker. Phone speakers have come a long way in recent years, but this really isn't anything special and you'll want to connect it to a Bluetooth speaker or a set of headphones where possible.

As for the 200% volume claim, even if we're comparing to the Nord N20, we run into diminishing returns pretty quick. Yes, it's loud if you max it out, but the already mediocre sound quality gets worse as the volume increases.

The OnePlue Nord N30 isn't a bad phone at all, but not a lot really makes it stand out amongst its peers. While it's a good thing that there are plenty of options available when you haven't got a lot to spend, it is hitting the point where you might as well pull names from a hat when selecting a handset. The standout features include the large screen size, the fair amount of RAM on offer, and the free protection that's thrown in. It probably does just enough to get the nod ahead of something like the Motorola Moto G 5G, which also hit the market fairly recently.

Still, the fact that it lacks features that were included in last year's model is worrying and has cost the device some points. We'd argue the Nord N20 can still hold its own in terms of performance, and a perk like that under-screen fingerprint scanner is enough to give it the edge over the new kid on the block. If you have the opportunity to grab the Nord N20 instead of this, go for it. Especially if you're already on T-Mobile and the older phone is available at a generous discount.

The OnePlus Nord N30 5G on Amazon will cost you approximately $300. Or you could find a renewed N20 on Amazon for around $200. Or if you'd like what might very well be the least expensive yet still-worth-the-cash OnePlus device still sold new by OnePlus now, take a peek at the OnePlus N200 on Amazon where it currently costs around $170.