OnePlus Nord 4 Review: 5G Metal Midrange Hero At An Enticing Price

For OnePlus, the past couple of years have been loaded with experiments, from form factors and materials to an ever-diversifying portfolio. The latest from the Chinese brand dials back to the nostalgic days of metallic phones, an aesthetic formula that OnePlus milked to great success for a few generations. Then came the era of polycarbonate shells and the ubiquitous glass-and-metal sandwich design for phones. OnePlus was no exception to the trend.

In 2024, the company is revisiting metal shells, and it's quite surprising to see that it partook in all that research and development not for an expensive flagship, but a mid-range phone. The result is the OnePlus Nord 4. The company made multiple distinct metallic trims of the phone and even introduced its latest budget phone at a fancy event in Milan. OnePlus is putting a lot of effort and trust in the Nord 4, and for good reasons. 

Given its asking price, which is approximately ₹29,999 in India, €599 throughout Europe, (likely around $650 in the U.S. in the unlikely event of a U.S. launch) there are not many phones that can one-up this device on crucial metrics like display quality, raw performance, and battery chops. I got the silver trim of the OnePlus Nord 4 from OnePlus for review. This "Mercurial Silver," as OnePlus likes to call it, has a beautiful laser-etched design that has more than 28,000 precise nano-level cuts. You can also pick this up in an understated black and a two-tone green finish. I spent a few weeks pushing it as my daily driver, and what follows is a recounting of my pleasing experiences and frustrating hiccups.

So, what's the whole deal with silvery metal engineering efforts? Well, the result is a beautiful lustrous finish, which offers a clean contrast with the chrome glass portion. I am not a huge fan of the camera lens positioning, but OnePlus tells me that it was a strategic decision.

Arranging the camera in a horizontal array allowed OnePlus to trim the motherboard's dimensions, which, in turn, left more space for fitting a larger battery inside the chassis. It's hard to believe that an approximately 8mm thick phone can house a massive 5,500 mAh battery. I can also report that the phone is not top-heavy and the weight balance is fairly uniform.

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The sides are flattened, but the corners are curved and the edges won't dig into the palm of your hand. I still have bad memories of living with the pain of an iPhone 14 Pro's stainless steel rails giving me hell, thanks in no part to my insistence on using it without a protective case. Now, the OnePlus Nord 4 is not a small phone by any stretch of the imagination. It's taller than the iPhone 15 Pro Max, but the narrow profile means it's more comfortable to grip.

I was worried about the signal reception because of the metallic shell. Thankfully, the resigned U-shaped antennae array didn't give me trouble with 5G network reception, so all my calls were smooth as usual. Another neat addition is the IR blaster at the top edge. The only bad part? Well, the charging port at the bottom is still stuck on the aging USB 2.0 standard. It's not a deal-breaker, since it doesn't hinder that speedy 100W charging, but worth pointing out for people who nerd about data speeds.

You get a 6.74-inch AMOLED display on the OnePlus Nord 4, serving a resolution of 2772 × 1240, a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz, and a peak brightness of 2,150 nits. Those are pretty solid traits for a budget phone's screen. The quality reflects in practical usage, too. It's a beautiful Ultra HDR-ready screen that produces vivid colors married to fantastic viewing angles and adequate outdoor legibility. The flat panel, thanks to slim bezels all around and some beautiful work with UI animations, comes to life and it's an absolute joy to gaze at.

You can adjust with parameters such as color mode, temperature, resolution, refresh rate, and display effects for maximum visual comfort. But despite offering HDR10+ support and clearing the Widevine L1 security level, the Nord 4 isn't cleared for Netflix HDR playback. On the positive side, OnePlus touts what it calls "Aqua Touch." Essentially, if the screen is exposed to water, such as rainfall, it won't register false inputs and will only respond to touch gesture from your fingertips.

The screen chases a slightly blue tinge by default, which becomes evident when put side-by-side against the Pixel 8A and the Motorola Edge 50 Pro. Once again, it's not any glaring flaw, but just something that it clearly noticeable. As far as content reproduction goes, there is little to complain here. Thankfully, the in-display fingerprint is accurate and zippy at authentication. Overall, it's one of the nicer screens you will come across, and certainly better than what an iPhone SE brings to the table.

OnePlus Nord 4 serves Qualcomm's Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 SoC, an octa-core silicon led by an Arm Cortex X4-core with a peak frequency of 2.8GHz and based on the 4nm process. OnePlus offers the Nord 4 in three configurations. The entry-point models pair 8GB of RAM with 128GB or 256GB of storage, while the top-end version bumps the figures to 12GB of RAM. We are talking about the fast LPDDR5X type memory and UFS 4.0 storage here. There's also a synthetic memory fusion system that borrows space from the onboard storage to boost the RAM bandwidth temporarily for demanding multi-app workflows.

The hardware described above is a fairly potent combination, and it handled my fairly heavy expectations with ease. Stepping down from the OnePlus Open, and armed with an iPhone 15 Pro Max in the other hand, I didn't feel the OnePlus Nord 4 slowing down any of my day-to-day tasks. Even with games with "Call of Duty: Mobile" and "Genshin Impact," you can expect a steady near 60FPS gameplay experience at high graphics settings. Unfortunately, the phone didn't climb all the way up to the 120fps mode in "Call of Duty: Mobile," but that's not really a bad deal at this price point.

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After 20 loops on the graphics-intensive "3D Mark Wildlife Extreme" stress test, I found that the frame rate fluctuated, but never strayed too far beyond the 60-80fps sweet spot, with one exceptional spike in the last leg of the analysis. Temperature, as a function, rose up to 105.8 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius) but then stabilized. What I loved was that within five minutes, heat dissipated from the metal surface, and the vapor chamber inside brought it back down to a comfortable 89.6 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius). Glass slab phones rarely cool down that quickly.

Leading the imaging department on the OnePlus Nord 4 is an optically-stabilized 50-megapixel Sony LYT-600 sensor. It sits alongside an 8-megapixel ultrawide snapper, while selfies are handled by 16-megapixel camera. The primary lens can capture up to 4K 60fps videos, while the front camera can only reach 1080p 30fps level. The lack of a telephoto or a dedicated macro camera seems like a miss, compared to the competition from other Asian brands.

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Talking about the raw camera prowess, the OnePlus Nord 4 is a surprisingly capable shooter. Images captured in daylight have plenty of detail, retaining sharp textures and providing ample color saturation. 

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Even when pitted against a particularly restless cat, the main camera did a beautiful job at isolating the hair fibers without making the fur look fuzzy. Some detail crushing is still evident in the peripheral areas, though.

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To my surprise, there was little color disparity between shots captured by the main and ultrawide-angle camera. I also didn't come across any warping or distortion either. Of course, the level of details varies, but on their own, the ultrawide shots are acceptable. But there is something way off with white balance and color temperature. The photos, irrespective of whether they were captured under daylight or indoors, lean heavily towards a colder tone and alter the color profile.

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The greens lose their warmth, and the pale tones look whitewashed. It doesn't look authentic and the difference can be easily felt with the naked eye in real time. I am not sure why it's happening, and it certainly appears to be an algorithmic problem, because the OnePlus Open and the OnePlus 12 don't botch the colors in the same fashion as the OnePlus Nord 4. Selfies turn out right, but they could use some skin tone correction.

Out of the box, the OnePlus Nord 4 boots OxygenOS 14 based on Android 14. The software is vanilla — mostly — with nearly half a dozen exceptions. "We sometimes choose to pre-install apps like Facebook, Netflix, LinkedIn, Agoda and Booking.com, and Microsoft 365, to offer additional functionality and benefits for OnePlus users," says the company. Thankfully, you can uninstall them. For those you can't remove, there's an option to disable them, at least. This is not an ideal situation, but at least there's a level of control in your hands against bloatware.

As far as the user experience, it's fluid, with some meaningful auditions in tow. I've loved the sidebar convenience on OnePlus phones, which lets you swipe inward to pull a customizable vertical deck loaded with quick tools like screenshot capture, audio recorder, camera, quick note, IR remote, or any frequently-used app of your choice. Then there's Repair Mode, which hides all personal data before you send your phone to get fixed at a service center.

Another cool feature is Beacon Link, which lets you make a call over Bluetooth in scenarios where you don't have cellular or Wi-fi network. There are a few useful AI tricks, too. You get an audio and note summarization facility, alongside a native translation system, as well. Taking some inspiration from Google Photos, OnePlus' Photos app also serves a magic eraser tool. And it works remarkably well. Just take a look at the before-after sample below, which was clicked indoors:

The best part is that the OnePlus will offer four Android OS upgrades and security updates for six years. Aside from Google's A-series Pixels and Apple's SE iPhones, that's one of the best software commitments you can get in the budget Android ecosystem.

OnePlus Nord 4 comes armed with a 5,500mAh battery, one of the biggest you will find in a standard-sized smartphone in the market today. The day-to-day mileage was expectedly good. I had nearly 80 apps installed on the phone. On an average day, I was running at least six communication apps in the background at all times, alongside task management apps, music streaming, and social media in the background. That, coupled with about 90-100 minutes of "Devil May Cry" and "Diablo Immortal" combined, and streaming music over headsets for about 5-6 hours each day.

With that kind of workload, I didn't come across a single day where I had to reach for the charging port. I ended each day with about 20-30% battery left in the tank by the time I reached home. I got that kind of per-charge battery endurance when the screen resolution was always above the 80% mark, the screen refresh mode was set to its peak value, and the cellular connectivity was always active over sub-6GHz 5G lanes. Those figures are really impressive and should allay any concerns if you've been eyeing the latest mid-ranger from OnePlus.

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Another notable perk is support for 100W wired charging, which is far speedier than what flagships from Samsung, Apple, or Google can muster. The phone goes from empty to 100% charge in under 30 minutes. OnePlus says the battery would retain 80% of its capacity even after 1,600 charging cycles, which means the phone should still deliver a one-day per-charge mileage even after 4-5 years of usage. That's an ambitious claim, and it remains to be seen whether OnePlus would honor replacements in case the real-life battery longevity falls short of its marketing hype.

With the Nord 4, OnePlus has delivered a pretty solid package that ticks all the boxes you would expect from a solid mid-ranger phone, and then some more. It's got a standout design with a build quality to match. The 120Hz OLED display is beautiful and the grunt served by the Qualcomm silicon inside is also impressive. The standout elements are the large 5,500 mah battery and support for 100W fast charging.

The cameras on this one also pack a punch, though they could use a bit of color tuning that can do justice to all the fine details it otherwise captures in every frame. A software update should easily take care of that. The commitment of four Android OS upgrades is yet another crucial selling point. The only caveat is that this phone is yet to hit the U.S. shelves, though it is now up for sale in the OnePlus store online in Asia and key European pockets, as well.

OnePlus' aggressive pricing push with this one, coupled with the unwillingness to cut corners, means some bloatware is inevitable, even thought the situation won't mess your user experience. On the competition aisle, you have the Motorola Edge 50 Pro, the Google Pixel 8A, and the iPhone SE. However, with the exception of Motorola's mid-ranger, no other rival comes to the heavy-hitting OnePlus. Overall, the OnePlus Nord 4 is a no-brainer, that is, if you can get your hands on one, or have the patience to wait for it.