OnePlus Nord 4 review: Old-school heavy metal

The OnePlus Nord 4 sees the return of this particular line to UK shores after “customs difficulties” kept the Nord 3 from making it over here. Those wrinkles appear to have been ironed out, as the OnePlus Nord 4 is ready to try its hand in the UK smartphone market – but how is it going to stack up against our favourite mid-range phones?

Without getting too far ahead of myself, I will say that the all-metal design isn’t going to be the silver bullet that OnePlus may have been hoping for but luckily, there are some fantastic specs to back it up. The display is a delight, performance impresses and the battery life is some of the best you can get at this price. The Google Pixel 8a is still better value overall but the OnePlus Nord 4 certainly gives it a run for its money.

OnePlus Nord 4 review: What you need to know

The banner change for this year is the return of a unibody metal frame – marking the first time the style has cropped back up in the 5G generation. Paired with that aluminium shell is a 6.74in AMOLED display with a rather sharp 2,772 x 1,240 resolution and a smooth 120Hz refresh rate.

Tucked away inside is the new Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 processor, backed up by 12GB or 16GB of RAM and 256GB or 512GB of non-expandable storage. The battery is another chunky component, with an above-average capacity of 5,500mAh. The metal rear keeps wireless charging off the table but you do, at least, get support for speedy 100W wired charging – though there’s no charger included in the box.

On the rear, we’ve got a dual camera array, comprising a 50MP (f/1.8) main lens and an 8MP (f/2.2) ultrawide shooter with a 112-degree field of view. Over on the front, a 16MP (F/2.4) selfie camera sits in a hole-punch notch in the display.

OnePlus Nord 4 review: Price and competition

The OnePlus Nord 4 starts at £429 for the 256GB model, with the 512GB variant set at £529. This puts it right in the crosshairs of our favourite mid-range phone, the Google Pixel 8a, which costs £499 for the 128GB model or £549 for the 256GB version – there’s no 512GB option here, so that’s a potential advantage for the OnePlus Nord 4.

If you’re happy to opt for lower storage and the slightly higher price, the Pixel 8a earned its place atop our best mid-range phone list with its fantastic camera suite, solid all-round performance and flawless AMOLED display. The cherry on top was Google committing to a massive seven years of OS and security updates, which is near-enough unheard with phones this cheap.

Closer to the Nord 4’s price is the Samsung Galaxy A55 5G. Once again, there’s no 512GB version, so you can either get the 128GB for £439 or the 256GB for £489. Finally, we reviewed the Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro Plus earlier this year and while there’s only one storage variant on offer, it’s a massive 512GB, making the £449 retail price excellent value.

OnePlus Nord 4 review: Design and key features

This is easily the biggest talking point for the OnePlus Nord 4 – so much so that I already wrote an in-depth article about it last week. If you don’t fancy reading the whole thing, I can sum it up simply here: the all-metal build is stylish and feels robust, the 200g weight isn’t uncomfortably heavy, though you can get much lighter phones at this price if you sacrifice the metal, and I have repairability concerns at the prospect of unibody designs returning.

What I don’t have concerns about, however, is the looks. Measuring 75 x 8 x 163mm, the Nord 4 is a little on the thick side but as with the weight, not drastically so. The brushed aluminium edges round off slightly to the display and the rear, making it sit snugly enough in the hand, too.

There are three colour choices and it’s here that we see a little deviation in the design. The Obsidian Midnight has a brushed metal effect on the lower two-thirds of its rear, the Oasis Green has an anodised finish and the Mercurial Silver model I was sent for review has a laser-etched ridged effect. This is purely aesthetic and doesn’t alter the feel of the phone but it certainly makes it look more unique.

All three versions fill that top third with a glass panel that encompasses the dual cameras and LED flash bulbs. While I quite like the aesthetics of the two-tone style, the glass feels like a bit of a weak link here as it shows fingerprints very easily – something that the metal on the rest of the chassis avoids.

In terms of features, we’ve got the power and volume buttons on the right, USB-C and SIM-tray on the bottom, an IR blaster on the top edge that allows you to use the phone as a remote control, and the OnePlus Alert Slider on the left. The latter has three positions and can be used to quickly switch the phone between silent, vibrate and loud without the effort of unlocking. It’s a really handy inclusion that too few brands are implementing, so it’s great to see it return here.

On the software front, the Nord 4 launches with Android 14 and OxygenOS 14.1 layered over the top. This isn’t the most obnoxious Android variant I’ve used but there’s more bloatware than I’d like, with old nuisances like booking.com and Ali Express cropping up yet again. On the bright side, the Nord 4 is getting OnePlus’ most robust update roadmap to date, with four years of OS drops and six years of security patches. That doesn’t quite match the Pixel 8a but it’s a very strong second place.

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OnePlus Nord 4 review: Display

The 6.74in display has a 2,772 x 1,240 resolution, which is better than the 1080p screens we regularly see at this price, and throws in a smooth 120Hz refresh rate and the essentially infinite contrast of an AMOLED panel alongside it. Brightness is solid, as well: on manual mode, I recorded a peak of 496cd/m², while switching to adaptive and shining a torch on the light sensor pushed it up to 683cd/m² – that was only on the Brilliant colour profile, however, with the other three topping out around 100 nits lower on adaptive.

That’s not to say that the other three don’t have their value: Vivid is a slightly toned down version of Brilliant, likely sapping less battery life, Natural targets the sRGB colour gamut and returned a fantastic average Delta E result of just 1.09 (we’re looking for 1 or lower here) and Cinematic did even better with the Apple-favoured Display P3 colour space, scoring an average Delta E of just 0.93. Both the Cinematic and Natural results speak to excellent colour accuracy, no matter which type of content you choose to peruse.

OnePlus Nord 4 review: Performance and battery life

The OnePlus Nord 4 is my first encounter with the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 chipset and so far, I’m quite impressed. The octa-core 2.8GHz platform did very well in our Geekbench 6 benchmark tests, landing roughly equal with the Galaxy A55 5G and Redmi Note 13 Pro Plus in the single-core portion, and outpacing them by 14% and 51%, respectively, in the multi-core.

The pricier Google Pixel 8a is still champion here, with the Tensor G3 SoC pulling 45% ahead of the Nord 4 in the single-core and 12% in the multicore, but this is still a terrific result for the OnePlus.

The Nord 4 comes into its own in the gaming benchmarks, with the best offscreen results of any in this selection, at 106fps. As the on-screen is a solid 60fps, I’m inclined to think that the phone locked to that frame rate during the testing, and may be capable of an even better result, based on the strength of the off-screen performance.

That’s just speculation, of course, but my hands-on gaming experience with the Nord 4 gave me no reason to doubt the phone’s prowess: simple fare like Candy Crush is handled with ease and I even got Genshin: Impact running smoothly, albeit at middling graphics settings.

I’m always a little sceptical when battery life tests come back with results this good but after verifying, the OnePlus Nord 4’s 32hr 34mins stamina is on the money. This is exceptional for the kind of money we’re talking about here, and thrusts the Nord 4 up near the top of our best phone battery life rankings.

The 100W charging support makes juicing back up a breeze, too. OnePlus claims that it can achieve a full charge in just 28 minutes – there’s no plug provided in the box, so I wasn’t able to test out that for myself, but my 67W charger got the job done in around 45 minutes, so it feels believable.

OnePlus Nord 4 review: Cameras

The camera suite is mostly the same as those found on the OnePlus Nord 2 and the Nord 2T, with a 50MP (f/1.8) main camera that has OIS support for better stability in your shots and an 8MP (f/2.2) ultrawide camera with a 112-degree field of view. The only difference here is that the 2MP depth sensor has been dropped, but honestly, that doesn’t feel like much of a loss.

The main camera isn’t identical, as it uses a new Sony LYT-600 image sensor, but that hasn’t hurt the quality. Images captured in good lighting are vibrant and packed with detail. The shutter is nice and nippy too, allowing you to effectively capture movement, like this sun-dappled fountain.

In low-light conditions, the main camera does a decent job brightening the scene, but the highlights are too blown out for my liking and there’s a fair amount of noise in the sky. Lens flares look fairly tame here but when I was closer to light sources, I experienced such ridiculous flaring that even J.J. Abrams might consider to be over the top.

The 8MP ultrawide camera isn’t particularly impressive either. Colour representation is pretty decent but the level of detail leaves something to be desired, especially towards the edges.

Video shoots up to 4K at 60fps and quality carries over well from the photography side of things. The main camera’s OIS support doesn’t crop up here, however, so you’re left with electronic stabilisation. This does the job well enough but I did still notice some swaying in my test footage.

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OnePlus Nord 4 review: Verdict

The cameras may not be game changers but there’s still a lot to be impressed by with the OnePlus Nord 4. The battery life is some of the best you can get from phones of any price, let alone a mid-ranger like this. The display gets nice and bright under the right conditions, too, and colour accuracy was on point throughout.

I’m not sold on the necessity of the all-metal design – it does feel nicely solid but the other edge of that sword is that the handset is heavier than it needed to be. If you’re happy making that trade-off, however, the OnePlus Nord 4 has plenty of charm and is well worth considering for its exceptional stamina and classy display.