With bigger batteries, faster CPUs, and sexier screens, budget phones are better than ever. How wonderful can a cheap phone become before the gaps, however minor, start to emerge, despite businesses’ best efforts to leave no space for complaint? I’ve been testing the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G, the newest low-cost competitor, to see if it’s the all-around pick for those who care about value.
The highly vibrant hue of lime sorbet that the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G come in seems to be the colour of the season. If you want something more sombre than this pastel lime choice, there is also a chromatic grey.
Camera
The Nord CE 3 Lite being “the first OnePlus smartphone boasting of 108 megapixels in its main camera” was one USP that OnePlus promoted. Although it appears decent on paper, the general calibre of the photographs has been uneven. Anything that wasn’t photographed in direct sunshine or under excellent indoor lighting came out below par. Even photos shot at night of completely motionless inanimate things, like buildings, were fuzzy. The lens couldn’t focus adequately, therefore attempts at macro photography failed as well.
Selfies can be taken using the 16-MP front camera, which captures skin tone rather well but blurs out skin texture even without any added effects.
Display
There is a sizable 6.72-inch FHD display, but regrettably, it is LCD rather than AMOLED, which is becoming more and more common. Recently, I haven’t given the quality of a device’s display a second thought, but this was an exception. Although the design is good, the illumination around the screen’s borders seems a little dimmer. Additionally, despite the 120 Hz adaptive refresh rate that was promised, scrolling through articles and websites still causes a noticeable blur.
A twin speaker system is present and produces loud enough sound. It has a 3.5mm headphone socket, which is fantastic news for anyone who want to plug in their wired headphones. There is a feature that allows me to increase the level by 200%, but in all honesty, it just makes the volume seem somewhat louder than 100% rather than twice as loud.
Performance
Similar to the iQOO Z6 and the POCO X5, the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G processor. The device I evaluated has 256 GB of storage and 8 GB of RAM. While multitasking wasn’t really a problem, particularly with casual gaming and web surfing. The OnePlus Nord CE 5G achieved a score of 65 in benchmark tests (AnTuTu).
With essentially no learning curves for first-time users, OxygenOS 13.1, the operating system that powers the OnePlus Nord CE 5G, is generally simple to use.
Battery
The Nord CE 3 Lite has a 5,000mAh battery, which is gradually becoming the standard, and offers more than a day and a half of use time before I feel the need to plug it in. (Hallelujah!) OnePlus is still including chargers with their products, and this one has a 67-watt SUPERVOOC Endurance Edition charger. When I needed a rapid boost, the charger could recharge the gadget in only 15 minutes and restore about 30% of its battery.