The OnePlus Nord N30 5G is a good budget phone, even if it’s not quite the phone I was hoping for.
Battery life is excellent, and processing performance is well above average for the $299 price tag. Because it has fast wired charging, and that’s what OnePlus is all about, it’s got a lot of thoughtful features you don’t usually find in budget phones, like stereo speakers, tons of RAM, and NFC for contactless payments. increase. These are all definitely good things.
But it’s not all good news. The N30’s screen is his large 6.7-inch display with a high refresh rate. But it’s also an LCD, unlike last year’s 60Hz OLED. With a phone this cheap, you can choose either, but this time OnePlus opted for the refresh rate. The camera system is also a wildcard. In many cases, that’s fine. But there’s something funky about his new 3x crop zoom feature, and depending on how the Google Pixel 6A sells at the time you read this, you could do something much better for less money. There is a nature.
The OnePlus N30 is the US version of OnePlus’ Nord CE 3 Lite, which sits right above the Samsung A-series phones and below another on the wireless carrier’s shelves. For many people who trade in their older devices, this is likely to be a “free phone”, and if so, I think it’s a worthy choice. If you’re paying out of pocket and the aforementioned guy has a Pixel 6A available, I think that’s a different story.
The N30 has the trendy flat edges and screen (which I personally prefer over the slippery curved edges). The display is covered with panda glass, and the back panel and outer frame are made of plastic. I’ve definitely used budget phones that feel cheaper and flimsier, but I like the matte finish of the N30’s rails.
I don’t mind the glossy plastic back. Most people would use a case, but I don’t. The back panel quickly got smudged with fingerprints. My review unit also has major scratches. I’m pretty sure I never dropped it, so my phone must have hit a key or some rough surface. That’s a good reason to use a case. And you won’t find his IP rating of dustproof or waterproof here either. Either way, these aren’t very common for phones around $300.
The screen is a 6.72 inch LCD with 1080p resolution and only enough pixels to cover this huge screen. The highest refresh rate is 120Hz, but you can adjust it to one of five slower refresh rates depending on what you’re doing to save battery life. It uses a faster refresh rate to make scrolling and animations look super smooth, giving the N30 a great level of refinement and responsiveness that a standard 60Hz screen can’t provide.
On the downside, the colors displayed by this LCD aren’t as rich as OLED’s, and it’s a little more difficult to use in direct sunlight. Like all OnePlus phones, the N30 ships with a screen protector, but removing it made the display a little easier to use. A little reflexive and mine was already starting to bubble.
The N30 includes 128 GB of internal storage (expandable with MicroSD) and uses the Snapdragon 695 5G chipset with 8 GB of RAM. That’s plenty of processing power for a low-cost cell phone. OnePlus doesn’t skimp on these specs, and they show that day-to-day performance is pretty good. I’ve been using high-end Android phones such as the Google Pixel 7 Pro these days. The N30 feels a fraction of a beat slow if you’re paying close attention, but for everyday use it’s very well maintained.The phone gets a little noisy when doing heavy tasks like running pocket city 2But it’s more than I’d expect from a $300 phone.
Also, can we talk a little bit about haptics? I really like the tactile feel of the N30. Budget phones can be a little loud and uncomfortable, but the N30’s haptics are both polite and reassuring. It’s a small thing, but it makes a good impression when using the phone.
Battery life is another strength of the N30. There’s a huge 5,000mAh battery here, which for me easily lasted a day and often the next day with moderate use. When I left home with half a battery on the day I was supposed to use the phone on the bus and coordinate an afternoon meeting with my husband, I thought nothing of it. . Sure enough, the N30 lasted all day, even streaming video while on the bus. The battery can display the screen for 4 hours. It lasted over 5 hours before battery life hit single digits.
If you need to plug it in, there’s 50W fast wired charging, giving you a big boost in battery in just a few minutes. In my testing, the battery drained from about 5 percent up to 35 percent in just 10 minutes. Like most other charging systems, it’s designed to slow charging as it approaches 100% to protect its overall lifespan. After all, it’s a huge battery, and it takes about 45 minutes to fully charge from zero to 100. Still, 10 minutes on the charger can go from “where’s the outlet?” to battery-free for the rest of the day. Wireless charging isn’t available, but it’s a rarity in the sub-$300 class anyway.
In other news, the N30 has a real live headphone jack, which we admire. OnePlus says it has built-in stereo speakers go to 11 I refuse to get involved further because this is an inherently stupid concept. All I can say is yes it is very noisy.
The N30 comes with Oxygen OS 13.1 based on Android 13. This is great news because a lot of budget phones are still using previous OS versions, but the not so good news is that the N30 has only had one OS upgrade in his 3 years of OS upgrades. is not scheduled. security support. Unfortunately, this is often the case with budget phones, but the N30’s processing hardware can probably last longer than that, so it’s a real shame here.
The N30 will be marketed by T-Mobile and its Metro prepaid brand, but the unlocked version will work on the 5G networks of all three major US carriers. This is even more great news, since the N20 didn’t have access to his Verizon’s network, so this was actually an option for AT&T and T-Mobile customers only. I can confidently say that the N30 works with Verizon. I saw my review unit (with a Verizon SIM) access his 5G, including an excellent mid-band ultra-wideband 5G. I’m glad OnePlus solved that.
We have good news and bad news for the N30’s camera. The good news is that modern smartphone cameras are all good at what they do. Photos in bright light show more detail and colors. The N30 uses a 100 million 8 megapixel main camera with an f/1.7 lens that outputs 1,2 megapixel images with 9 pixel bins for better light collection in low light conditions To do.
It also uses the same camera for a 3x “lossless zoom”. This is a new technology that uses pixels in the center of the sensor for magnification instead of relying on digital zoom or upsampling. It has a 16-megapixel selfie camera, 2-megapixel macro and depth sensors. The latter is useful in portrait mode, but the former isn’t worth your time.
In theory, I like the 3x lossless zoom option here. He gets two cameras for the price of one, without the ugly digital zoom artifacts. In practice, it doesn’t work so well. The image is so soft at times that it looks as if the camera has gone out of focus or something went wrong in the processing pipeline. I’ve noticed this happens in situations with lots of light and static subjects. So this is either a bug or just a side effect of this being one of his V1 features.
Either way, I managed to get some great shots. And you won’t find a decent optical telephoto camera on any other roughly $300 phone out there. This is best viewed as a bonus rather than a dependent feature.
Back to the normal 1x focal length, the N30’s main camera struggles in dim lighting, especially with moving subjects. Shutter speeds tend to drop to his 1/13th or 1/10th of a second, and even if your subject isn’t moving that much, you’ll still get a lot of blur. Using noise or noise reduction will also squash details and colors a bit. We didn’t expect great low-light performance or sharp portraits in low light indoors from this budget phone, but OnePlus, which has delivered surprisingly good budget phone cameras in the past I expected something a little better.
Video recording is limited to 1080p or 720p (both at 30fps). The clip looks great in good light and has electronic image stabilization to smooth out the impact of footsteps. Video in dim room lighting suffers from the same issues as stills in the same conditions, but is tolerable.
I really liked the N20, so I had high hopes for the N30. And there are certain points where it is the phone I was expecting. For everyday tasks, it performs more like a $500 phone than a $300 phone, and has plenty of RAM to keep your tasks running smoothly. The battery life is so good that I stopped charging it overnight because I didn’t need to. It also feels good overall, has a nice tactile feel, and scrolls seem smooth on the 120Hz screen.
Where the N30 disappoints is the camera and screen. I like what his OnePlus is doing with his 3x telephoto and think the next version of this feature will probably be much better. And what this camera system struggles with is what most budget phones struggle with.
But the space is teeming with other smartphones that make it difficult to recommend the N30. That’s last year’s Google Pixel 6A. With the release of the Pixel 7A, the price dropped to $349. If it’s still in stock and you can afford the extra $50, the 6A is the phone you should buy. Its camera system is much more reliable, with mid-range perks like an OLED screen and his IP67-rated robust dust and water resistance. Also, although he’s a year out from launch, there are still two more OS upgrades and security support scheduled for July 2027, which puts him in a year more than his latest N30 in each category offers. It will be a long time. The 6A doesn’t have the very impressive battery life or fast wired charging that the N30 has, but personally, I’d rather have a better camera and live with my phone charging every night.
That said, if the Pixel 6A isn’t within reach, or T-Mobile is offering a free N30, I think it’s a good option. That’s a lot of phones for the money, even if that’s not all.
Photo: Alison Johnson/The Verge
