OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G review: A capable mid-range 5G phone with excellent battery life

The Nord CE 2 is a decent smartphone with an attractive price tag, but there's plenty of competition in the mid-range sector -- not least from last year's now-discounted OnePlus Nord 2.


The OnePlus Nord CE 2 has an attractive price tag in the UK of £299, or €349 in Europe (the Nord CE -- Core Edition -- series is not officially available in the US). Although compromises must be made to achieve that level of affordability, there are some improvements over the original Nord CE 5G, which I reviewed last summer. These include storage expansion via MicroSD and 65W fast charging. 




The real question is, can £299/€349 (~$390) buy enough of a handset to justify the spend, or should buyers consider the higher-end Nord 2, which at the time of writing is available discounted to £369/€369 in the same 8GB/128GB configuration?

Given the budget price tag, it's no surprise that the Nord CE 2's backplate is made from plastic rather than glass or metal. The back is shiny and slippery, and failed to sit on the arm of my chair securely. It slid about as I would expect any smooth-backed handset to do – at least, until I attached the provided opaque white bumper.  

The good news is that the back doesn't collect fingerprints to an undue degree, so you shouldn't need to constantly wipe it clean. My review sample was Bahama Blue -- think 'baby blue' and you'll have a good idea of what that looks like. There's also a Gray Mirror version


The handset's sides have a slight overbite in relation to the backplate, which is noticeable if the Nord CE 2 is set beside something that's constructed with greater precision. This is unlikely to affect usability, however, or put off potential buyers. 

The plastic backplate helps to keep the OnePlus Nord CE 2's weight down to 173g. Its dimensions of 73.2mm wide by 160.6mm deep by 7.8mm thick are not unusual for a phone with a 6.43-inch screen, although the relatively large bottom screen bezel suggests OnePlus could have trimmed a few millimetres from the handset's depth. We calculated the Nord CE 2 5G's screen-to-body ratio to be 85%, compared to 85.4% for its predecessor. 

As on the Nord CE, OnePlus's Alert Slider is absent from the CE 2. Located on the right side of higher-end OnePlus handsets, the Alert Slider lets you flick between silent, vibrate and ring modes. This is a distinctive feature that's much appreciated by OnePlus fans, and its absence – presumably on cost grounds – is a shame. There is a 3.5mm headset jack, and the SIM caddy has room for two SIMs and a MicroSD card for storage expansion.



The 6.43-inch AMOLED screen is bright and vibrant, with 1,080 by 2,400 resolution (20:9, 409ppi) and HDR 10+ support. The pinhole camera in the top left of the screen is not distracting. The 90Hz refresh rate was set as standard out of the box, although you can drop down to 60Hz to conserve battery power if necessary (my benchmarks were taken at 90Hz). The in-display fingerprint sensor worked fine for me, and Corning Gorilla Glass 5 provides some protection against knocks and scratches.

There are some tweaks that can be applied to the display, including opting for a light or dark theme and using Eye Comfort mode. However, the reading mode that turns everything monochrome, which I really like on higher-end OnePlus phones, is not here, which is a shame. 


The speaker directs sound from the bottom edge of the handset. Audio is very loud, but not of great quality, with music harsh and distorted at higher volume, and bass is notably absent. I'd use it for spoken word audio, but wouldn't like to rely on it for any kind of music playback