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?
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
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