One Plus Nord 2T 5G review: Worth considering in Rs 30k segment

The Rs 30,000 price segment is the sweet spot for OnePlus. It’s the same category with which the company had hit the jackpot with its first-ever smartphone – the OnePlus One. But as its flagship became expensive, there was a void, which OnePlus has been trying to fill with the Nord series. It proved to be a success for the company, which is why OnePlus keeps on expanding the options for the consumer. The latest is the Nord 2T with Mediatek Dimensity 1300 chip that does not disappoint.

One of the best-looking Nord to date, the 2T is a glass sandwich protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 and with reminisces of the original OnePlus One sandstone finish but lacks texture. The dark grey colour looks good. The font, as always, is all screen with sleek bezels. The rear has a rather large camera bump with two large circles housing three lenses. Overall, the handfeel is great not just because of the soft finish but also the compact size making it comfortable to operate with just one hand. And mind you, this still houses a 6.43-inch screen with sleek bezels. The power button is on the right panel with a new addition of the much-loved alert slider, and volume control on the left. While there is nothing fancy about the alert slider, after all, one can mute the notifications from the volume button too, but the slider is just more convenient.

It took me about 2-3 minutes to set up this phone, post which the UI made me feel instantly at home. It’s a neat user interface with apps neatly tucked into the app tray with a search icon at the top. Unlike most Android smartphones, it has all the basic apps including a few more including Netflix, Zen Mode and a couple more.

The Nord 2T has picked up some of the goodies from the Nord 2 - like the screen. Like the bright 6.43-inch full HD+ AMOLED display with 90 Hz refresh rate and with HDR10+ support. This makes it good for all kinds of apps - streaming OTT, reading on Magzter, browsing the web, gaming, or capturing and editing images. Even the legibility in scorching sunlight is pretty good. The default settings are great but you can customise it further as per your liking from the display setting. Lastly, the punch hole for the front camera is on the top left which doesn’t interfere with the experience.

In the Qualcomm Snapdragon world, MediaTek has emerged as the preferred processor choice for mid-segment smartphones and the OnePlus Nord 2T is no different. Instead, OnePlus has gone a step ahead by adding Mediatex’s new chip - Dimensity 1300 - to this device. With no lags or heating issues, I would say the performance was amongst the best in its price category. And this includes gaming, binge-watching, video editing and work. But if you feel like optimising the performance even further, there is a RAM boost option that tracks device usage and can predict the apps to be launched and speed up the RAM performance. However, in my two weeks of using the phone, I didn’t experience any difference. Plus, there is this new popular feature amongst mid-segment Android phones of RAM expansion. While 12 GB RAM on this phone is good for almost all sorts of tasks, if you need more - say while gaming - there is a way of expanding it further by 3GB, 5GB or 7GB - from the settings. Turning it on and restarting the device will reallocate the said RAM from the 256GB onboard storage.

For imaging, the Nord 2T houses a 50MP sensor from Sony as the primary camera along with an 8MP ultra-wide and 2MP mono lens. For selfies, the Nord 2T gets a 32-megapixel shooter. When shooting in well-lit surroundings and holding the phone steady, the images captured are vibrant and sharp. There is this AI setting at the top, which ends up brightening the images a bit too much. I preferred keeping it off. Just like the majority of Android phones, even this one struggles in low light. But thankfully, the Night mode comes to the rescue. Images captured from ultra-wide were sharp, vibrant and had sharp corners.

OnePlus has taken its fast-charging tradition a notch higher on the Nord 2T with 80W charging, which juices up the phone in about 37 minutes. That said, the battery lasts over a day with average use, but I ended up plugging it to charge at about dinner time on days with heavy usage.

All in all, the OnePlus Nord 2T isn’t revolutionary but a good contender in its price category. The 8GB RAM with 128GB storage is available at Rs 28,999, whereas my review unit was the higher-end model priced at Rs 33,999.