OnePlus Nord 4 review

Solid build, premium in-hand feel

The device has a metal back panel, made out of aluminium. (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)

Despite being made out of aluminium, the Nord 4 feels like a slab of silver. Its Mercurial Silver variant also masks the antenna bands running across the phone and makes it spotless. While most of the phone is smudge-proof and fingerprint-resistant, the top glass does get a bit greasy but helps the phone with cellular reception, especially 5G signals.

Held at an angle, the Nord 4 appears to have a texture (obtained using over 28,000 nanolaser cuts) on the back panel but when I hold the phone in my hand, it is smooth as silk. The contouring of the back panel also makes it easy to hold onto the device. It also gives the phone a sturdy feel, although it makes it a tad heavier.

The phone has a flat display at the front and includes a soft screen protector, and just like the back panel, there is an ever-so-slight curve which enhances the in-hand experience.

Some phones of this class feature a vegan leather back, which does offer good grip, but tends to lose its shine in the long run. The Nord 4, with its metal body, is almost certain to look as new as it looked on day one for years to come unless, of course, there is any physical damage.

Includes OnePlus’s signature alert slider

The alert slider has a distinct orange accent. (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)

OnePlus smartphones are known for their alert slider but not every OnePlus phone has it. Just like its predecessor, the Nord 4 has one and it is as tactile as one comes to expect, enabling users to switch between different profiles with ease, even when the device is locked.

Picture-perfect display

The display is sharp and colour-accurate. (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)

The 6.74-inch flat panel Super Fluid AMOLED screen with Ultra HDR support is easily one of my favourite displays recently. It has narrow bezels on all four sides and the device has a premium feel when held. There aren’t many phones with this kind of display in the market. Unlike a phone with a curved display, users don’t have to bother about issues like ghost touch, unresponsive edges, and the difficulty of finding a tempered glass-style screen protector.

The display gets adequately bright and remains bright enough to use even under direct sunlight. At night, the display gets adequately dim, which makes it usable during bedtime. The phone has a 120Hz refresh rate panel and everything feels smooth and fluid.

The combination of a well-staged stereo speaker setup paired with this great display makes the Nord 4 an entertainment powerhouse that can easily accommodate video streaming on platforms like YouTube or scrolling through Instagram reels with ease. For gamers, it’s even better, thanks to the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 chip, which can handle almost any game with ease.

Cameras could have been better

The phone has a 50 MP primary camera with an 8 MP ultra-wide angle shooter. (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)

The Nord 4 has two cameras at the back – a 50 MP primary camera with a wide-angle lens and an 8 MP sensor with an ultrawide angle lens. There is also a 16 MP camera at the front. The camera is one segment the Nord 4 takes a step back on. While the main shooter can produce good-looking portraits, the results from the ultrawide angle lens lack details and sharpness.

Also, neither the ultrawide angle lens nor the selfie camera can shoot at 4K resolution, which is limited to just the primary camera. The main camera captures good portraits, and even at 2x (in-sensor zoom), the images come out sharp, and the availability of optical image stabilisation (OIS) also helps the device to capture shake-free videos and images.

Check out some of the camera samples from the Nord 4 in various lighting conditions:

OnePlus Nord 4 camera sample. (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)
OnePlus Nord 4 camera sample. (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)
OnePlus Nord 4 camera sample. (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)
OnePlus Nord 4 camera sample. (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)
OnePlus Nord 4 camera sample. (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)
OnePlus Nord 4 camera sample. (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)

Solid hardware but bloated software

OxygenOS 14 is feature-rich, which also packs a bit of a bloatware. (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)

The OnePlus Nord 4 is powered by the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3, which is almost as powerful as the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. However, when it comes to raw performance, as we have seen with the previous OnePlus phones, the phone maker has gone for a conservative approach, where, we got a score of slightly over one million on AnTuTu, while we have seen phones with the same chip perform much better.

Our CPU throttle test also gave a similar result, where the performance was throttled down to 65 per cent in just 15 minutes of loop test.

While I did not notice any frame drop during my hour-long COD: Mobile sessions on the Nord 4, the phone did get hot, and thanks to its metal body, it was more evident than most other phones. However, it did go back to room temperature pretty quickly, faster than most phones.

Synthetic benchmarks only tell us half of the story, and the OnePlus Nord 4 is a testament to this, as the day-to-day performance and gaming are as best as they can get. The whole UI is well-optimised, apps load quickly, and UI animation makes everything feel very fluid. However, this is also the first OnePlus smartphone where I saw bloatware, including Oppo App Market, which took me by surprise, as that is the last thing I expected on a OnePlus. While I could uninstall most of the bloatware, the early impression does leave a bad taste in your mouth.

Surprisingly, OnePlus is offering four years of OS updates and six years of security updates for the Nord 4, which simply means the device will receive Android updates until Android 18 and will receive security updates until 2030.

Impressive charging

One of the fastest-charging smartphones. (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)

You will never know what fast-charging speed is until you use a OnePlus. For someone whose primary devices are Samsung and Apple, the Nord 4 with its 100W fast charging (charger included in the box) can fully charge the 5,500 mAh battery in under 30 minutes. I mostly charge my phones during the night, but with the Nord 4, I don’t have to as it is fully charged before I freshen up and make a cup of coffee for myself.

This phone, on most days, delivered over six hours of screen-on-time and lasted all day without any issues. On top of that, even if I ran out of juice (because of excess gaming) I could get a quick refill in a matter of minutes.

A unique mid-ranger

A solid mid-range smartphone. (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)

Most mid-range smartphones seem to compromise on a thing or two, and the Nord 4 is taking the hit with its camera. Except that, it’s a text-book perfect smartphone that can handle everyday tasks with ease. If you are in search of a new phone with robust build quality, excellent performance, great display, and superior battery life, the Nord 4 is the answer.