OnePlus Nord 4
MSRP $550.00
“The OnePlus Nord 4’s unique all-metal design brings big benefits in comfort and style, while the screen is perfect for video and gaming, plus the long battery life keeps up with hard use.”
Pros
- Metal unibody
- Excellent screen
- Long software support
- Fun main camera
- Fast charging, with a catch
Cons
- No wireless charging
- No proprietary wall charger in the box
- Software lags behind competition
OnePlus wants you to concentrate on the unique design and materials used for the OnePlus Nord 4 before you buy it. If you’re a Nord nerd and know the specs from previous models by heart, you might also want to take a good look at the screen.
Why does it want you to do this? The unusual metal unibody is the star, but it isn’t the only big change for OnePlus in the Nord 4. There’s something else you need to know about, and it will come as a bit of a shock.
OnePlus Nord 4: design
The OnePlus Nord 4 is a rarity in the smartphone world today as it has a metal unibody, rather than solely using metal for the chassis and wrapping the rest in plastic or glass. Once a popular option, it has mostly been abandoned, particularly as an all-metal body rarely played well with cellular reception.
OnePlus says it has solved this problem with an entirely redesigned interior, where newly designed antennas actually use the metal body to amplify the signal. There are still plastic antenna bands on the side of the chassis and at the bottom of the back, too.
There are no ridges or sharp edges on the OnePlus Nord 4, making it very comfortable to hold. At 199.5 grams, it’s sensibly weighted, and the 7.99mm thickness is ideal for one-handed use. The always-helpful Alert Slider is on the side of the phone, so you can quickly switch between silent, vibrate, or sound modes. The Mercurial Silver color in our photos is bright and eye-catching, although incredibly reflective. So far, it has not attracted much in the way of smudges, and the slightly ridged texture on the lower part of the body is a neat touch. The phone also comes in two other colors: Obsidian Black and Oasis Green.
The result is a classy, expensive-looking smartphone that doesn’t resemble every other device out there. The use of an all-metal body is welcome, and so far has not affected use for me, just as OnePlus promised. It should be more durable than an all-glass body, and the phone has an IP65 water and dust resistance rating, too. Well done to OnePlus for thinking about the design and materials on its midrange phone, enabling it to stay separate from, yet still equally desirable as, the flagship OnePlus 12.
OnePlus Nord 4: screen and performance
Here are some key specification details for the OnePlus Nord 4. It has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 processor and up to 16GB of RAM. This is a rarely used chip, and although it sits below the OnePlus 12 and OnePlus 12R, there’s no problem with performance when gaming or watching video. It’s certainly a much more desirable chip than the aging Snapdragon 695 inside the recently announced OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite.
You look at a 6.74-inch Super Fluid AMOLED screen with a switchable 60Hz/120Hz refresh rate and a maximum 2772 by 1240 pixel resolution, although the phone defaults to 2414 by 1080 pixels. It has the same AquaTouch feature as the OnePlus 12 to make the screen more responsive if the surface or your fingers are damp, plus OnePlus’s ProXDR display feature, which enhances your photos when viewing them on the phone.
It looks fantastic and is plenty bright enough to be seen outdoors on a sunny day, too. It’s excellent for video and games, and there has been no major heat buildup when playing games like Asphalt 9: Legends. The game was fun and exciting due to no frame rate issues or slowdown, and I could happily play for some time, helped by the phone’s relatively lightweight and comfortable to hold body.
What about the reception? Calls have sounded fine, just as good as any other device, and I haven’t noticed any adverse issues with the phone pulling in a signal. However, I have only tested the phone for a short time.
OnePlus Nord 4: software and AI
The OnePlus Nord 4 has Android 14 and OxygenOS version 14.1 installed. OnePlus says it will provide four years of software updates and six years of security updates and promises its software optimization work will remain “fast and smooth” for 72 months. This is slightly longer on the security update side than Samsung offers on the competing Galaxy A55 and Galaxy A35 and is solid support for a midrange phone.
I have been impressed by the overall performance of the OnePlus Nord 4 when playing games, but the same praise cannot be lavished on the operating system. There’s a stickiness to OxygenOS on the OnePlus Nord 4 that’s hard to describe. It’s fluid and smooth, but it never feels fast or in a hurry to do anything. I wondered if it was the refresh rate or the resolution, but switching both to the lowest setting didn’t alter the oddly ponderous nature of the animations and scrolling. One thing is for sure, though: The software is much more visually appealing at 120Hz than it is at 60Hz, so lower this setting at your peril.
When setting up the OnePlus Nord 4, it installed multiple games and apps without an option to decline them, and the system has a variety of its own apps included — such as the Clone Phone app, Zen Space, and a Recorder app. Most apps can be uninstalled, but it’s frustrating to sort through them all, as it scatters them over several home screens.
What about the AI? OnePlus says it uses AI and machine learning in its battery and power management and to keep the processor, software, and performance elements running at their best. There are a few AI features, too, including text translation and both audio and text summarization. I tried out the audio summary feature after being forced to create a OnePlus account to access it, and it worked well, giving me a concise summary of a meeting plus a series of follow-ups I should make.
OnePlus Nord 4: camera
The OnePlus Nord 4’s back features two cameras: a 50-megapixel Sony main camera with optical and electronic image stabilization (OIS and EIS) and an 8MP wide-angle camera. The latter can shoot video at up to 4K resolution and 60 frames per second (fps), and there’s a 16MP selfie camera at the top of the screen.
The main camera takes bright and vibrant photos with lovely detail and a pleasing depth of field when you get close to a subject. Surprisingly, for an 8MP wide-angle camera, the one on the OnePlus Nord 4 isn’t too bad. There’s not much detail, as expected, but I appreciate the consistency in colors and tone, which makes the photos it takes more usable than some other examples. Selfies contain plenty of detail, but the portrait effect is poor, with messy edge detection and trouble separating elements from the background.
The standard Gallery has an AI-powered editing tool to remove unwanted objects and people from your photos, much like Google’s Magic Eraser tool, which works quite well. It’s a shame there are no AI editing tools to change the look of your photos, though.
The OnePlus Nord 4 has to take on a range of very good camera phones, including the Samsung Galaxy A55 and the Google Pixel 8a. It’s a very competitive space, and while I like the main camera on the Nord 4, the camera is rather barebones. There’s no optical zoom, and it does feel like the wide-angle camera is a token effort, for example.
OnePlus Nord 4: battery and charging
Now, we get to the shock. There are irritating decisions, and then there’s leaving the charger out of the box when a smartphone uses a proprietary fast-charging system. That’s right, the OnePlus Nord 4 is one of the very first OnePlus phones not to include a charger in the box. Depending on where you live in the world, you may have purchased a OnePlus 12 without a charger, but it appears this is now becoming a wider strategy for the brand.
It’s a much more jarring issue here than in many other phones because the Nord 4 supports OnePlus’s proprietary 100W SuperVOOC fast-charging system, which can take the 5,500mAh battery to full in 28 minutes, according to OnePlus. Except you won’t get the maximum speed unless you use the special 100W SuperVOOC charger and cable, which, unless you already own one, will cost $50 or 60 British pounds to get one.
You can still charge the battery using any USB-C cable and wall charger, but how long will it take? I used a standard GaN wall charger from Anker, which supports the 45W PD PPS standard, and it reached 65% in 20 minutes and fully charged in 38 minutes. I can live with it not charging any faster than that and with not paying for OnePlus’ expensive accessory.
It’s not a good look, though, as OnePlus promotes the proprietary 100W charging feature as a benefit yet doesn’t include the necessary components in the box to make it work. There’s also no wireless charging, which OnePlus has long withheld on the Nord series. But this feature is found on many other phones at this price and is a convenience some may not want to do without.
How about overall battery life? A 30-minute YouTube video at 2160p and at full brightness takes only 4%, while Asphalt 9: Legends for the same amount of time takes 8%. With around two-and-a-half hours of mixed-use screen time, the battery has had around 50% remaining at the end of my day (8 a.m. to around midnight), so expect at least five hours of use from a single charge. I’ve found two days on a charge to be achievable this way, and that’s good performance.
Is it a pain that the SuperVOOC charger isn’t in the box? Yes, but don’t bother buying one. Just get a cheaper USB PD PPS charger and use that. Otherwise, battery life is a real highlight.
OnePlus Nord 4: price and availability
OnePlus will almost certainly not release the Nord 4 in the U.S., as it prefers to tailor-make dedicated Nord phones that it feels better suit the market. The OnePlus Nord 4 will be available in the U.K., Europe, and other regions, and it starts at 429 British pounds or 499 euros, which converts to around $550.
There is a lot of choice at this price. The Google Pixel 8a is a great buy, as is the Nothing Phone 2a, the Moto G Stylus, or the Motorola Edge 2024, plus the very well-received OnePlus 12R if you can stretch the budget and don’t care about wireless charging. Both Samsung’s Galaxy A35 and Galaxy A55 have spec improvements over the Nord 4 but aren’t such design winners. If you don’t mind waiting for a sale, then the Google Pixel 8 can turn up for only a little more money than the OnePlus Nord 4, too.
OnePlus Nord 4: verdict
The OnePlus Nord 4’s metal body is cool, and it’s great to see the process being explored again after lying dormant for so long. However, you’ve got to really appreciate the engineering and feel of the all-metal phone, as there are some missing features that hurt the phone. There’s no wireless charging and no proprietary fast-charger in the box. The camera is a little ordinary, and while IP65 will probably be fine, other phones do better at this price. The software remains love-it-or-hate-it, and it’s less pleasurable to use than Android on the Pixel 8a, for example.
On a more positive note, I love the way the phone feels in my hand, and it’s just about the perfect weight. The screen is beautiful, and the stereo speakers sound excellent, so it’s very good for media and games. Plus, there’s plenty of stamina in the battery. It’s going to last a while because of longer software support, OnePlus’ promised system optimization, and decent durability. Does this make it one to buy?
The OnePlus Nord 4 sits alongside all the expected competitors rather than driving ahead of them and uses cool design and materials, along with excellent ergonomics, to tempt you instead of an overly packed spec list. I appreciate this, and if you do too, then the OnePlus Nord 4 won’t disappoint at all. But if you prefer the camera to be the star or to have convenience features like wireless charging, then it’s better to look elsewhere.
