Priced at 499.99 and up right off the bat with absolutely no strings attached and an undeniably impressive spec sheet, the OnePlus 12R looks like the perfect “budget 5G flagship” at first glance. But because there’s no such thing as perfection in today’s mobile industry, the outstandingly affordable Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 powerhouse has been recently found to have at least one more flaw than initially reviewed.
Of course, slow(er than expected) storage can’t break one of the best deals in the Android smartphone space right now, especially when a nice $100 gift is also added to the aforementioned $500 value equation.
Yes, the unlocked 5G-enabled OnePlus 12R is available at the time of this writing alongside a $100 Best Buy gift card at its regular prices of $499.99 and $599.99 in 128 and 256GB storage configurations respectively, and no, you don’t have to trade anything in or activate the device on any particular US carrier upfront in order to score that very attractive deal sweetener.
What you do need is a My Best Buy Plus or Total membership, which makes this the retailer’s equivalent of an Amazon Prime-exclusive offer. If you’re not a member yet, you can easily become one by paying as little as $49.99 a year, and even if you don’t end up using the service for anything else (which we highly doubt), you’ll still save a cool 50 bucks when all is said, done, and calculated.
In addition to that aforementioned high-end Qualcomm processor, the OnePlus 12R packs an absolutely gargantuan 5,500mAh battery equipped with blazing fast 100W charging capabilities, as well as 8 and 16GB RAM in combination with 128 and 256 gigs of internal storage space respectively.
This bad boy’s 6.78-inch display is also no pushover (to say the least), supporting 120Hz refresh rate technology and a peak brightness of 4500 nits, while the 50 + 8 + 2MP triple rear-facing camera system is admittedly not impressive if we compare it with the shooters on the back of the best phones out there today.
But that’s not an entirely fair comparison for obvious reasons, and if we pit the OnePlus 12R against the similarly affordable Pixel 8 or Galaxy S23 FE instead, its general capabilities and overall performance unquestionably come out on top.
