If you are looking to upgrade your phone and are on a budget, OnePlus Nord 2T should be near the top of your list.
Design and build
I tested the Jade Fog coloured model that is a mint green hue that looks classic OnePlus.
A matt black Grey Shadow model is also available.
This is a svelte and slim 190g device which is flat unlike many premium devices that opt for curved edge displays.
Read more: OnePlus Nord CE 2 review: Impressive affordable mid-range smartphone
The rear of the phone is glass and features a large and unusual camera mount that houses two large black modules.
In the top circle is the main camera lens while in the bottom circle are two other lenses. It looks odd but distinctive.
The cameras, incidentally, are the same as those on the original OnePlus Nord 2, they have just been moved around and look different.
The glossy finish on the rear picks up fingerprints and smears easily, and while the phone is grippy enough to hold and use without a case, there is a decent transparent matte finish case in the box that resists fingerprints and protects your smartphone.
There is Gorilla Glass 5 protection on the front and rear, incidentally.
The all-important OnePlus alert slider — with three positions for silent, vibrate and ring — is present and correct.
I’m still amazed more Android phones don’t copy this feature because it’s so helpful and saves you having to unlock the phone to silence it or turn on do not disturb throughout the day.
Elsewhere in the build you get a USB-C port; downward firing speaker on the bottom; thin earpiece at the top of the screen that acts as a second speaker; power button on the right side and volume rocker on the left.
Audio is acceptable at best but I rarely use smartphone speakers so the lack of quality or volume does not bother me.
There’s no headphone jack, no adapter and no IP rating for dust or water resistance.
But there is a pre-installed screen protector.
Display
Nord 2T’s 6.43in screen is a 20:9 AMOLED panel with a resolution of 1080 x 2400 that can refresh at up to 90Hz.
Higher-end phones, and even some mid-range handsets, sport 120Hz displays that look even better but the 90Hz here is impressive.
This makes animations, apps and menus scroll smoother than the standard 60Hz, which can still be applied if you want to save battery life.
You get HDR10+ support too.
The panel is sufficiently bright, and text looks clear and sharp.
OnePlus’ auto-brightness settings calibrate the backlight to the right level effectively.
Vivid is the default display setting and is best suited to watching HDR content on Netflix or Disney Plus.
Natural is the best option for general web browsing and app use.
Performance
This is the first phone to ship with MediaTek’s Dimensity 1300 processor. It is excellent just like its predecessor Dimensity 1200 was on Nord 2.
Dimensity 1300 is an octa-core SoC built on a 6nm fabrication process with four performance cores: an Ultra Cortex-A78 core clocked up to 3GHz and three Super Cortex-A78 cores clocked up to 2.6GHz.
The other four efficiency cores are Cortex-A55 and are clocked up to 2.0GHz.
The GPU is a nine-core ARM Mali-G77 GPU that supports MediaTek’s HyperEngine 3.0 gaming technologies.
My review model had 12GB of RAM and this combined with the MediaTek SoC means the device is perfectly capable of marathon gaming sessions.
In daily use it is fluid and fast, never showing any signs of lag when I engaged in heavy multi-tasking between music playback, video streaming, browsing, word processing and email, all while connected to Bluetooth earphones.
But on the other hand I didn’t find it noticeably faster than the chip in Nord 2.
Nord 2T runs Android 12 and OxygenOS 12.1 on top and it looks and feels a lot more like the Oppo Find X5 Pro than a OnePlus flagship from a few years ago.
This because while OnePlus phones still run OxygenOS, it is now essentially Oppo’s ColorOS with a skin on top.
For example, notifications come in as rounded rectangles that feel more Oppo than traditional OnePlus.
You also get features from ColorOS such as holding the fingerprint reader when unlocking to access shortcuts to apps and actions.
OnePlus’s Shelf widgets are accessed with a swipe from the top right, just like on iOS. You can turn this off if you prefer.
The Google feed is accessed by swiping right on the home screen.
There's an always-on display option and a Work Life Balance mode that lets you control notifications and settings based on schedules, Wi-Fi networks and location.
Overall this is a clean and capable iteration of Android 12 that feels faster out of the box than some top-end flagship phones.
Cameras
OnePlus Nord 2T has four cameras and two of them are great: the main 50MP wide angle camera and the 32MP selfie camera.
The former is a Sony IMX766 sensor with optical image stabilisation that takes superb shots in daylight. It's the same sensor that is used in the wide and ultrawide shooters on the five-star-rated Oppo Find X5 Pro flagship.
It shoots 13MP images by default but you can switch to 50MP if you want to get even more richly detailed photographs.
Photos are sharp, bright, clear, colourful with decent dynamic range.
The 50MP sensor is so sharp that you can crop in with pleasing results. This makes up for the lack of decent telephoto lens.
The updated Nightscape mode does a reliable job at artificially brightening scenes.
The Dimensity 1300 chip allows the phone to process AI enhanced photos but I preferred to leave this switched off.
Video performance is solid and Nord 2T can capture footage at up to 4K at 30 frames per second (fps). It has fun features for video like portrait bokeh and filters but overall isn’t on a par with the market-leading video capture on recent iPhones.
For the smoothest shake-free video on this device, I recommend using 1080p at 60fps.
The selfie camera sensor is the same one used in OnePlus 10 Pro and is superb.
It’s top notch for video calls.
Battery life and charging
One of the biggest selling points of the Nord 2T is its game-changing 80w fast charger.
In tests it went from zero to 100 per cent in 27 minutes. So you no longer have to charge your phone overnight or worry about not having enough juice when you’re about to step out the door. A 10-minute charge gives you potentially hours of use.
But you can only achieve this speed with the Supervooc charging brick and cable. A USB-A to C cable is used just like on Oppo phones which also use Supervooc charging.
This is annoying as it means you can’t use the charging brick for fast Power Delivery to other devices such as laptops and tablets.
There’s no wireless charging, incidentally, but that is common for phones of this price.
Battery stamina from the 4400mAh power pack delivered about six hours of screen-on time during heavy testing days.
In general use, with less intensive testing, I often had about 30 per cent left at midnight after an 8am 100 per cent start.
Other features
You get dual SIM 5G compatibility, NFC, Bluetooth 5.2, and Wi-Fi 6 built in.
The under-display fingerprint sensor is fast and reliable.
Face unlock with the front facing camera is instant too.
OnePlus offers two Android OS upgrades and three years of security updates.
This compares poorly to Google which offers three OS upgrades and four years of security updates.
Samsung offers four and five respectively for many new phones and Apple gives five or six years of upgrades.
Verdict
Aside from the OS upgrades issue, there is little to quibble with on the excellent OnePlus Nord 2T.
It does everything the casual smartphone user might need with aplomb and boasts some flagship standard features that power users and gamers will love.
It is one of the best smartphones you can currently buy at this price point.
I compared it in tests to the Nord 2, and if you already own one of those phones then you do not need to upgrade as that device is still incredibly powerful.
Pricing and availability
OnePlus Nord 2T costs €399 for 128GB storage and 8GB RAM or €499 for 256GB/12GB.
OnePlus Nord 2T key specs
Dimensions: 159.1mm x 73.2mm x 8.2mm
Weight: 190g
Display: 6.43in Full HD+ (1080x2400) Fluid AMOLED, 20:9, 90Hz, HDR10+
Processor: MediaTek Dimensity 1300 chipset
RAM: 8GB/12GB RAM (DDR4)
Storage: 128GB/256GB (UFS 3.1)
OS: Android 12 with Oxygen OS 12.1
Rear camera: 50MP, f/1.9 CHECK main camera, PDAF, OIS; 8MP ultrawide, f/2.3; 2MP mono, f/2.4
Front camera: 32Mp, f/2.5
Fingerprint scanner: In-screen
Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, GPS, NFC, 5G
Dual-nano SIM: Yes
Battery: 4500mAh non-removable battery
Charging: USB-C 65W wired charging
