The OnePlus Nord is OnePlus’s first mid-range smartphone. The 5G smartphone, which has four rear cameras, has been reviewed by DxOMark. The overall score awarded to it places it underneath the Pixel 4a, reaffirming that having one good camera is better than having four average ones.
The OnePlus Nord scored 108 points overall which is broken down into 117 points for photo, 47 points for zoom, and 92 points for video. The review says the Nord performs well for a mid-range phone, earning praise for its exposure, color, autofocus, and texture. However, it loses points for bokeh and night mode.
Scoring 47 points for zoom should not be a surprise. The OnePlus Nord doesn’t have a telephoto camera like its more powerful sibling, the OnePlus 8 Pro. Its lack of optical zoom means its only option is digital zoom via the main camera and that results in lower quality photos with respect to distance.
For ultrawide photos, the OnePlus Nord has good exposure but the “edges of photos were often noisy and fine details were lost”. DxOMark also says that the primary camera can distort subjects in bokeh simulation mode and the photos do not look natural.
Coming to videos, while the phone trails behind that of other phones, the colors are vivid when shooting indoors and outdoors when there is enough light. However, when in low-light, “there are strong hue-casts and color-rendering becomes inaccurate”.
For stabilization, the 48MP main camera has optical image stabilization but it doesn’t do a great job when walking and recording, as DxOMark says there is residual motion visible in the videos. What further lowers the video score is autofocus as it fails in most of the “tested conditions” and the “tracking capabilities are very low” says the review.
The conclusion says the phone performs well in general but its flaws are evident in the not-so-frequent scenarios such as in low-light. Its lack of a proper telephoto camera also affected its performance. We hope OnePlus and other manufacturers ditch the macro camera and depth sensor next year and replace them with a proper telephoto camera.
UP NEXT: OnePlus Nord 2 is already in development and it is codenamed “Denniz”
