About three weeks ago, a rather interesting phone landed at my doorstep. It was OnePlus’ latest budget pleaser, which neither falls in the “mid-tier” segment, nor sniffs too close to the flagship summit. Yet, the value it offers at an MSRP of around $400 redefines the whole concept of the class that we often refer to as “budget flagships.”
The Samsung Galaxy Fan Edition phones are the quintessential definition of this honor, at least for the competition-starved US market. After using the OnePlus Nord 5, I’ve come to the realization that this is what a true Fan Edition phone should look like. One that delivers where it matters, without a confoundingly high price tag slapped on the box. I believe it’s a recipe for Samsung to emulate for its next Fan Edition phone.
It commands a second glance
I’ve extensively written about Samsung’s identity crisis in design. The company has been recycling the same fundamental look for years — from thousand-dollar flagships to dirt-cheap plastic-made phones. The current-gen Galaxy S24 FE is not different. Plus, in our review, it got flak for its “cheap and hollow” in-hand feel.
OnePlus Nord 5 skirts around that dilemma by going with a fresh look, one that is a dramatic deviation from the all-metal OnePlus Nord 4. The rear shell is an all-glass affair, while the sides are polycarbonate with a metal-mimicking coat of paint over it.
The surface finish is the real standout element. It looks like natural marble, but has a beautiful satin-like finish. The rear shell is pleasant to touch, though it’s a tad slippery. Unlike the Galaxy S24 FE, the OnePlus Nord 5 looks and feels a lot more premium.
That’s pretty wild because the Samsung phone is about 47% more expensive than its OnePlus rival. My only pet peeve is that in its quest to make a well-built phone with a large battery, the OnePlus Nord 5 reached a weight profile of 211 grams, and its footprint is also pretty wide.
I have no complaints with the lovely 1.5K OLED display. Far from it, actually. It is a 144Hz panel that can handle HDR content and doesn’t struggle with touch sensitivity even with water droplets on the screen. It’s the uniformly thin bezels, however, that give it the aura of a much pricier phone.
Outclassing the heavy-hitters
One of the biggest concerns I’ve had with “big flagships” over the years is the cuts they make in certain crucial areas. Think of display, processor, camera, or battery life. The latest OnePlus warrior is not entirely shielded from that trend, but at the same time, it also delivers a few unexpectedly good surprises.
The phone comes fitted with a massive 6,800 mAh battery. Save for the Red Magic 10s Pro, this is the biggest battery I have ever used in a phone, and the beefiest for a mainstream brand doing business in the US.
For comparison, Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra only features a 5,000 mAh battery, while the Galaxy S24 FE sticks with an even smaller 4,700 mAh battery. With moderate usage, I was able to go two days without charging the phone.
On days that I mixed things up a bit with games, extended music streaming sessions, and outdoor navigation, the phone would still end the day with 30-40% juice still left in the tank. With power saving thrown into the mix, the mileage only goes up.
Another underrated, but crucial benefit is fast charging. Seeing the phone go from empty to 100% in just an hour is a huge relief, thanks to support for 80W charging. With just 10-15 minutes of plugged-in time, you can get enough juice to last half a day with ease.
For comparison, Samsung’s best phones are still stuck close to the halfway mark in terms of charging speed. Moreover, you don’t need to pay extra cash for that ultra-fast charging convenience, as the 80W charging brick comes bundled in the retail package. Are you seeing this, Samsung and Apple?
Going a step further, OnePlus has enabled passthrough charging on the Nord 5. So, let’s say you are playing games. Once this mode is enabled, the power is supplied only to keep the phone running, but not stored in the battery. This avoids heating of the Li-ion cell and is claimed to keep the battery in a healthy shape in the long run.
Talking about heat, the OnePlus Nord 5 offers something you won’t usually find in a budget-centric phone. A large vapor chamber cooling system. It did an admirable job handling the stress of Wuthering Waves and Call of Duty Mobile at a cool 144 fps, thanks to the built-in Adaptive Frame Booster system.
The rear shell gets warm, but the Nord 5 didn’t get as toasty as phones with a metallic rail, under stress. My biggest hardware gripe is that the in-display fingerprint sensor is positioned uncomfortably close to the lower edge, which means you need to adjust the phone’s position in the hand to get a proper scan.
On the software side, OnePlus is promising four years of yearly Android upgrades and security patches for six years. That’s not the best out there, but acceptable for a phone in this price bracket. The software is your usual OxygenOS affair, with its own set of perks such as the excellent OnePlus Mind Space for cataloging content using AI and the side bar.
Getting the basics just right
OnePlus has armed the Nord 5 with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 SoC, which is neither the latest, nor its fastest top-end silicon. The day-to-day performance, however, is way above the benchmark you would expect from a $400 phone.
Synthetic benchmarks suggest that it is neck to neck with MediaTek’s Dimensity 8350 Extreme Edition powering the Motorola Edge 60 Pro. Moreover, compared to the Nothing Phone 3a Pro (which costs $460 in the US and relies on the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 silicon), the Nord 5 proves to be twice as powerful on AnTuTu and single-core Geekbench tally.
At graphics-intensive GFXbench and 3DMark tests, the OnePlus Nord 5 proves to be nearly 30% more powerful, on average. What surprised me the most was the phone’s stability under load.
After running a 20-minute-long test on 3DMark, the phone achieved a stability score of 83.9% and locked the frame rate to a small fluctuation range instead of a sustained drop. The Exynos 2400e inside the Galaxy S24 FE is no slouch, but the phone can’t handle heat and sustained load nearly as well as the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 inside the Nord 5.
Coming to the cameras, I quite like the main 50-megapixel snapper on the latest from OnePlus. The optically stabilized main sensor takes sharp pictures with a health level of surface detail and realistic color output. Even the 2x in-sensor cropped shots turn out pretty well.
The color processing is different compared to the OnePlus 13, which offers a lot more character in stills. The Nord 5, however, does an admirable job of retaining the skin tone, even though it occasionally struggles with surface details and harsh highlights. Daylight shots are slightly on the warmer side.
With slight exposure adjustment, the Night Mode can overcome its light bleeding issues, too. It, however, struggles with retaining the color tone of objects and usually defaults to a higher ISO ceiling than needed. A bit of software tuning can fix it, hopefully. The 50-megapixel selfie camera also fares pretty well and draws full benefits of pixel-binning tech.
The only notable miss is the telephoto camera, which you get on the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE. But if you look around, even the mainline iPhone still sticks with the same main + ultrawide dual camera approach despite their much higher asking price, so the OnePlus Nord 5 can be excused here.
It’s the value that matters
At an ask of nearly $400 (converted from the Indian market price), and £499 in the UK, the OnePlus Nord 5 hits well above its weight class. It avoids the usual pitfalls of a budget-centric phone and offers facilities that are usually reserved for high-end devices.
The silicon performance is unexpectedly good, and so is the 144Hz OLED screen. The looks are clean, while the material quality also impresses. The real stunner is the massive battery and the fast charging facility, complemented by an in-box 80W charging brick.
Overall, the OnePlus Nord 5 serves as a template for what a Fan Edition should actually cost and deliver. I hope Samsung is taking notes and accordingly makes the right decisions with its yet-to-be-launched Galaxy S25 FE in the coming months.
