Verdict
While it does n’t have that sentiency of killer value of time value classic OnePlus telephone had , this is a good mid - reach option if you ’ll appreciate its loud speakers and like the centre - catching fleeceable people of color .
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite is one of OnePlus ’s chintzy phone . It is affordable , but not without a sentience style and charm .
It ’s bold , available in a lime green semblance more provocative than OnePlus ’s typical tones . It has a large blind , loud stereo speakers , fast charging and a decent principal camera .
The OnePlus Nord 2 tonne seems a more special headphone , though , and unlike some other phone from the brand , the Nord CE 3 Lite seems about right for the money , rather than a real bargain .
Design and screen
The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite does n’t have much of a specific OnePlus tone to its aim . And that makes horse sense when you look at theRealme 10 Pro , an almost superposable mobile from the same family of telephone manufacturers . Realme , OPPO , OnePlus and Vivo are all part of BBK Electronics .
It ’s a fair chunky - tone Android . The brick - like shape , 8.3 mm thickness and large footprint verify of that . But if you ’re take care for something trim and loose , just see out theOnePlus Nord 2Tinstead .
The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite ’s back and sides are pliant . This is not a hugely expensive style , but it does at least avoid the vacuous part of some plastic designs thanks to its injection forge manufacturing process .
Its lustrous plastic backplate also curves down at the sides , softening the feel of the headphone just a little .
The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite has a side fingermark scanner , one a bit sluggish off the stain than OnePlus ’s sound . And there ’s a good stereo system speaker array .
One gadget driver sits above the screenland , one of the bottom of the phone . While the mids can go a little hard - edged at top mass , there ’s a good amount of the stuff on tap .
Max out the volume as it displays as “ 200 % ” , which I take as an reading you should have a bun in the oven a bit of distortion . But it ’s a star at cutting through noise , like a simmering kettle or the audio of a rain shower . It ’s one of the loudest in this family .
The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite has a 6.7 - in 1080p display , with specs I ’d expect for this sort of money . However , I do n’t think it arrive at a great first impression .
come from the OLEDXiaomi 13 Lite , the Nord looks sickly . Its stock ashen balance is too cool , colour saturation is overbaked , and the LCD instrument panel does n’t really have the same color depth as an OLED .
If you buy one of these phones I urge shift the colour modality to Natural , and dial the temperature slider all the way over to the fond side . Like this I think the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite see fine , but still not quite as good as someOLED phones .
Max smartness is just o.k. by 2023 standards too . The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite does have a sun mode that ramps up the backlight to vie with strong ambient light , but on a very bright day , it barely scrapes by . This was the norm a twain of years ago , but we ’re set out to see mid - range phones that really do blast their display up to around the 1000 - nit scar outdoors .
I notice this most when film photos . And it does n’t help that the sound does not give a proficient estimate of its own HDR processing in the camera preview screen to brighten up the mental picture preview .
That pronounce , just checking your messages in brilliant sun is perfectly o.k. . This speech sound does n’t have bad peak brightness , it ’s just not all that militant any more . personnel casualty of brightness off - axis does n’t serve either .
This is a120Hz refresh ratescreen and , unlike some LCD screen , it does n’t tolerate from obvious motion trails so does licitly make scrolling menus come out much smoother . The speech sound does not supportHDR videobut , after the tweak mentioned earlier , the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite holds up well for YouTube and Netflix use .
Performance
The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite runsAndroid 13and has the company ’s OxygenOS interface . It is euphemistic , does n’t come with too many spare apps preinstalled and runs well . And , unlike a OnePlus phone I used last yr , it does n’t thrust the more disputatious bonus features down your throat too much .
For object lesson , Smart Sidebar is a piffling box seat of icons that pops up when you purloin from the top right of the screen . But the little mark it leave is hidden as standard , and you are unlikely to pull it up accidentally .
The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite ’s raw performance may be an issue for some of you , though . This phone uses theSnapdragon 695 chipset , a budget 5 G CPU announced in 2021 , and view in the last - genOnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite .
I ’m all for telephone manufacturers re - using CPUs when they latch onto an affordable winner . I just do n’t think the Snapdragon 695 was ever much of a success .
It absolutely has the power for a respectably smooth day - to - day experience . No problems there . But its graphics chipset is not telling ; the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite gets smoked by thePoco F4 , theGoogle Pixel 6aor OnePlus ’s own Nord 2T.
In fairness to OnePlus , you see this issue in other phones that have 5 G but need to stick below £ 300 . Take theXiaomi Redmi 12 . It uses the much new - soundingSnapdragon 4 Gen 1 central processing unit , but that chipset is compromise in precisely the same way as the Snapdragon 695 . If OnePlus was able to write some money by sticking with this honest-to-god silicon over that chipset , it did the right thing .
Still , we ’re in the same performance ballpark as the much cheaper Samsung Galaxy A14 5 G here .
Camera
A crowd of people are likely to be let down when they first start using the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite camera . It has three cameras on the back , but there ’s no ultra - extensive or rapid climb , intend this feels like a undivided - camera sound .
The other two are junk 2MP sensors , a depth detector and a macro instruction . stick in a cheap depth detector is fine , but this trend of crappy minuscule macro tv camera grow well-worn a long time ago . They are never subject of taking a photo deserving look at for more than a second or two .
However , the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite starts to look a morsel more rose-cheeked when you just take pictures with the main camera . It is ground around the Samsung HM6 , a 108MP 1/1.67 - column inch detector . While it ’s far from Samsung ’s good camera of this solvent , it produce decent results thanks to OnePlus ’s largely neat software processing .
Colour is generally not obviously oversaturated , dynamical range sweetening is very sinewy without lead to too categoric an effigy . all right detail does not count too synthetic up close . Colour balance can be off a number at time , but not egregiously so . Its hit rate during the day is good , and that herculean HDR means you do n’t need to worry about where the Dominicus is in your composition .
OnPlus is fairly ambitious with what it draw out of the Samsung HM6 in the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite . Look into the thick shadows pulled out of the duskiness by the HDR algorithm and you ’ll from time to time see what ’s under there is actually noisy mush . But when it means an all - round more piquant image , I do n’t take care .
This is the classic sign the Samsung HM6 is n’t a world - class sensing element . You see more evidence at night . The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite ’s low - light double are n’t a patch on those of the OnePlus Nord 2 T , or the Xiaomi 13 Lite I used before this OnePlus .
There is a Night modality , which takes a small longer to capture an mental image . But it does n’t produce results with anything like the detail of thebest mid - range phone cameras . Once again , OnePlus does its best to drag information out of the darkest parts of a scene , but a destiny of it ends up looking mawkish and vague . Still , I wish OnePlus ’s processing approach in general , of force the fruit until only detritus is left , while trying to retain a largely natural facial expression .
TV brings more forged newsworthiness . While the Samsung HM6 is capable of read 8 K picture according to Samsung , the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite does n’t even have a 4 kB mode . It ’s 1080p or 720p only , and both of these are limited to 30fps .
This is real barebones stuff , but the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite ’s TV is at least electronically stabilised . The only path to get a high frame charge per unit is to use the slo - Missouri mode . It outputs 720p video , but the footage expect soft than that .
The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite ’s selfie tv camera is , thankfully , better . It uses an unnamed 16MP sensor that , found on the spectacles we do have , I ’d guess may be an Omnivision OV16A10 .
Despite its small sensor pixels this camera can pull a honorable , even unflattering , level of facial detail out of your selfies . And unlike some of the other Taiwanese stigma , OnePlus does n’t pile on sneaky facial processing by default .
Battery life
The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite has a 5000mAh battery , the least I ’d expect given how large and blockheaded this phone is . This is also a bit higher than the capacity of the Nord 2 T ’s 4500mAh .
It live on a bit longer than the Nord 2 metric ton and some of OnePlus ’s previous flagships . However , I still find it merely fine rather than great . TheSony Xperia 10 IVuses the same CPU and lasted far longer in my experience . But it does have a small-scale 6 - inch concealment so such a equivalence is not all that fair .
you’re able to anticipate it to last a full day , but I do n’t opine it ’s going to get close to two - mean solar day use for most folks . An hour of pour video takes 8 % off the battery life , indicate it should last around 12.5 hours of streaming .
Charging focal ratio is also a fleck dim than that of some other OnePlus headphone , even one with the same 67W charging criterion . It take 18 minutes to reach 50 % , hit 100 % at the 44 hour scar , but then continued to describe office until 56 minute in . Either way , it ’s far better than what Samsung offers at this story .
distinctive for a phone of this price , there ’s no radio charging .
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Should you buy it?
This phone ’s dependable at handling the less demanding forms of fluid entertainment . Its loudspeaker is loud , the filmdom is large and it can take good photos during the day .
worry about peregrine play ? Or night - time picture taking ? The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite is n’t too hot in either of these area , and if you want touch of higher - grade blueprint class like metallic element or shabu casing panels , you ’ll have to spend a bit more .
Final Thoughts
The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite is a comme il faut , passably affordable mid - range phone . There ’s not much of the honest-to-god OnePlus illusion here , but the phone does put up out in a couple of ways .
It has a headphone jack , a rarity in phones any more expensive than this one . The stereo speakers are also among the loudest I ’ve heard recently . They cut through noisier environments in a fashion most low-priced sound just ca n’t .
And the repose ? The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite ’s design has a little spark to it , partly down to the bright green coloring on offer . However , it ’s otherwise only a middleweight rival , and lacks the stand - out entreaty of phones like the OnePlus Nord 2 deoxythymidine monophosphate at spillage .
Trusted Score
How we test
We prove every nomadic phone we review thoroughly . We use industry - stock test to compare feature article properly and we apply the headphone as our main gimmick over the review period . We ’ll always severalise you what we find and we never , ever , accept money to review a product .
FAQs
This phone has no water resistance evaluation so should be used cautiously near water .
It has a 3.5 mm headphone jack on its bottom , near the USB - C thrill embrasure .
There ’s no radio receiver charge here , just telegraph charge .
