Alright, here’s a brand new smartphone from OnePlus. It’s the Nord CE 3 Lite and it’s a rather entry-level smartphone, powered by the Snapdragon 695 chipset and supports 5G too. This phone… to be honest, feels familiar. It’s very similar to another phone that we reviewed earlier this year.
But, let’s put that aside first – let’s see if this is a good phone.
I want to quickly comment about the name of the phone. The full name of this phone is a mouthful – OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite. It’s a mouthful of a name.
Design
I honestly do like the design. It’s similar to last year’s Nord CE 2 Lite, but now without the camera bump. There are just two big protruding circles now and I like the design. It’s clean.
I do need to highlight one thing – the back panel… I can’t confirm what’s it made of. It does feel like glass since it’s slides around the table and doesn’t have hairline scratches. Still, I would’ve preferred a matte finish rather than a glossy finish like what we have here.
I mean, I do like the green color. A lot. Some people told me that they don’t like this color – but hey, that’s why it is available in black color too.
Cameras
Let’s now talk about the cameras. We have 3 cameras on this phone, but I’ll say only one of them is actually feasible. The 2MP macro camera is… well, pretty unusable.
So, it all boils down to that single 108MP main camera. To have a look at all the pictures and videos taken with the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite, watch our video at the top of this review.
Screen
Now, let’s talk about the screen. This is a 6.72-inch IPS LCD screen with a resolution of 2400×1080 pixels and has a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz. Honestly, this is a pretty good screen. We used our colorimeter to test it and we get 99.96% sRGB and 98.36% of DCI-P3 color gamut coverage at a very low ΔE number too.
The absolute maximum brightness that we get though, is kinda expected – it peaks at around 650 nits. I mean, that’s the limitation of an IPS LCD screen. You might have issues looking at the screen during a super bright sunny day.
Performance
Now, let’s talk about the performance. This phone has a Snapdragon 695 chipset and we’ve tested other phones with this chipset before and the performance is… I’d say depends on what you want to do with it. For day-to-day usage like social media, web browsing, all those stuff – it will mostly be fine. There will be stutters here and there but it’s generally okay. In case you’re wondering, this phone has 240Hz touch sampling rate.
When games are concerned, it truly depends on what you’re playing. It handles PUBG Mobile, COD Mobile, and Mobile Legends just fine – but Genshin Impact is going to be a challenge.
At the lowest graphical settings, the game struggles to maintain 30fps and dips further down constantly. I mean, I have nothing against it. This is an entry-ish level smartphone after all so I don’t expect it to play the game with no lags.
It’s our job to test out these phones with a few different games to let you know how the phone performs. Just like how we found out that PUBG New State has 90fps option for this phone but OnePlus still doesn’t let a majority of games to run above 60fps.
Battery life
The battery life is straightforward enough. The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite comes with a 5,000mAh battery and in our usual PCMark battery life test at 100 nits brightness, it can run around 13 hours and that’s actually quite good.
Charging time
The charging time is also nothing out of the ordinary. It comes with a 67W charger in the box and it’ll charge from 15% to completion in slightly less than 40 minutes. The temperature while charging is very low too – 36°C is the highest that we recorded for the entire charging duration.
Unfortunately, OnePlus still uses its own proprietary charging standard. What I mean by proprietary is that you’ll have to use their cable and charger to get this charging speed.
Software
In terms of the software, this phone is running OxygenOS 13.1 – and the overall features, look and feel, and prebuilt apps feel the same as the flagship OnePlus 11.
There are little to no bloatware apps and we still have the OnePlus Shelf feature too I mean, I really like this Shelf feature and it has so much more potential to expand and include more things like home screen widgets. Imagine swiping down to access all sorts of widgets without going back to the home screen.
Other than that, the overall experience is actually snappy even for a phone with the Snapdragon 695 chipset.
Few more things to mention
Of course, there are a few more things that we need to mention. This phone is using UFS 2.2 NAND chips and also uses a USB 2.0 port at the bottom of the phone.
However, we do have a 3.5mm audio jack – which is nice to have even though OnePlus still wants to promote their entry-level OnePlus Nord Buds 2 as well.
It also has a dedicated nano SIM card slot and another combo slot so you can put in a microSD card if you want to.
By the way, this phone does have an audio jack even though OnePlus is literally launching this phone alongside the new OnePluds Nord Buds 2.
Should you buy the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite?
I think that depends on the price. At RM1,099, the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite is indeed what I’ll consider to be a good price for the phone. Our initial script for this review compares this phone with the Samsung Galaxy A34 because of two reasons – the Galaxy A34’s Dimensity 1080 chipset performs better and it has proper OIS.
But at around USD $100 cheaper than the Galaxy A34, that makes the Nord CE 3 Lite actually at a reasonable price point.
Where to buy? (Affliate links)
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