OnePlus N200 5G review: decent phone, lackluster cameras

[ad_1]

It’s Father’s Day. My mother takes a cake out of the kitchen and puts it in front of my father. Take a picture, he says. My family is waiting for you to get the phone out. I try a new phone pretty much every couple of weeks, so they assume it’s using a fantastic $ 1,000 device with 16 cameras and 108-megapixel sensors. But today they took it for granted. I keep my phone in my pocket and instead ask my brother if I can use his.

I’ve been using the OnePlus Nord N200 5G for several weeks now, a budget Android phone from the company known for making affordable (and increasingly not-so-affordable) high-end phones. OnePlus’s current strategy is to try to conquer the low-end smartphone market with cheaper models that retain some of the sleek, sleek mojo of its more expensive options. I really like the $ 300 Nord N10 5G that debuted earlier this year. The new N200 5G cuts another $ 60, coming in at just $ 240.

It’s amazing to see premium features like a 90Hz screen refresh rate, 5G connectivity, massive battery and sleek design in such an affordable phone. Unfortunately, in the weeks that I use it, I have found myself taking fewer and fewer photos. The camera system is not very good, as you might expect from such a cheap phone. But you shouldn’t settle for less from a company whose slogan is Never Settle.

Economic emotions

If you rarely open the camera app, there’s a lot to like here. Despite the plastic build, the N200 5G doesn’t look like a budget phone. Its narrow bezel fits nicely in my palm, although parts of the 6.49-inch screen can be hard to reach with your thumb. The screen itself has thin bezels and a perforated selfie camera, so it looks quite modern.

The blue gradient sheen on the matte plastic back gives it an air of elegance, but you may still want to slap a case, the coating has picked up some weird stains over the course of a few weeks and I can’t seem to remove them. As for water resistance, the Nord N200 reaches the bare minimum with an IPX2 degree of protection; it can withstand some splashes of water (think light rain) but not much more.

There’s a USB Type-C charging port, a MicroSD card slot to expand the 64 gigabytes of built-in storage, a headphone jack, an NFC chip for contactless payments, and a reliable fingerprint sensor on the side of the phone. phone that doubles as a power button. All standard rate features in budget phones. The real highlight here is the screen.

It’s still an LCD, so you don’t get the blacks like ink or the always-on display offered by OLED panels, but the screen has a 90Hz screen refresh rate. Typically, phones in this price range use panels at 60 Hz, which means that the images update 60 times per second. By increasing the refresh rate to 90, you are now seeing 90 images per second; everything from Instagram scrolling to gaming feels a little smoother. Higher-end phones offer 120Hz screens, but the N200 is among the cheapest phones in the US with specs that come close enough. 90 Hz is also a big improvement.

Pair this spec increase with surprisingly decent performance thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 480 5G chip and you get a phone that can handle most tasks well. Games like Alto’s Odyssey and Pako Forever also performed well. That said, the paltry amount of RAM (only 4 gigabytes) shows its limits. You will often encounter slowdowns. Juggle multiple tasks and quickly switch between apps and you’ll see the processor gasp as the on-screen animations stutter and crawl. The Moto G Stylus 5G I recently tested has the same chip but with 6 gigabytes of RAM and ran much smoother (it also costs $ 160 more).

Outside of the 90Hz screen, which is also crisp and gets quite bright outdoors, the second selling point is the 5,000mAh battery cell. Easily got me through two full days of average use. It’s nice not to have to plug in a phone every night.

Then there is 5G, which is not yet too common in phones under $ 300. There are some caveats though. First, 5G only works on T-Mobile’s network, so if you’re on AT&T or Verizon, this phone will only use 4G. On T-Mobile, it only supports sub-6 5G, which is faster than 4G but not as fast as the millimeter wave (mmWave) version of 5G which gives you blazingly fast internet. That’s normal at this price and it doesn’t matter, as mmWave is barely available in the US.

[ad_2]