The OnePlus 11 gained’t make as a lot of a splash because the agency’s smartphones have completed up to now however, whisper it quietly, it in all probability deserves to. Though now not the darling of these within the know, it is a solidly competent smartphone which barely places a foot fallacious.
There’s no headline-grabbing 200MP digital camera or 100x tremendous zoom – nevertheless it’s none the more serious for it. The OnePlus 11 trims the luxurious fats, retains the worth smart and serves up nice all-round efficiency, lengthy battery life and a collection of fine cameras.
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OnePlus 11 assessment: What it’s worthwhile to know
The OnePlus 11 is the general flagship for the model in 2023. This 12 months, says OnePlus, there might be no Professional mannequin. Maybe a ‘T’ later within the 12 months to seize those that couldn’t fairly stretch to the total OnePlus 11, however nothing to compete with the Samsung Galaxy S23 Extremely and even the Motorola Edge 30 Extremely.
Regardless of the flagship label, although, the specs don’t level in direction of a flagship product. Though OnePlus has revived the Hasselblad partnership for the digital camera array, there isn’t any telephoto digital camera right here. As a substitute, you get a essential digital camera, an ultrawide and a portrait lens. Wi-fi charging can be not on the playing cards and quick charging has taken a step backwards, with the OnePlus 11 providing slower topping up than the super-rapid OnePlus 10.
The remainder of the bundle is fairly normal stuff at this finish of the market. The cellphone has a 6.7in 120Hz LPTO AMOLED show, is available in matte ‘titan’ black or gloss ‘everlasting’ inexperienced or and in 8GB/128GB (RAM/storage) or 16GB/256GB configurations.
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OnePlus 11 assessment: Value and competitors
Costs for the OnePlus 11 begin at £729 (8GB, 128GB, black) and rise to £799 (16GB, 256GB, inexperienced), a far cry from the sub-£200 of the agency’s authentic handset approach again in 2012. However that is nonetheless cheap for a flagship smartphone in 2023.
Its essential rivals are, subsequently, just about all the large telephones which have launched up to now three months: the Google Pixel 7 Professional, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus (or the Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus when you don’t thoughts sticking with final 12 months’s {hardware}), the Motorola Edge 30 Extremely and the Apple iPhone 14 Plus.
The Google Pixel 7 Professional might be the OnePlus’ largest competitor, purely due to its worth. Though the listing worth of the bottom specification is £849, you will get maintain of it fairly extensively for round £720 in the meanwhile and it’s a cracking smartphone with a 6.7in 120Hz AMOLED show, a 5x telephoto digital camera alongside a essential digital camera and an ultrawide.
The Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus is costlier than the OnePlus 11 however, once more, beats it in terms of the digital camera setup. It has a 2x telephoto to go together with its ultrawide and essential cameras. It additionally matches the OnePlus 11’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, though the S23 Plus’ 8 Gen 2 is the “made for Samsung variant”, which is a contact sooner.
The Motorola Edge is our present choice at this worth level. It comes with final 12 months’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip however is in any other case a beast of a cellphone at a really cheap worth. It comes with the same number of cameras because the OnePlus 11 – ultrawide, essential, 2x telephoto – however its base specification is 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage and it makes use of the identical 200MP digital camera because the simply launched Samsung Galaxy S23 Extremely.
Lastly, there’s the Apple iPhone 14 Plus. It’s a pleasant sufficient cellphone however solely has two cameras – ultrawide and essential – and makes use of final 12 months’s A15 Bionic chipset as a substitute of the A16 Bionic utilized by the iPhone 14 Professional. With 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage it prices £949.
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OnePlus 11 assessment: Design and new options
Massive outdated digital camera bumps are all the craze lately and the OnePlus 11’s is a humdinger. It dominates the rear of the cellphone: a chrome steel ring surrounding the cellphone’s three cameras and LED flash organized in a sq., and the Hasselblad branding emblazoned throughout the centre. It’s definitely eye-catching, however there’s one thing awkward about the way in which it flows into the body of the cellphone and wraps round it.
Nonetheless, it’s a greater wanting association than on the fairly ugly Motorola Edge 30 Extremely and I feel it’s barely neater than the brutish digital camera bar stretching throughout the rear of the Google Pixel 7 Professional.
I fairly like the way in which the cellphone sits within the hand as properly. It’s properly balanced and lightweight at 205g, and the way in which the display screen and rear panel glass curve in to satisfy one another on both aspect of the chromed aluminium body makes it really feel much less cumbersome than you’d anticipate.
As regards to glass, there’s Gorilla Glass Victus on the entrance and Gorilla Glass 5 on the rear to guard towards scuffs and scratches and, as ever, OnePlus features a pre-applied display screen protector. One factor that’s not instantly obvious from the skin is that this OnePlus really has an IP64 score for mud and water resistance.
This isn’t something particular within the general scheme of issues, nonetheless – a score of 4 towards water ingress means the cellphone isn’t protected towards submersion, simply “water jets from any path” – and it’s a step behind the OnePlus 10 Professional, which had an IP68 score. Nevertheless, it’s higher than the OnePlus 10T, which had no official score in any respect.
In any other case, it’s conventional OnePlus fare with the corporate reintroducing the three-position alert-slider swap after omitting it from the OnePlus 10T. This sits on the appropriate edge round an inch larger than the facility button. The amount rocker is on the left edge and the twin 5G SIM tray is on the underside edge alongside a USB-C port and a single speaker grille. There’s no 3.5mm headphone jack, no microSD card growth slot and no wi-fi charging right here, though the cellphone does supply an in-screen fingerprint reader, face unlock and NFC.
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OnePlus 11 assessment: Show
The show is just about as you’d anticipate from a flagship smartphone in 2023. It measures 6.7in throughout the diagonal, has a decision of 1,440 x 3,216 and refreshes at as much as 120Hz for ultra-smooth scrolling and gameplay, and all the way down to 1Hz so the always-on show doesn’t leach away an excessive amount of battery capability whereas it’s operating.
Different notable specs embody HDR10+ and Dolby Imaginative and prescient help, plus sRGB and Show P3 color gamut help. Peak brightness reaches 1,300cd/m2, too and as with all AMOLED shows, its distinction ratio is, primarily, good. It ought to look good no matter content material you’re viewing, in different phrases.
In testing, it carried out admirably nevertheless it didn’t move each problem with flying colors. I examined each one of many cellphone’s 5 color modes – Vivid, Pure, Cinematic and Good – and located that the Pure mode was fantastically color correct inside sRGB, whereas Cinematic mode provided one of the best color accuracy inside Show P3. Use the primary for looking the net and normal dynamic vary content material, the latter for HDR video playback or, if you would like essentially the most vibrant colors, decide Good. On this mode, the display screen generated 122% of the P3 color area.
In apply, utilizing this show is essentially an incredible expertise however Dolby Imaginative and prescient help does look like a bit of patchy. It really works positive on Amazon Prime, for instance, however there’s no signal of it on Netflix or Disney+ the place solely HD codecs of common reveals appear to play. That presumably will change in time as OnePlus irons out the bugs nevertheless it’s one to concentrate on when you watch a whole lot of streaming video in your cellphone.
I used to be additionally unable to push peak brightness past 700cd/m2, it doesn’t matter what I did. I performed an HDR file with a white window set to 10%, turned auto brightness on and off and beamed a torch on the brightness sensor and toggled between all the varied color modes. It’s doable to succeed in the 1,300cd/m2 brightness based on OnePlus, however you’d must show a 1% white patch towards a black background, with auto brightness enabled and a vivid torch shining on the sunshine sensor to get it there. Notably Dolby Imaginative and prescient peak brightness is simply rated at 800cd/m2 and you will solely see as much as 500cd/m2 whereas watching HDR10+ materials.
All that is, admittedly, a bit of educational. The display screen is completely readable within the brightest of ambient gentle at these ranges of brightness and whether or not HDR or Dolby Imaginative and prescient is enabled or not, streaming TV and flicks on the display screen look excellent on it.
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OnePlus 11 assessment: Cameras
If it’s a combined report for the show, the cameras are far more spectacular, significantly the digital camera that’s alleged to be the star of the present: the so-called portrait module, which is definitely merely a 2x telephoto. This shoots photos at 32MP with an aperture of f/2.8 and, when it really works, it captures pleasing portraits with topics cleanly reduce from the background and a creamy {smooth} bokeh.
Use the Serenity Hasselblad Masters filter and the look is much more spectacular, lending every shot a stylised look that’s alleged to ape Yin Chao’s type (a well-known Chinese language trend photographer).
I don’t know his work significantly properly however portraits captured with it look nice. I don’t normally just like the self portraits I snap throughout smartphone testing however the photos I captured with the OnePlus 11 had been spectacularly good, clearly beating the iPhone 14 Professional Max, particularly in terms of pores and skin tones.
My huge gripe with the portrait mode is that, very often, I discovered that the digital camera would miss focus, leading to an unusably blurry {photograph}. It doesn’t actually like being proper up shut and private.
The opposite huge differentiating issue, based on OnePlus, is that the cellphone has a separate “13-channel multi-spectral” sensor for color identification for setting white stability and this works throughout all of the rear cameras, together with the primary 50MP, f/1.8 essential digital camera and the 48MP, f/2.2 ultrawide. It definitely appears to do the trick in terms of portrait pictures and it really works for pictures captured in in any other case tough lighting as properly.
Within the grass beneath, the OnePlus 11 captures a much more lifelike unfold of tones and avoids the over-sharpening that is current within the iPhone 14 Professional Max shot:
Once more, there are some caveats right here. You’ll have to be cautious when taking pictures with vivid gentle sources in body as these trigger dramatic and off-putting lens flare. And autofocus is an issue with the primary digital camera in addition to the portrait digital camera. Very often I discovered what would have in any other case been fairly good pictures ruined by being too blurry, or with the fallacious components of the {photograph} in focus. It’s a disgrace as a result of when it will get focus proper, the pictures you’ll be able to seize with the OnePlus’ essential and ultrawide cameras look fairly beautiful.
Even low gentle pictures aren’t as huge an issue as they’ve been up to now. I’ve in contrast it right here with the iPhone 14 Professional Max as that’s the smartphone digital camera I do know finest and, though there’s no competitors when evaluating pictures taken in Professional Max’s 48MP RAW mode, the OnePlus 11 really beats the iPhone for normal picture seize, with superior element, much less noise, higher HDR and nicer colors.
Plus, when you don’t thoughts taking the time to be taught your approach across the Hasselblad-branded Professional mode, you’ll be capable of nail your shot each time through the use of superior options equivalent to focus peaking and the on-screen histogram.
As for video, that’s fairly spectacular, too, with the power to seize as much as 8K at 24fps stabilised, 4K at as much as 60fps stabilised and 1080p at as much as 60fps with OnePlus’ Extremely Regular Professional mode enabled. That is one thing akin to an action-camera sort stabilisation, enabling you to stroll and even run whereas sustaining a rock regular shot.
All in all, whereas autofocus may be one thing of a weak level, that is essentially the most impressed I’ve been with a OnePlus smartphone digital camera for a while.
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OnePlus 11 assessment: Efficiency
If the digital camera efficiency is a shock, I’m considerably much less stunned by the cellphone’s common efficiency. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 has produced nice efficiency and spectacular battery life in all of the telephones we’ve examined to this point. The Snapdragon Gen 2 contained in the OnePlus 11 takes that to a different stage.
It’s an octa-core chipset with one efficiency core (a Cortex-X3) operating at 3.2GHz, 4 mid-speed cores at 2.8GHz (Cortex-A715 and A710), and three low energy Cortex-A510 cores at 2GHz. The GPU is an Adreno 740 operating at a surprisingly low clock frequency of 680MHz and the RAM and storage are actually of the sooner LPDDR5X and UFS 4.0 sorts.
The lead to pure efficiency phrases is that it is a faster cellphone than the iPhone 14 Plus and all of its Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 rivals, nevertheless it lags ever so barely behind the “Made for Samsung” Gen 2 contained in the Galaxy S23.
Battery life, too, may be very spectacular certainly with a results of 28hrs 9mins in our video rundown check with flight mode engaged and the show set to a brightness of 170cd/m2. That’s the seventh finest consequence we’ve had since we began utilizing this check.
And charging velocity is speedy: a 100W SuperVOOC charger equipped within the field, coupled with a dual-cell contained in the cellphone means the OnePlus 11 can hit full cost from empty in as little as 25 minutes or 70% in quarter-hour. That will not fairly match the 19 minutes of the OnePlus 10T nevertheless it’s nonetheless excellent certainly.
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OnePlus 11 assessment: Verdict
All of this provides as much as a surprisingly good displaying for the OnePlus 11. The design will divide opinion however its capabilities are literally fairly spectacular. It’s solely very barely slower than the Samsung Galaxy S23, the battery life is good, and I just like the portrait digital camera, even whether it is only a renamed 2x telephoto.
There are weaknesses. The digital camera struggles with focus at instances, particularly up-close portraits, the place it tends to overlook greater than it hits. And, if I’m utterly sincere, I’d discover a correct telephoto lens with a 5x optical zoom extra helpful than the 2x “portrait” digital camera.
All in all, although, the worth of £719 is low sufficient that it’s onerous to seek out fault with the OnePlus 11. Make no mistake about it, that is an outstandingly good smartphone at a really tempting worth.
