OnePlus Nord 2 vs Mi 11X Full Review By TecworkZ

Hey guys it’s Sagar and in this video, I am comparing the OnePlus Nord 2 with the Mi 11X. Last year when OnePlus introduced the Original Nord, it barely had any completion in that segment, so OnePlus did very well with it. Fast forward to a year later, and now that segment is very tightly filled with completion from all brands. Mi 11X is Xiaomi’s attempt to dominate the segment but OnePlus also wants it’s share of the pie back, so they introduced the Nord 2. Both these phones fall in a similar price range, which is causing a confusion in the minds of many people, that which one should they go with. If you are one of them, you have clicked on the right video.

We will put both these phones under a microscope, look at what both of them offer, dive deep into their similarities and difference and then in the end help you decide which would be the right one for your needs. I am not just going to brush up or read the speck of both the phones and call it a comparison video. This is going to be a slightly long video filled with a lot of useful information, so without wasting any time, let’s get started with the first point which everyone has to think about while getting a new phone, The Price. Mi 11X comes in 2 RAM and storage variants. The 6GB RAM and 128GB Storage variant is priced at Rs.27,999. And the 8GB RAM and 128GB storage variant is available at Rs.29,999. There are 3 colour options to choose from- Celestial Silver, Cosmic Back and Luna White.

All colour and storage variants of the Mi 11X are available for purchase. OnePlus Nord 2 gets 3 RAM and storage variants. The 6GB RAM and 128GB Storage variant is priced at Rs.27,999. This variant is not available for sale right now. In typical OnePlus style, It will go on sale in very limited quantities at the end of August, and we might never see it again after that.

Then there is the 8GB RAM variant with 128GB of built in storage and it is available for Rs.29,999. And finally for those who need more storage there is the 12GB RAM and 256GB storage variant of the Nord 2 which is being sold at Rs.34,999. Nord 2 also gets 3 colour options - Blue Haze, Gray Sierra and Green Wood. The Green Wood colour again isn’t available right now and will go on sale in the middle of August and will exclusively be available only in India. So Price wise, both the phones are evenly matched.

Base variant of the Nord 2 is still over a month away, so if you want a phone now and you cant stretch your budget beyond 28K Rs. You should go with the Mi 11X. These are of-course their retail prices at the time of uploading this video, and you can get both these phones for much lower price with some exchange offers and credit or debit card discounts. For their current pricing and discount offers, make sure to click on the links in the description section. If you have liked this video so far and you aren’t subscribed to the channel, make sure to hit the subscribe button and the bell icon next to it.

I am trying to get this channel to 200K subscribers by the end of this year and this is your chance to help me get there. With the prices taken care of, let us check out the design of both these phones. Both of them get a plastic frame running around the device, and it is sandwiched by Gorilla Glass 5 from either sides. Mi 11X gets a frosted matte back finish on the Celestial Silver and Luna White colours, while the Cosmic Black colour gets a glossy back. Nord 2 on the other hand has 3 different finished to its back.

The Blue Haze colour has a glossy back, This Gray Sierra one has a frosted matte back and the Green Wood colour has a leather like finish. I am a big fan of the Frosted matte back, but it is nice to see OnePlus giving people more choices. The matte finish on the Mi 11X is silky smooth, while it is a bit more corse or rougher on the Nord 2. Most people wont even feel difference here, but I like the finish on the back of the Nord 2. The overall design of both the phones is not that different.

Both have a full screen display at the front with a punch hole style cutout of their selfie cameras. And a triple camera array at the back on the top left. Mi 11X is slightly taller and wider than the Nord 2, but it is 0.5mm thinner, so it doesn’t feel too bulky. Nord 2 is slightly smaller, so it fits in the hands a bit better, it is also 6-7 grams lighter than the Mi 11X, but given its size and thickness, it somehow feels heavier of the 2. Let me make this very clear, it is not the heavier one, but given its size and dimensions, it feels like the heavier one.

Xiaomi has done a better job of distributing the weight of the Mi 11X evenly around the entire body of the phone. It also gets IP53 water and dust resistance rating, which the Nord 2 doesn’t. Coming to the ports and buttons, Mi 11X has it’s Power and volume buttons on the right. It gets a physical fingerprint sensor which sits under the power button. Nord 2 has its power button and the Signature OnePlus Alert Slider on the right side.

At the top, Nord 2 just has a secondary noise cancelling microphone, whereas Mi 11X gets the noise cancelling microphone, IR blaster and a secondary speaker at the top. Left side of the Mi 11X is left completely clean without any buttons or ports, but the Nord 2 has its volume buttons on this side. At the bottom, both of them have the speaker grill, USB Type C port for charging and data transfer, a microphone and the SIM tray. SIM trays on both the phones can hold 2 nano SIM cards, and both the phones don’t have an option to expand the storage via a microSD card. Build of the buttons on the Mi 11X feels a bit flimsy over the buttons on the Nord 2, which feel rigid and have a very satisfying clicky feedback.

For my average sized hands, both of them are 2 handed devices, but since the Nord 2 is a bit smaller and narrower, it fits better in my hands. That being said, no matter which one you decide to get, you will easily get used to the size and the weight within a day or 2. Mi 11x has a bigger overall form factor to accommodate its larger 6.67 inch Super AMOLED display. This display has a resolution of 2400x1080 pixels, gets 120Hz refresh rate and 360Hz touch Sampling rate, has 1300 nits of peak brightness while viewing HDR content, supports HDR10+ and is covered by Gorilla Glass 5. Nord 2 has a slightly smaller 6.43 inch Fluid AMOLED panel, with a resolution of 2400x1080 pixels, 90Hz refresh rate, 180Hz touch sampling rate, and HDR 10+ Support and this display also gets gorilla glass 5 protection. I like and prefer the display on the Mi 11X.

Not because it is bigger, but because it can get brighter and shows accurate colours of the 2. The white balance and colours on the display of the Nord 2 don’t seem to be very accurate. And on top of that, there are very limited display calibration or customisation options when compared to the Mi 11X, which lets you adjust the display as you like it. While watching HDR videos on both, Mi 11X not only gets much brighter, but it also shows richer colours and blacks are deeper on it as well. Viewing angles seem to be good on both, and there is no weird shift in colours or anything like that, when you look at these displays from various angles.

If you are getting a phone for watching lot of videos, you should go with the Mi 11X, as its display seems much better than the one on the Nord 2. It seems like the display quality is one of the places where OnePlus has tried to cut a few corners. Since Mi 11X’s display has 120Hz refresh rate compared to 90Hz on the Nord 2, everything on the Mi 11X feels a bit smoother. Everything from animations to swiping seems faster on the Mi 11X. It also has 360Hz touch sampling rate which becomes very important while playing games, and can turn out to be the difference between you taking the shot, or being shot while playing FPS games.

After all every time you pick your phone, display is what you look at, so its better to go with a phone which offers you a better display. Both of them have Punch hole style camera cut outs in their display for the selfie camera. One on the Mi 11x is very tiny and is in the top middle of the display, whereas the one on the Nord to is just a hair bigger and is on the top left of the display. This completely depends on your personal preference, but I like the selfie camera to be placed in the middle because it looks symmetric. Not that I take a lot of selfies, but I also find it to be a bit difficult to frame a good selfie when the camera is placed in one of the corners.

Both these phones have WideWine L1 certification and they can play HDR videos on Youtube. But the Nord 2 has some issues. While watching videos on Amazon, there is no 1080P HD option which we see on the Mi 11X, and in Netflix app, while both phones can play FullHD content, Nord 2 doesn’t seem to have support for HDR playback, but the Mi 11X does. So again I think Mi 11X is a better phone for consuming media. Nord 2 gets an in display optical fingerprint sensor and most people love it.

Mi 11x on the other hand gets a physical capacitive fingerprint sensor, mounted on its side under the power button. While both of them have their advantages and disadvantaged, it really comes down you your preference. As cool as the in display fingerprint sensor looks, I prefer a physical fingerprint sensor, and there are a few reasons for that. First of all, the physical one is much easier to find and hit accurately every time, whereas you have to be a bit cautious about the placement of the in display one. Physical one is also much faster and accurate to unlock your phone.

No matter how fast companies tell us the in display ones are, they are just as not as fast as, at least not on these non flagship phones. Since the optical in display ones like the one on the Nord 2 need light to read your fingerprint, you need to go through an extra step of waking the screen first, even if you have the always on display turned on all the time. Whereas the one on the Mi 11x is always on, and you can even touch it while picking up the phone or removing it from your pocket and have it unlocked by the time you look at it. This seems like a small thing, and some might think how many seconds can you actually save. But an average person unlocks their phones a few hundred times every day, so this really adds up to a significant amount of time over years.

And lastly, the fingerprint sensor on the Nord 2 is placed way too lower for your thumb to comfortably reach. I think the one on the OnePlus 8 was placed at the best location. So if anyone from OnePlus is watching, please place the fingerprint sensors on all your phones at about 1 inch away from the bottom bezel. Alright, so after having spent way too much time on the fingerprint sensors, let’s talk about the speakers on these phones. First of all, none of these phones come with a 3.5mm headphone jack. Mi 11X does however come with a USB C to 3.5mm dongle in the box, which you can keep attached to the headphones or earphones of your choice. Now for the speakers on the phone, both of them offer a dual speaker stereo output.

Mi 11X has actual dual speakers, one at the top and one at the bottom, whereas Nord 2 uses the earpiece speaker as its secondary speaker. Here is how both of them sound. This audio is being played via the loud speakers on both these phones, recorded via my rode shotgun microphone straight into my Sony camera, and you are listening to it after YouTube’s compression out of the speakers of the device you are using right now, so keep all of this in mind. I don’t know if you could tell this through this video or not, but both of them can get pretty loud. Nord 2’s output seems to be slightly louder because one of its speaker is firing the audio right towards you, while Mi 11X is firing the audio in these 2 directions.

Audio from the Nord 2 also sounds a bit deeper and I could hear the instrument separation slightly better from its speakers. Mi 11x gets Dolby Atmos Support and custom equaliser options, so you can fine-tune the music coming out of these speakers to your liking. If you like to listen to your audio via the loud speakers, I think the Nord 2 does has slight edge over the Mi 11x in this department. Coming to the internals, this time OnePlus went with MediaTek’s Dimensity 1200 processor. This MediaTek’s most powerful processor and it is built on 6nm architecture.

It is coupled with Mali G77 GPU, 6/8 or 12 GB of LPDDR4X RAM, 128/256GB of UFS 3.1 storage and 4500mAh dual cell battery. Xiaomi went with a more traditional approach and included the Snapdragon 870 processor inside the Mi 11X. This is build on 7nm architecture and is coupled with Adreno 650GPU, 6/8GB of LPDDR5 RAM, 128GB of UFS 3.1 storage and 4520mAh battery. Both the phones are 5G enables, but the Mi 11x supports only 2 5G bands, whereas the Nord 2 supports 6 5G bands. Nord 2 also gets NFC chip for making contactless payments, which the Mi 11X doesnt have.

Although both the phones have difference processors inside and the Snapdragon processor in the Mi 11X scores higher on the benchmarks, the real life performance of these phones is not too far away from each other. The GPU on the Nord 2 isn’t strong enough to give you as smooth performance as the Mi 11X for long hours of gaming sessions. But other than that, while using most day to day apps on these phones, you wont be able to tell a difference in performance. When placed side by side, Some apps and games might seem to open faster on the Mi 11X, and its UI also feels smoother, but then that is due to the 120Hz refresh rate. If you want to play a lot of games for long time, then out of these 2, you should go with the Mi 11X.

Actually this is the first time OnePlus is using the Dimensity 1200 processor, so maybe they need slightly more time to optimise it for gaming performance on this Nord 2. Internals, performance and Software go hand in hand, so let us talk about the software on both these phones. Mi 11x is running MIUI 12.5 and the OnePlus Note 2 is running the latest version of Oxygen OS 11, both of which are built on top of Android 11. In terms looks Oxygen OS is way better, cleaner and minimal than MIUI 12.5. Xiaomi installs a lot of bloatware on their phones to begin with, and if you are not careful while seeing up your phone, those apps can send you numerous vague and random notifications.

None of this is an issue on Oxygen OS. Other than a few google apps and Netflix, you will barely see any bloatware on the Nord 2 out of the box. MIUI 12.5 has been out for sometime, so Xiaomi has got a lot of time to clean and iron some bugs with software updates, while the Oxygen OS 11.3 on the Nord 2 is fairly new, so you might see a few small bugs here and there. OnePlus has merged its codebase with Colours OS, so there have been a few changes behind the curtains, which sometimes even pop out on the Nord 2. Like the display and battery settings look a lot like what you see on Realme phones, and the camera app on the Nord 2 is straight out of a Realme phone.

This might not be much of an issue if the Nord 2 is going to be your first OnePlus smartphone, but if you are currently using a OnePlus phone and are planning to shift to the Nord 2, you won’t find the UI and some design elements to be as clean or minimal. Software on both phones are fairly customisable so most of the people getting this phone should not have an issue making these phones their own. Software update wise, both should receive 2 major Android version updates and 3 years of security updates. While OnePlus has said this publicly, Xiaomi has not made any such promises. Both the phones get a somewhat similar sized battery.

Nord 2 comes with a 4500mAh dual cell battery and the Mi 11x packs in a 4520Mah battery, so both the phones should comfortably last you an entire day. If you want to get into the specifics, on the Mi 11X I get a screen on time of about 6 and half to 7 hours easily, while on the Nord 2 I get a screen on time of nearly 6 hours. Battery on the Nord 2 has to power a smaller display which doesn’t even get that bright, but its battery still lasts less than the one on the Mi 11X. This might be because the power efficient Snapdragon 870 processor. That being said, when it is time to charge both of them up, the competition is not even close.

Mi 11X comes with a 33 watt charger in ht e box, whereas the Nord 2 comes with a 65watt charger and a dual cell battery, which can fully juice up from 0 to 100% insanely fast. So when it come to charging Nord 2 is the undisputed winer. Coming to the cameras, these are easily one of the most important features on a smartphone for most people. Both of them come with a triple camera setup on their back. Mi 11x gets a 48 megapixel Sony IMX582 sensor as it main camera, an 8 megapixel sensor with ultrawide lens, and lastly a 5 megapixel sensor with a macro lens in front of it.

Nord 2 comes with a 50 megapixel Sony IMX766 sensor as its main camera, 8 megapixel sensor with an ultra wide lens and finally a 2 megapixel monochrome camera. At the front Mi 11x gets a 20 megapixel selfie camera whereas Nord 2 comes with a 32 megapixel front facing camera. Now the main camera on the Nord 2 uses the same new sensor as the wide camera on the OnePlus 9 Pro, so everyone has big expectations from this camera. Mi 11x’s main camera is not a new sensor, it is actually a few years old, but if you guys saw my camera review of this phone, you might know that it is capable of taking some really good images. But how does it stack up against the camera on the Nord 2? Here are some images from both the phones.

Both images are looking good and seem to have similar amount of details in them, but there is a clear difference in the white balance and colour temperature of these images. One from the Mi 11x appears a bit warmer where as Nord’s image is a bit cooler. Actual colours were more like what Nord is showing in this shot. In this one, there isn’t a big difference in terms of white balance, but the Mi 11x seems to have captured slightly better looking colours. As we zoom in on these images, Mi 11X seem to have captured a lot of noise, where as the image processing on the Nord 2 did well to keep that noise down.

But we also see that Mi 11’s image is much sharper compared to the Nord’s image. In overcast conditions, we see Nord 2 capturing cooler but true to life colours and slightly brighter images. Mi 11X on the other hand is crushing the shadows a bit. There is a bit more contrast in Mi 11X’s images, and it is also capturing slightly warmer colours, which make colours in its images seem more saturated than the ones in Nord’s images. None of them are showing bad looking colours, but which one you like will depend on your colour preference.

When it comes to HDR situations, Nord 2 is doing a better job of bringing up the shadows and preserving slightly more information in the highlights. But in this process its images are turning out to be a bit too processed. Now some might like this look, after all its images are showing a lot of information in the parts which are completely dark in the images form the Mi 11X. I don’t know about you guys, but this doesn’t look natural to me. I think OnePlus needs to tone down the HDR mode on the Nord 2 a bit for the images to look good and natural.

If you think this difference is big, check out how much wider it gets in lower lighting situations. Even without the Night mode, look at how much brighter and detailed the images from the Nord 2 are. This is thanks to the Optical image stabilisation on its main camera. With the night mode turned on, images form the Nord 2 seem like they were clicked in daylight. Just look at the amount of light and details in these shots.

I did not take a lot of selfies, but in just these 2 shots anyone can tell that the selfie camera on the Nord 2 is really bad. I don’t know if it is an optimisation issue or what the actual problem is, all I can say is please don’t get the Nord 2 if you like to take a lot of selfies. Now this is not a detailed Tecworkz style camera comparison video, so I am not going to show images in each and every lighting condition. But even from just these images you get a fairly good idea of which images you might prefer. In the next few days, I will be uploading a very detailed camera comparison between these 2 phones where I will share over 100 image and video samples from each of these phones in various lighting conditions.

If camera is your main deciding factor, I would suggest you guys to be a bit patient and wait until that video goes live on the channel. In day time, the difference in detail is not that much, so look at the one whose colours seem more natural to you. But if you want to take images lower light, Nord 2 is the undisputed winner. Finally OnePlus seems to have got the cameras right on one of their phones. Again for a much deeper dive into their cameras, make sure to check out my detailed camera comparison which will come out in a few days.

There are some other things that make each of these special. Nord 2 has the Alert slider, which makes switching profiles so much faster and simpler. It also gets NFC chip, and if you are in habit of using your phone for contactless payments, this is a must have feature. Mi 11X gets an IR blaster, which many people love and use to control various appliances in their home. It also has dedicated Macro camera, which if you know how to use properly can end up giving you incredible images, and it also gets the USB type C to 3.5mm headphone jack adapter. Something that both these phones have is very strong haptic motor.

It is so good to finally see Android manufacturers embracing this and adding small haptic feedbacks throughout the user interface. So after looking at all these things, your decision might come down to this. Do you prefer a phone with bigger display or a one with a slightly more manageable form factor. If I were you, I would go with the Mi 11X for its display, not for the size, but for how bright it can get and for its overall quality. Performance of both these phones is pretty neck and neck, but if you want a phone for gaming, again go with the Mi 11X.

If you want a phone with better camera, go with the Nord 2, it seems to be doing better with the colours, and it blows the Mi 11X out of the park when it comes to low light photography. Altough I said that the Mi 11X lasts longer on a single charge, but I would still say go with the Nord 2 for the battery. It wont lasts as long on a single charge, but the speed at which it juices back up is just incredible. It is not very often that I get to compare 2 phone that are so evenly matched. The actual decision might even come down to just which brand you prefer.

So after knowing all this, which of these 2 would you pick? If you are still confused, go through the video again, and note down the pro’s and cons of both the phones, maybe that will help you decide. Once you have decided which one you are going to get, don’t forget to let us know about it in the comments. Your comment might help someone in their decision making process. Whichever one you plan on getting, I will really appreciate if you get it from the affiliate links in the description section. That is it for this video guys.

Please hit the like button if you enjoyed this video, and subscribe to the channel for more quality tech videos like this. You can also check out some of the other videos from this channel. This has been Sagar, and I will catch you guys in the next video. Take Care.

Source : TecworkZ