OnePlus Nord N200 5G Review with Pros and Cons | Temper your expectations! By Grant Likes Tech

How's the ground here welcome back to the channel, and today I'm going to be going through my impressions of the OnePlus word and 205g. Basically, my pros and cons things I like and don't like after using this for off and on for the better part of about two weeks now and so. First off just a quick rundown of the specs in case you're really wondering first off the price, it's about 216 dollars at full cost from T-Mobile right now, or you can get it free with a trade-in. So I think that's a pretty good deal that a lot of people are taking advantage of right now, and I think this phone is getting in a lot of hands because of that it's 240 dollars. If you decide to buy it straight, unlocked from OnePlus, it features the snapdragon 485g. They want to hit a low price 5g phone.

That was pretty much the target it seems like here, and you've got 4 gigs of ram 64, gigs of storage with micro, SD card expansion. It's got about a six and a half six point: four nine inches IPS lcd. It's got a 1080p display with 90hz refresh rate, so it's nice that they added a high refresh rate display on a fairly low cost phone. You can see it's got a triple camera system. I use that loosely because it's a 13, megapixel main wide angle sensor that can shoot up to 1080p 30 frames per second video, but it's the second and third are a 2 megapixel macro and depth sensors respectively, so not too useful.

As far as the other two lenses, it doesn't have an ultra-wide or telephoto, so pretty much a single lens camera to me and a front facing 16 megapixel selfie camera that can also shoot up to 1080p video. You can see the punch hole right there in the upper left, and then you've also got 5 000 William hour capacity battery, so a very large battery built into this phone, and it's not really thin. But it's not really super chunky either very lightweight, because it's all plastic- and I think this phone looks really nice for being all plastic. So quick rundown of the specs there and let's just jump right in I think, to hit a low-cost price point phone like this they're always going to be compromises, and so, let's start off with the cons or things that I don't like, and they're, probably pretty obvious, but worth mentioning just so that people can kind of set their expectations as far as what they're getting into, because I think a lot of people are getting this phone because of the free deal. So first thing off is going to be pretty obvious, which is going to be performance so with a snapdragon, 480 processors.

In this thing it's not going to be the fastest phone necessarily, and they pretty much prioritized 5g over performance. So they tried to hit a low-cost 5g phone so that carriers like T-Mobile can sell this and subsidize this and give it away for free, get it into as many hands as possible so that they can sell you on 5g. Other manufacturers are putting in higher end and faster chipsets at this price point, but don't necessarily support 5g bands in the US. That being said, it's not like the 480 is that bad, as you can see, just scrolling around can be pretty smooth. Launching apps takes a little longer if you're coming from a higher end phone.

Obviously, but as you can see here, you can see a little of hiccup here and there, and it's going to lag from time to time, and that's just what it is performance is not that bad. If you're coming from a higher end phone tempo, your expectations, it's not going to be superfast or blazing, but it's far from poor performance. I think this is definitely very usable for day-to-day tasks suitable for social media web browsing email, all that kind of stuff you're not going to really go wrong with doing all those basic things there is going to be minor, lag from time to time and some hiccups and some animations. That's just part of the deal with this processor. You can play basic games, and so it's not like you're relegated to doing pretty much next to nothing on this you're not going to be extremely limited, but it's just that you're not going to be able to do some higher end intense games.

You know maybe video editing if your creator, but for basic everyday things, I don't think you're gonna, be uh very disappointed at all. So that's pretty much performance uh. The second con or second thing that I didn't really like is the low light camera performance and that's pretty obvious. Most phones at this price point will sacrifice camera quality and lower light while not bad. It's not really great.

It does have a night mode in here, so you can see the camera app. This is what it looks like. It does have a night mode, but as you can see from the camera samples here, it doesn't really do a lot. So I think it's just thrown in there to say I've got night mode, but, as you can see from the actual samples and the evidence, it doesn't seem to be doing a lot of improvement. There and it's pretty much kind of useless, in my opinion, uh.

The other aspect of the camera. That's a bit of a letdown is that the front-facing camera does not have any kind of stabilization or as built in for video, so video is gonna, be very shaky from the front-facing camera. The third thing that I think I don't personally like is that there is no alert slider, so OnePlus has usually that alert slider for their mute switch and to switch to vibrate a physical hardware button or slider. And yes, I understand they had to do. Sacrifice that to cut costs and that's probably nitpicking, but that is a signature, hallmark feature of an OnePlus phone, and so, if you're familiar with OnePlus, it's not.

It doesn't quite feel like an OnePlus phone without that alert, slider, and you're not getting that. But of course that's, probably not who this phone is targeted for it's not targeted for OnePlus fans, necessarily it's just trying to get 5g low-cost phones into people's hands, and they probably don't even know who OnePlus is. But I think, if you're watching this, you probably are a tech, enthusiast phone enthusiast, you probably know OnePlus and you do know that you typically come with those sliders. It's not going to be on this phone. Moving on to the fourth thing that I think is a negative or con here is the speaker.

So it's a single down firing speaker. They just kind of chose to sacrifice one of that as one of the things to hit this price point, and so, while not entirely bad, it's not really soft or anything. It's just not the best speaker, and I really think they could have gone with dual front firing. Speakers. It's been done at this price point and so stereo, just wouldn't better, but here's a quick sample for you moving on to the fifth con for me personally, is the outdoor display visibility.

While it's not the worst I've ever seen, it is gonna, be a little dim, and you're going to struggle a little to see it outdoors. I've seen a lot worse, I'm not completely straining. I can see it as you can see in the sample here. So it's not as bad as maybe somewhere claiming, and I think it's definitely doable, but of course outdoor visibility can be improved. It's typical for most phones in this price point, but worth pointing out because a lot of people that is something important to them, and so, depending on your sensitivity to that level of visibility, you can take a look at the sample that I was showing you and determine for yourself.

If that's going to be bright enough for you and now. Moving on to the last counter thing that I don't like- or I think it's just worth pointing out is gonna- be the Wi-Fi speeds. It does not support Wi-Fi six on this and so you're not gonna, get the fastest Wi-Fi download speeds. For me, I'm getting roughly half of what I normally get with some of my Wi-Fi six supported phones. I've got a Wi-Fi six routers so, and I've got a fast internet service, and so I typically get about 400 400 plus megabytes down on my download from my internet service over Wi-Fi on Wi-Fi six devices on this particular device.

I'm getting about roughly around 200 down to about half of what I normally get upload speeds, something about the same: I'm paying for 40 megabyte upload speeds, megabit per second upload speeds, and I'm getting that with this device. So it's just the downloads about half of what I'm normally used to on Wi-Fi. As you can see, 5g LTE speeds are actually very good, so 5g and that's the target of this phone 5g speeds are actually pretty good. I'm getting really fast speeds here with Google phi, which is basically T-Mobile and so T-Mobile has been doing some upgrades, and you can see here. The 5g speeds are on par with some of my other phones very fast, even on the upload.

It's just that Wi-Fi speeds are about half of what I'm used to compared to my other Wi-Fi 6 devices, all right, so those are my cons or negatives about the Borden 200. I think you should be aware of, but moving on to the pros. The very first thing that I really like about this is the battery life on the word n200 5g is phenomenal. So again, five thousand William hour battery capacity battery large battery. This is a two plus day battery for you before it's going to die.

So for me, it's always lasted me at least two days. I've actually gone up to four days on this thing, believe it or not, with eight to nine hours of screen on time each time and this thing basically sips on the battery on standby. So if you don't have access to a charger in your job or wherever you are you're constantly mobile, you're not going to have to worry about battery life. On this thing, it'll definitely last you at least one day, probably two days with again I'm getting eight to nine hours of screen on time, which is amazing. So battery life is perfect here on the n200 5g next thing that I really like about this is actually the biometrics.

So I'm a fan of physical fingerprint scanners. I don't really like the in-display ones, no matter how fast they are just they're just hard to feel for physical scanners are a lot better for me and this one you don't even have to press the button. It's just a touch sensor, so you can just rest your finger on it, and it'll immediately unlock, and so I really like that. It's really fast, and I'm a lefty and even for you lefties. If you program your finger, as you can see here, it'll unlock just fine, so very fast, responsive physical, this fingerprint scanner.

I would have preferred it on the rear. It would have been a lot bigger touch target easier to feel for, but the side mounted one works great, and so this also has faced unlock, which has been pretty good here. So you can see it just work right there with that animation, and it unlocks pretty quickly. So you know face unlocking, see there really quick and fast here so nice that it does actually have that, and it works really well, even in lower lighting conditions, so lower light indoor even at night, I've noticed that it works no problem. I have other phones, uh that are more inexpensive, with face unlock that don't work well in anything other than ideal lighting conditions.

So this works in a very in various light conditions, and it's very good. So fingerprint scanner face unlock very good on this phone third thing that I really like is actually the display indoors. So, while outdoor visibility may be a little of a struggle, indoor visibility is not a problem. I can keep this thing at about 50 to 60 brightness indoors, and it's more than bright enough. Viewing angles, look pretty good to me, and it's got a 90 hertz display, so nice fast fluid uh display, so it adds a little.

Fluidity makes up for some performance gaps and kind of smoother things out a little. They didn't have to put 90 hertz refresh rate into this, and so I think that does help with some minor hiccups I can see, and it helps with some smooth just to smooth out the overall usage and UI of this whole thing and beyond that it does support double tap to awaken sleep which I like. So if you just double tap to turn it off double tap, to wake the screen right there, and you're in, so you don't always have the fumble for the side button. Sometimes it's tough to look for it or feel for it. All I have to do is just double tap, and then it'll unlock, and if you don't want to feel for the button, you can just double tap to put it back to sleep.

So I do like that, and the fourth thing that I do like is the software so for the lack of performance and that snapdragon 480 oxygen oses, which is the skin on top of android 11 on this thing, really helps make up for some of that performance deficit. Oxygen OS, like most of the phone enthusiasts understand, is one of the best skins out there for android, and they really optimize that software for their hardware. It's very light crisp and helps things move along very quickly. It doesn't bog down the hardware to really keep things performing as well as possible. Also, it's pretty much close to stock android.

So it has. The Google discover feed if you like that. Of course, you can turn that off. If you don't like it, and it does have a lot of the normal customization features that you find in oxygen, OS so being able to customize the accent, colors icons, wallpapers, icon packs, are supported by the native launcher. You can see the new canvas features here.

All that stuff in oxygen OS for customization is here on their lower end phone as well as some quick gestures so being able to do things like drawing a circle on your screen to launch the camera from the lock screen, also being able to do things like maybe drawing a v to turn on the flashlight. You can do all that stuff here same like you, do on the higher end, OnePlus phones, now moving on to the fifth pro or thing that I like about. This is the camera. So, while low light performance isn't great, as you would expect, and good lighting, the camera is actually not too bad. It's pretty much as good as can be expected for that main sensor.

The macro sensor is pretty much useless and the depth sensor is just kind of there to make it a triple camera system. Um but basically the main sensor isn't as bad as you would think. You can take a look at the samples I'm showing you here as good as it can be expected some white balance issues, but the focus has been pretty impressive. I can get some pretty good, looking macro shots, which I didn't think it would even be able to focus in on, so focus has been pretty good. Camera quality has been as good as you can expect here, not the best, like I said some white balance issues, but considering the price point I was expecting a lot worse and lastly, the thing that I like- and I think other people will appreciate, is that there is NFC on board.

So if you depend on contactless payments, NFC is here in lower in this lower cost phone a lot of times. They omit NFC to hit this price point. They've included it here, which is, I think, a bonus all right. So that's my pros and cons after using the word n205g off and on for the last couple of weeks. I didn't think it was gonna, be that great based off of the specs on paper and everything, but after using it, it's been mostly a positive experience, which is why you really have to try these things for yourself to see.

If it's going to be good or not, don't just judge it on paper and also, if you're really hyped about getting it for basically free with some basic fees with trading in a phone from that T-Mobile or metro by T-Mobile deal, I think you're still going to get a good phone. I don't think you're going to jump into this, and you're going to regret it so long as you have the proper expectations keep the cons that I had in mind and see if those are dealbreakers are not for you, of course. Let me know if you have any questions or comments leave them down below. We can continue our conversation on there I'll answer. Whatever questions that I can and as always, thanks for watching.

Source : Grant Likes Tech