OnePlus 9 review: The best phone for under $750 | Laptop Mag

Our Verdict

The OnePlus 9 is an excellent flagship alternative offering (nigh) all the features constitute in more expensive devices, including blistering operation and long bombardment life.

For

Fantastic performance
Long battery life
Insane charging speeds
Bright and bright 120Hz display
Decent photograph and video quality

Against

Plastic frame
No OIS (blurry dark shots)
Lacks expandable storage
5G non supported on all carriers

Laptop Mag Verdict

The OnePlus 9 is an excellent flagship alternative offering (almost) all the features found in more expensive devices, including blistering performance and long battery life.

Pros

+
Fantastic performance
+
Long battery life
+
Insane charging speeds
+
Vivid and vivid 120Hz brandish
+
Decent photo and video quality

Cons

-
Plastic frame
-
No OIS (blurry night shots)
-
Lacks expandable storage
-
5G not supported on all carriers

OnePlus 9 specs

Price: $729 ($829 as tested)
Bone: Android 11 / Oxygen Os 11
Brandish: vi.55-inch, 2400 x 1080 AMOLED (120Hz)
CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 888
RAM: 8GB, 12GB
Rear cameras: 48MP wide (ƒ/one.8); 50MP ultra-wide (ƒ/2.2); 2MP monochrome
Forepart camera: 16MP (f/2.iv)
Storage: 128GB, 256GB
Bombardment: 11:24 (60Hz); 10:53 (120Hz)
Size: 6.3 x two.9 ten 0.32 inches
Weight: 6.77 ounces

OnePlus was one time synonymous with "bully value" and while that hasn't changed, the company has since expanded in different directions. On one end, yous have the OnePlus Nord N10 5G, a upkeep model that trades performance for quad cameras. On the flip side, is the OnePlus 9 Pro, a proper flagship with a price tag just beneath $1,000. The OnePlus 9, its cheaper sibling, lands in the toll category that made OnePlus a contender among Android phone makers. It delivers fantabulous value with flagship-level performance at a slightly beneath flagship price.

OnePlus made very few missteps with the OnePlus 9. It has a gorgeous 6.55-inch brandish, the operation is unrivaled, and the battery lasts a full day and so charges in the glimmer of an eye. Virtually importantly, OnePlus paid special attention to the cameras, getting an assist from Hasselblad to produce high-quality photos nether most conditions.

There are a few small kinks to iron out — the low-calorie-free photos suffer from motility blur (no optical image stabilization included) — and the frame is fabricated of plastic — but those problems shouldn't dissuade customers who want a flagship experience for well nether $1,000.

OnePlus nine: Price and configurations

Just similar the Pro model, the OnePlus 9 comes in two configurations available with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage for $729 or, in the case of our review unit of measurement, 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for $829. There are two colour options: Astral Black and Wintertime Mist.

In Europe, the OnePlus 9 costs €699 and €799 for the 128GB and 256GB versions, respectively.

Exclusive to T-Mobile, the OnePlus 9 tin be purchased from the pink wireless carrier for $thirty.42 over 24 months. It can likewise be bought unlocked at Best Buy, Amazon, and other major online retailers.

OnePlus 9 design

This is a handsome phone, but it fails to stand out.

Maybe it's the banal Astral Black color (it'due south blackness…), the been-there-done-that shape, or my budding distaste for glossy anything. No, those are just role of the problem; a bigger complaint is the plastic frame surrounding the OnePlus ix instead of the premium material found on its predecessor. Overall, the OnePlus ix's design fails to inspire, especially when I identify it next to the swanky matte-white finish on my Pixel 4XL.

The OnePlus 9 is covered in drinking glass from top to bottom. On the rear is glossy glass bonded with a matte moving-picture show and a barely visible OnePlus logo in a darker shade of black. A volume rocker is on the left border and a useful iPhone-style ring/vibrate/silent slider is on the right. At vi.3 x 2.9 x 0.32 inches and half-dozen.77 ounces, the OnePlus is predictably taller and heavier than the half-dozen.2-inch Samsung Galaxy S21 (5.97 x 2.eight 10 0.31 inches, 5.95 ounces) and the 6.1-inch iPhone 12 (five.78 x 2.81 x 0.29 inches, 5.8 ounces).

A rectangular camera module is located in the elevation-left corner and oriented vertically with the three lenses positioned in a straight line. The camera bump protrudes enough to make the phone feel unsteady on a flat surface. Pushing the summit-left or bottom-right corner of the device made information technology rock dorsum and forth. I'll touch on this later, but a new addition to the OnePlus aesthetic is "Hasselblad" inscribed merely nether the photographic camera flash. For those who haven't heard, OnePlus is teaming with the Swedish luxury photographic camera maker to enhance the quality of its cameras.

Moving to the front, the OnePlus 9 has practically no bezels around the six.55-inch display — only the narrowest of speaker grilles at the top. There isn't room for a selfie lens so OnePlus opted for the pigsty-punch photographic camera in the top-left corner.

The OnePlus 9 is a big phone, simply information technology feels good in the hand. Gentle curves on the back panel conformed to my fleshy palm while the flat edges were piece of cake to grip. Unlike the Pro model, the OnePlus 9 has a flat screen instead of a rounded one. I don't mind as this reduces the chances of adventitious touches and allows for a glass screen protector.

Oddly, the OnePlus ix sold through T-Mobile has IP68 water and dust-resistant resistance, but those sold unlocked from a major retailer (All-time Buy, Amazon,etc) practice not. These versions, in all likelihood, are built the same, information technology'south just a matter of OnePlus saving money on the certification in order to proceed the price downwardly. What all version of the OnePlus 9 skip is the microSD carte du jour slot for storage expansion, and then what y'all run across is what yous go.

OnePlus ix brandish

The six.55-inch, 2400 x 1080-pixel AMOLED display is gorgeous, consistently produced bright and bright images whether I was watching videos or browsing the web.

Moreover, the 120Hz refresh rate made everything menses similar water down a stream. Flipping between homepages happened instantaneously while fast-activeness scenes in movies had an added intensity. There are a few downsides to using the 120Hz setting. The large 1 is the toll it takes on battery life (don't worry though, I'll explain why later). Some other is that the refresh rate does not accommodate dynamically based on the content you're viewing — a method for optimizing efficiency — so it will always remain at either 60Hz or 120Hz.

The OnePlus 9 gave me the cinematic feel I've longed for in the past year and a half equally the pandemic has forced the shutdown of movie theaters. Of course, it isn't exactly like watching it on the big screen. Yet, the trailer for 007 No Fourth dimension to Dice was a visual spectacle on the 6.55-inch console. I spotted each strand of pilus in Daniel Craigs' well-groomed stubble and his piercing blue eyes were like aquamarine.

I had to zoom to fit some videos to the full screen while others automatically stretched beyond the entire sail. Once the videos were in full-screen mode, I could appreciate the slim bezels surrounding the panel, a feature that made soccer highlight clips more than engrossing.

For the virtually saturated colors, turning the Vivid setting on allows the OnePlus 9 to embrace 141.iii% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, making it much more colorful than the iPhone 12 (81.one%) and the Galaxy S21 (77.four%) in natural style (the Galaxy S21 in vivid way will likely fare much ameliorate equally the S21+ got 150.4%). For more natural colors, the default brandish setting covers 73.eight% of the color space.

Averaging a peak brightness of 696 nits, the OnePlus 9 can be easily used outside on a sunny day. Information technology doesn't quite outshine the Galaxy S21 (711 nits) with adaptive brightness turned on, simply it did out-illuminate the iPhone 12 (570 nits).

Color accuracy isn't a problem on the OnePlus 9 which scored a Delta-E (lower is better) of 0.27 and 0.28 with the brandish set to Natural and Vivid, respectively. Both the iPhone 12 and Galaxy S21 did marginally worse at 0.29.

OnePlus 9 audio

The OnePlus 9's dual forepart-facing speakers become loud, but won't replace your Bluetooth speaker. For calls, the OnePlus nine did merely fine. I even turned the volume downwardly to well-nigh 50% while on a call with my brother, who sounded crisp through the loudspeaker. I tried listening to Kanye West'south "My Cute Dark Twisted Fantasy" album but fabricated it through 2 verses in Dark Fantasy before putting on my Sennheiser HD650 headphones and listening on my Dell XPS 15.

I couldn't just plug information technology into the phone because it lacks a headphone jack. I gave the OnePlus nine another run a risk with "Runaway," my favorite rail on that album. The high-pitched notes, including the pared-downwards piano, were crisp, merely the midrange sounds (like Westward's vocals) were muffled.

OnePlus 9 performance

Equipped with the latest Snapdragon 888 SoC and 12GB of RAM, the OnePlus ix is amid the fastest Android phones on the market. Information technology'southward a remarkable feat when you consider how much more affordable the OP9 is than almost flagships (including the OnePlus 9 Pro).

Real-world performance was glimmer-and-yous-miss-it quick, with apps loading instantly and multiple web pages firing upwards without a hint of sluggishness. I played Call of Duty: Tokyo Escape, streamed music through YouTube Music, and flipped betwixt dozens of Chrome tabs without the slightest slowdown. Fifty-fifty navigating the UI felt quicker than any phone I've used before. Credit not only belongs to the Snapdragon 888 — the fastest scrap this side of Cupertino — but also the 120Hz refresh charge per unit display, which made the UI zing as I swiped between the home screen and app drawer.

The OnePlus 9 uses Qualcomm'southward X60 5G modem, simply its support for U.S. carriers is disruptive. If y'all're a T-Mobile user, you lot're in luck; the OnePlus 9 supports T-Mobile'due south 5G network without restriction. Every bit for Verizon, the OP9 can but use the slower nationwide network and not the quicker ultra-wideband (which is supported on the OnePlus 9 Pro). AT&T customers are, unfortunately, completely out of luck with no appear back up every bit of mid-Apr 2022.

On the Geekbench v overall performance test, the OnePlus 9 scored three,618, beating the Galaxy S21 (3,302), although the iPhone 12 (3,859) with its A14 Bionic CPU remains the operation champ. But every bit you can see, the gap between the quickest Android telephone and iPhone is narrow.

The OnePlus 9 didn't light up the scoreboard in our graphics test in the same way, hitting 34 frames per 2d on the Wild Life Unlimited 3DMark test. That is a skilful score, but the Galaxy S21 notched 35 fps and the iPhone 12 hit 51 fps.

On our Adobe Premium Rush benchmark, the OnePlus nine took i minute and i second to convert a 4K video to 1080p resolution. The Galaxy S21 took two seconds longer while the iPhone 12 needed but 26 seconds.

OnePlus nine bombardment life and charging

The 4,500mAH bombardment in the OnePlus 9 will hands get you through a full day on a charge. I was never forced to plug the phone in before I clocked out each night. That's a major do good considering I frequently forget to accuse my Pixel 4XL, merely to find it dead when I wake up in the morning.

On a typical twenty-four hours, I'll spend a few hours browsing the web, an hr or then chatting with my family on Messenger, and a concerning corporeality of fourth dimension checking social media. Even with my obsessive Twitter habits, the OnePlus 9 always had at least a 10% accuse before I set it on my nightstand at around 11:30 pm each day. In that location was even some extra juice on days when I mounted the OnePlus 9 to my cycle and used the navigation to wheel to nearby tennis courts — Google Maps navigation is usually a battery killer but not in this case.

The superb battery life I experience in 24-hour interval-to-day utilize was quantified in our lab tests where the OnePlus 9 endured for eleven hours and 24 minutes on the T-Mobile network with the screen set to 120Hz. On AT&T'south network, the phone lasted for 10 hours and 24 minutes. That'southward great news because it means you don't need to drop the refresh charge per unit especially since the OnePlus 9 got about the aforementioned runtimes at 60Hz (10:53). For comparing, the Milky way S21 endured for 9:53 while the iPhone 12 clocked out at x:23.

So the run times are corking, but endurance isn't the most impressive affair about the battery. What is, is how heed-blowingly fast the telephone charges using the Warp Charge 65 Power Adapter included in the box. It is then fast, y'all tin literally watch the percentage go up within seconds. OnePlus claims the phone will go from 0% to 100% in just nether one-half an hour. In our ain testing, the OnePlus nine went from 0% charged to 98% charged in 30 minutes afterward hitting 62% at the 15-minute mark.

If you don't want to deal with cords, the OnePlus 9 supports 15W Qi wireless. I personally get the wired route — I can plug in the dead OnePlus nine, take a shower, bank check my emails, and come back to find information technology 100% charged.

OnePlus 9 cameras

OnePlus created some buzz when it announced a partnership with Swedish luxury camera make Hasselblad. The results of this newly formed team might not be fully realized only yet, but the shots I took with the OnePlus 9 suggest a promising hereafter lies alee.

Equally for the camera setup itself, well, it's got a lot of megapixels! The primary wide-angle camera has a 48MP, f/1.eight lens; in that location is a secondary 50MP, f/two.2 ultra-broad lens; and the third of this triple-photographic camera array is a 2MP, f/ii.4 monochrome camera for blackness-and-white photography and improved low-light images. What you lot miss from the OnePlus nine Pro is the 8MP telephoto lens, although that specific zoom lens doesn't compare with what Samsung offers and you can just as effectively use the 48MP main camera with some clever postal service-image cropping.

Starting with the primary camera, the 48MP, f/one.8 takes practiced shots under both brilliant and depression-calorie-free conditions. This photo of a German Shepard being a silly skillful boy shows skilful details and strong color accurateness. You can see blades of grass and strands of pilus though zooming in reveals some visual dissonance.

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These two shots of a wasp snacking on nectar evidence how you tin can apply the main camera with the 2x zoom for a subject field you might non desire to go too close to. I'm happy with both shots even though the background is unevenly blurred. I likewise had to retake this shot a few times. That might not have been the example if there were born OIS to keep things steady. Still, at that place is sharp item and the flower was that exact hue of purplish pink.

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The OnePlus 9 takes skilful low-low-cal images as shown in my exam shot. This epitome was taken in my kitchen with only streams of light filtering in between blinds from a distant sliding door. The Nightscape style isn't what improved the shot, only rather, that credit belongs to the HDR style. Unless yous're in almost-complete darkness, photos taken with the standard camera mode and HDR turned on await almost identical to those with Nightscape on. Turn off HDR and the paradigm looks dark and grainy.

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Using the 50MP ultra-wide-angle lens gets yous a much wider field of view but at the expense of border distortion. The warping around the edges isn't as well bad; I wouldn't hesitate to upload a beautiful mural photograph using this lens but I'd try using the main camera with panorama mode if I were to impress information technology afterwards on.

The 16MP f/ii.4 front-facing photographic camera is a good one. This selfie I snapped is very detailed; so detailed that you can see every loose strange dangling from my pandemic-era beard. Creases in my eyes and thread lines in my collar are also visible. I fifty-fifty like the colors; my rosy completion is spot-on and you can run across a faint hint of greenish-yellow in my eyes.

OnePlus nine software

OxygenOS 11 is the side by side best thing to stock Android 11. And in some ways, it makes Google's mobile operating organization even better. While it might non look as close to pure Android equally previous versions of OxygenOS, the UI on the OnePlus 9 is fluid and intuitive.

OnePlus changed the layout to make information technology easier for those with smaller hands to reach important menus given the size of the screen. Information technology is a considerate quality-of-life modify hiding in the background of everything you lot do. OxygenOS 11 also expanded the always-on display functionality and a new Turbo Boost 3.0 supposedly uses RAM compression and vRAM so you lot tin can continue 25% more than apps open in the background without hurting performance.

Continued software support is a factor you shouldn't skip when deciding which telephone to buy. With the OnePlus 9, y'all'll go two major Android updates and iii years of security patches. That's standard stuff from an Android telephone but outmatched by Samsung and Google.

Lesser line

The OnePlus 9 is a compelling option for Android users looking for a sub-$1,000 phone that doesn't cede likewise many features available in pricier flagships. It even punches in a higher place its weight course in certain areas, outperforming every Android phone on the market too its "Pro" relative and enduring for about 11 hours on a charge. Information technology's besides worth spotlighting the fast charging feature, which gets you from dead to 100% in most 30 minutes.

While the OnePlus ix Pro might take hold of all the headlines, yous aren't trading much stepping down to the OnePlus 9. Aye, the telephoto lens is missing, merely you can get comparable shots using the primary photographic camera. The other notable downgrade is an FHD screen instead of QHD, but the panel on the OnePlus 9 is and then precipitous, you won't exist disappointed. Two factors that may sway y'all toward the pricier model are the plastic frame around the OnePlus 9 and the lack of OIS on any of the cameras — those are tougher pills to swallow and corners cutting that foreclose the OnePlus nine from beingness a 5-star product.

If those two shortcomings don't bother you, the OnePlus 9 is an excellent telephone and a potent alternative to the Samsung Galaxy S21.

Phillip Tracy is the assistant managing editor at Laptop Mag where he reviews laptops, phones and other gadgets while roofing the latest manufacture news. Later graduating with a journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin, Phillip became a tech reporter at the Daily Dot. There, he wrote reviews for a range of gadgets and covered everything from social media trends to cybersecurity. Prior to that, he wrote for RCR Wireless News covering 5G and IoT. When he's not tinkering with devices, you lot can find Phillip playing video games, reading, traveling or watching soccer.