OnePlus Nord N10 5G review

 

the nord n10 has a rather average design

which seems at odds with oneplus never

settle slogan

it has a plastic build and the back is

quite shiny a

fingerprint magnet and very slippery the

plastic seamlessly wraps around the

phone

though the frame isn't the most

comfortable to hold if you're using it

for extended periods of time without a

case

the n10 has gorilla glass 3 on the front

which is less prone to scratching but

more prone to breaking

so i guess you should really buy a case

and a tempered glass protector for this

one

that aside thanks to the material it's

rather light in the hand and it's a

bottom heavy phone so it won't tip out

of your hand

it has tactile power and volume buttons

and you'll find

a card slot that can hold either two sim

cards or

a sim and a micro sd card what you won't

find is a physical alert slider which

makes it the first oneplus phone without

one

honestly you'll find that its design

language resembles oppo and realme much

more than oneplus

since the screen is an lcd panel there's

no chance for this phone to have an

under display fingerprint reader

which is why it's on the back instead to

our surprise

there were inconsistencies with

reliability until a recent update fixed

it

though it's still slow that's very

disappointing for a phone release this

year

and even more so for a oneplus phone

which traditionally has had

lightning fast unlocking on the front

you'll find a tall 6.49 inch ips lcd

with a full hd

plus resolution and a punch hole in the

upper left corner

it isn't bad but it is a noticeable step

down from the nord's amoled display

in general it's average for the price

range still it's driving the point home

that oneplus is cutting costs everywhere

they can the display has a 90 hertz of

refresh rate which feels very smooth

but it still doesn't look as good as an

oled display

the screen got a max brightness of 440

nits which was

alright and a minimum brightness of 2.4

knits which is very good for

not blinding you in the dark sunlight

legibility is all right for the price

as far as the colors are concerned

they're quite cool

out of the box but you can make the

phone's color reproduction more accurate

if you bump the slider 5

8 of the way to the warm option on the

other side of media consumption you'll

find a headphone jack and a dual speaker

setup here

i say dual speaker because there's no

channel separation which would make it

stereo

it had good sound quality and it got

very good loudness on our audio tests.

Music.

if you're more into wireless headphones

you'll really like the fact that this

phone supports bluetooth 5.1

the nord n10 has a 4 300 milliamp hour

battery

and got a very good 99 hours of

endurance on our battery life tests

charging is even better and you can get

a 66 charge in half an hour and a full

charge in 52 minutes

oneplus software also has an optimized

charging option which allows the phone

to learn your charging habits and can

reduce your overnight charging loads

the n10 has six gigabytes of ram and the

snapdragon 690

which supports sub 5 gigahertz 5g

networks

it has similar single core performance

to phones that have the snapdragon 765g

chipset and its multi-core scores were

similar to phones like the reno3 pro 5g

day-to-day you'll find that this phone

is snappy and responsive

the processor is tuned more for battery

efficiency than performance

and as a whole it strikes a good balance

between battery life and power

the nord n10 has android 10 with oxygen

os on top

sadly oneplus is only planning to update

this phone up until android 11

and then it'll offer two years of

security updates

this is something to keep in mind if

you're really after longevity in your

phones

other than that the software is mostly

the same as on other oneplus phones

there is no always-on display but you

can set the screen to activate when you

lift up the phone

or when you get notifications the

launcher is simple and straightforward

and you'll find quite a few

customization options

you can switch from light to dark themes

choose your ambient clock style select

an accent color

change up the icons and switch your font

one thing we liked was hidden space

which lets you hide apps which you don't

want to appear

in the app drawer the os also supports

parallel apps so you can have two

accounts on a single device

the oneplus nordin 10 has a quad camera

setup with a 64 megapixel main sensor

with autofocus

an 8 megapixel ultrawide snapper a 2

megapixel macro cam

and a 2 megapixel monochrome camera

during the day

the phone takes 16 megapixel snaps that

look good overall

in ideal lighting colors are vibrant and

detail is quite good

in more challenging shooting conditions

the image processing tries to compensate

too much

and you'll get washed out colors and

shaded areas that don't look shaded

that's why we'd say that the camera was

mostly consistent but

not always white balance varied between

shots from time to time and sometimes

contrast was great while other times it

wasn't enough

there's an option to shoot photos in the

full 64 megapixel resolution

though you should know that if you're

uploading to social media they'll get

compressed anyway

that said the full resolution shots had

more natural contrast

which we prefer sometimes there's no

dedicated zoom camera so if you want to

zoom in you'll be getting a crop from

the main sensor

if you choose to go the other direction

and use the ultrawide you'll get colors

and white balance that are in line with

the main cameras

the dynamic range is more limited and

the detail isn't as plentiful

but that's unsurprising since the

ultrawide sensor is smaller

the monochrome snapper isn't just for

depth sensing which isn't always the

case on mid-range phones

it produced more natural mid-tones and

shadows than what you would get if you

desaturated a photo

shot by the main camera there's also a 2

megapixel macro camera

shots were nicely exposed and had about

as much detail as you would expect from

this type of sensor portrait shots look

alright but the bokeh looked better with

more light

the framing was more wide than what

we're used to and there's no tighter

crop option in the phone's camera ui

so you'll just have to do it manually

after you take the shot

when the light gets low you can use

nightscape on both the main and

ultrawide cameras

we found that they were a little cropped

in when compared to regular low light

snaps

without nightscape the camera doesn't do

well

as for the ultrawide the camera simply

isn't suitable for low light photography

and nightscape didn't do much to help

the nord n10 has

a 16 megapixel camera and the hole punch

on the front

it wasn't great at metering exposure and

there was less contrast than what we

would have liked but overall shots were

alright

if you're keen on videography you should

know that the nord n10 supports 4k

at 30fps on the main camera and full hd

at 30fps on the ultrawide

eis is available for all video modes

unless you're shooting a two-time zoom

video or capturing footage at 60 frames

per second

4k videos had exposure that once again

was too bright for our taste

the dynamic range wasn't impressive but

details are okay and noise is quite low

full hd footage on the main camera was

pretty much the same but with less noise

and a slightly better dynamic range the

ultrawide camera had a noticeable drop

in sharpness and detail and colors

weren't as vibrant as those on the main

camera

sadly it's pretty clear that the oneplus

nord is better than the nord n105g

in almost every possible way including

in my opinion

the name but if you live in a market

where

the nord is not available then this

phone makes a lot more sense

the nord n10 has an uninspired design an

average display

a slow fingerprint reader and it will

only get security updates

past android 11. really it doesn't seem

like what we've come to expect from

oneplus

the bright side is that it's very

affordable it has fantastic battery life

and fast charging and even nighttime

shots are pretty good

if you're chasing an affordable 5g phone

then maybe you should take a look at

this one but if 5g

is not a priority for you and you can

live with 4g then

there are a lot of other phones that are

also super easy on the wallet

thanks for watching everyone stay safe

and i'll see you guys next time