Design

• Plastic construction with thick chin bezel
• IP65 certification
• Unique marble finish on white model

Modern OnePlus has picked up the occasional habit of impressing with a design flourish. Some of its phones are rather dull to look at, but last year’s OnePlus Nord 4 stood apart from the mid-range also-rans with its unibody metal construction.

The OnePlus Nord CE5 doesn’t offer anything quite so radical, and reverts to the company’s safer design approach. However, I have to declare myself a fan of the marble-effect rear cover of my Marble Mist model.

There’s more than a hint of your mum’s kitchen worktop to it, but the effect is fresh and suitably subtle, with a nice matte grippiness.

It’s a smart way of disguising the fact that this is an all-plastic phone – even the flat metal-effect rim is made of the cheap stuff. Still, it feels solid enough in the hand. IP65 certification isn’t as big a boast as it might once have been, however, in a world where the IP69-rated Motorola Edge 60 Fusion exists.

OnePlus’s phone doesn’t present nearly as well as Motorola’s budget-mid-ranger from the front, either, thanks to uneven bezels and a particularly thick chin. I’d always prefer a universal thickness in this department, even if that means going a little thicker than strictly necessary on the sides.

There’s no slider button on the left edge here. That’s not surprising – OnePlus didn’t tend to include this signature hardware button on its cheaper phones, and it’s now done away with the feature altogether.

This Marble Mist shade is a tad thicker than the Black Infinity variant, at 8.27mm rather than 8.17mm. Both models weigh 199g, which helps them to feel substantial but not excessively heavy.

Screen

• 6.77-inch FHD+ AMOLED
• 1080 x 2412 resolution
• 120Hz refresh rate

You generally don’t need to worry about OnePlus phone displays. They’re invariably big, bright, and sufficiently sharp, and so it proves here.

The OnePlus Nord CE5 packs a 6.77-inch OLED with a 1080 x 2412 resolution. That’s a step down from the OnePlus Nord 4’s 1.5K resolution, but it still proves plenty sharp. A 120Hz refresh rate keeps things moving smoothly, too.

This is a screen that will hit a solid 800nits of brightness in typical usage, but will ramp up to 1300nits in high brightness mode (HBM). I’ve used the phone outside during the recent UK heat wave, and I didn’t have any major issues with legibility.

It can stretch a little further in HDR scenarios, to the tune of 1430 nits, which is just fine. It falls far short of the Motorola Edge 60 Fusion’s 4500 nits, but is generally solid for the money.

I found this screen to be nice and colour accurate, at least once I switched away from the Vivid colour mode to the more even Natural.

I wish I could say the same for the OnePlus Nord CE5’s audio output. With just a single bottom-firing speaker, it can’t hope to output proper stereo sound. This is something I would expect to see from any upwardly mobile mid-ranger.

As it stands, the audio output here is loud and clear, if a little shrill and one-note. This is definitely an area I would hope to see an improvement on in future iterations.

Performance

• Capable MediaTek Dimensity 8350 Apex
• 8GB of RAM
• 128 or 256GB storage

OnePlus has fitted its new mid-ranger with a capable MediaTek Dimensity 8350 Apex processor. No, it’s not the mainstream Snapdragon chip that some may have hoped for, but to say it takes care of business is putting it mildly.

It’s the same chip we saw recently in the Oppo Reno 13 5G and Reno 13 Pro 5G – two highly capable phones that cost £499 and £649 respectively. You’ll also find the chip in the £600 Motorola Edge 60 Pro.

Add 8GB of LPDDR5X RAM into the package, and you’re looking a very speedy set-up.

In day-to-day usage, the OnePlus Nord CE5 feels as quick as you could hope for. Menu animations, app start times, and unlocking the phone all feel super snappy.

Demanding games run reasonably well on low to medium settings, but you’ll want to divert your attention to the similarly priced Poco X7 Pro if gaming is a priority for you.

When it comes to benchmark results, the OnePlus Nord CE5 outguns the Motorola Edge 60 Fusion and the Nothing Phone (3a), but falls behind the aforementioned Poco X7 Pro.

There’s a choice of two storage capacities here: 128 or 256GB. There’s a microSDXC slot in the SIM tray, too.

Camera

• 50MP f/1.8 Lytia LYT-600 main camera
• 8MP ultra-wide, no dedicated zoom camera
• 16MP selfie cam

The OnePlus Nord CE5 packs a very similar camera set-up to last year’s OnePlus Nord 4 – ostensibly a more premium phone, even if it’s now a year old. I found this to be merely OK in last year’s £429 option, but I was pleased with how it handled here in the £299 CE5.

That 50MP f/1.8 Lytia LYT-600 main sensor isn’t the largest sensor around at 1/1.95”, but it’s a solid component ably assisted by PDAF and OIS. It’s the same sensor that led the OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite 5G, incidentally.

It produces reasonably sharp, well-exposed shots with a pleasing level of contrast. Shooting on a sunny day, it didn’t blow out highlights, which is always a positive in a cheaper phone such as this.

According to OnePlus, this camera “supports Ultra HDR capture and incorporates the same RAW HDR algorithm and Real Tone exposure algorithm found in the OnePlus 13 series”. The resulting images aren’t as accomplished as that flagship phone, but the overall shooting experience definitely felt suitably premium.

Night shots are reasonably bright and sharp, too. Given that this isn’t the largest sensor, I appreciated the clarity of these snaps – a testament to the inclusion of OIS, Sony’s sensor, and OnePlus’s night mode algorithm.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the camera system for me was the 8MP ultra-wide. While shots taken with this component aren’t massively sharp, I liked how of-a-piece they were with that main sensor. OnePlus has matched the two out nicely, which isn’t something you see too often in non-flagship phones.

Don’t expect strong zoomed results, however. There’s no dedicated telephoto, and the limitations of that small sensor are exposed when you crop in beyond the 2x mark, with noisy, grainy shots.

The 16MP selfie camera is also capable of taking decent snaps with natural skin tones, though the portrait mode failed to pick out my outline with an appropriate level of crispness.

Video capture extends to 4K at 60fps, which is always good to see in a cheaper phone.

Software

• OxygenOS 15 based on Android 15
• Four guaranteed OS updates, six years of security patches
• Smattering of AI tools

The OnePlus Nord CE5 ships with Android 15, and the company’s own OxygenOS 15 sits on top. It’s not quite the lean, classy UI it used to be in the early days of the brand, as it’s now merged with Oppo’s somewhat busy ColorOS.

Even so, this is one of the faster and more responsive custom Android UIs out there.

OnePlus calls this “the most streamlined version of OxygenOS to date,” and one that “eliminates unnecessary bloat”. That last point is debatable, with Netflix, Facebook, and TikTok all preinstalled, alongside six other non-optional third-party apps.

Still, that’s far from the most egregious example of bloatware that we’ve seen of late, especially at the cheaper end of the market.

There’s a smattering of AI features here, alongside Google’s Gemini. AI Search lets you search for content on your device using natural language. You can use AI Summary to produce pithy summaries of long articles and web pages, or have AI Speak vocalise passages of text (including web pages) in a spookily natural-sounding voice.

The Photos app, meanwhile, will let you use AI to recompose your shots, erase elements entirely, sharpen details, erase reflections, and remove motion blur. All of which is rapidly becoming standard fare on Android phones, but less so on cheaper handsets, so OnePlus deserves credit.

Going beyond what we expect is OnePlus’s Mind Space tool. Much like Nothing’s Essential Space (but minus the dedicated hardware button), this takes a screen grab, processes the content, and smartly turns it into a memory in the Mind Space app, complete with AI summary and searchable tags.

It’ll also detect appointments and offer you a one-tap shortcut to adding them to the Calendar. As ever with AI mobile applications, it could process a little quicker in order to make it genuinely convenient, but this is a potentially useful feature nonetheless.

As with the OnePlus Nord 4, the company is promising four major Android upgrades and six years of security updates. This beats the Motorola Edge 60 Fusion with 3 and 4 years, as well as the Nothing Phone (3a) with 3 and 3. The Samsung Galaxy A36 offers six of both, while the Pixel 8a (now just £399) gives you a class-leading seven.

Battery Life

• 5200mAh battery
• 80W wired charging support
• No wireless charging

While it’s not quite as big as the OnePlus Nord 4’s battery, the OnePlus Nord CE5’s 5200mAh cell is a decent size. It’s a match for the Motorola Edge 60 Fusion.

Together with OnePlus’s efficient components and solid optimisation, I found this to be good for two days of normal usage.

On one particularly heavy day of usage, with 6 hours 50 minutes of screen-on time (way above normal for me), I was still left with 40% in the tank. That’s impressive.

There’s support for 80W charging, which has the potential to supply a full charge in around an hour. OnePlus no longer supplies the charger necessary for this, however, so you’ll need to factor that into your expenses if you don’t have one already.

Using a 120W Vivo charger I had to hand, I managed to get the OnePlus Nord CE5 from empty to 23% in 15 minutes, and to 53% in 30 minutes. A full charge took just over an hour, though using a OnePlus charger may indeed speed that up a little.

You won’t find any wireless charging here, though that’s hardly a normal feature within the £300 weight class.

Should you buy it?

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