An almost flagship-grade experience with a long-lasting battery!!
The OnePlus Nord series has been very popular ever since it came to market, as it bridges the gap between the budget Nord CE series and the popular R series, both of which are performing well in the market. The Nord series strikes the perfect blend of experience along with an almost flagship performance, thus undercutting the competition and has been a huge success when compared to other smartphone brands out there.
The OnePlus Nord 5 (Review) was a successful product, as it offered strong specifications, including the powerful Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset, a 144Hz AMOLED display, a larger 7000mAh battery and all specifications were good. So, considering the success of the OnePlus Nord 5, there are a lot of expectations from its successor, i.e. OnePlus Nord 6. With the OnePlus Nord 6, the company has made quite a bunch of handful upgrades which make it a strong contender.
With the rising price of components like semiconductor chips and DRAM for smartphones, OnePlus has jacked up the prices of the OnePlus Nord 6, which now falls under the value flagship territory. However, with upgrades like a 165Hz display, a powerful Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset, a massive 9000mAh battery and much more, does it feel like a good upgrade over the OnePlus Nord 5? Is it worth buying?
Let's find out in the full review.
OnePlus Nord 6 Design:
The OnePlus Nord 6 sports a slightly different design this time around, as the company has now gone with a squarish-shaped camera module instead of the vertically pill-shaped camera module on its predecessor, i.e., the OnePlus Nord 5. The squarish camera module houses dual cameras, an LED flashlight, and an IR Blaster. The camera module is slightly protruded from the back, which will make the smartphone wobble when kept on a flat surface.
Around the edges, the smartphone is rounded, and both the front and back have flat panels with no curves. Though the design looks refreshing with the pill-shaped camera module design, the build quality remains unchanged, as you get a polycarbonate build across all colour variants, which is a kind of a letdown when you compare it with the OnePlus Nord 4 (Review), which came with a premium unibody metal design.
The OnePlus Nord 6 is available in three different colours - Holographic Quick Silver, Pitch Black and Fresh Mint. The Quick Silver colour variant has an interesting addition of a holographic double-lining pattern that wraps right around the camera module, which gives a shimmering effect when the smartphone is tilted at different angles. It gives a cyberpunk-like vibe, which may appeal to the younger generation out there.
If you want a simpler look, then the other two colour variants, i.e. Pitch Black and Fresh Mint, will look good. All three colour variants have a smooth matte finish, which would not carry many fingerprints as such. Around the sides, the OnePlus Nord 6 is thicker at 8.5mm and has a polycarbonate frame which houses the power button along with volume buttons on the right side, whereas the left side houses the signature Plus Key that provides multiple functionalities on a daily basis.
The top only houses a secondary noise-cancelling microphone along with a speaker output. The bottom of the smartphone houses a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a dual SIM card slot, and a primary microphone. The OnePlus Nord 6 weighs around 217 grams, making it quite heavy as it packs a massive 9000mAh battery, so you can definitely feel the weight while holding it in your hands.
The OnePlus Nord 6 has upgraded the durability as it now comes with an IP66+IP68+IP69+IP69K rating, making it completely dust- and water-resistant. On the front, there are slimmer bezels on the sides, which are uniform, and the display houses a single punch-hole located at the top centre that houses the selfie camera. In terms of display protection, OnePlus Nord 6 comes with Crystal Guard protection, which is almost equivalent to Corning Gorilla Glass Victus +.
OnePlus Nord 6 Display:
The OnePlus Nord 6 has a slightly smaller display at 6.78 inches when compared to the 6.83-inch display of the OnePlus Nord 5. The OnePlus Nord 6 sports a 6.78-inches 1.5K(1272x2772 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9. As this is a 10-bit display, the colours look punchier with deeper blues and blacks, and the viewing angles are good. Just like the flagship OnePlus 15, here you also get a 165Hz refresh rate on the display.
The 165Hz refresh rate only works in gaming applications, for example, games like Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, Genshin Impact, etc. There are three different settings to choose from: Auto-select, Standard, and High. Choosing Auto-select or High mode lets the display refresh at 120Hz for most of the applications, except that in Auto-select mode, the display refreshes at different refresh rates, i.e. 30Hz, 60Hz, 120Hz, etc.
In High mode, the display maintains an almost 120Hz refresh rate for almost all applications, and you can also set application-specific refresh rates. The Standard mode ensures that the display refreshes at 60Hz only, thus providing better battery life. The display is an LTPS panel and not an LTPO panel, though. Combined with the 165Hz refresh rate, you get a 360Hz touch sampling rate for faster responses and in gaming, you get an instantaneous touch sampling rate of 3200Hz.
In terms of display brightness, the OnePlus Nord 6 achieves a peak brightness of 3600 nits, which remains unchanged from the predecessor, i.e. OnePlus Nord 5. Under High Brightness Mode, the display brightness comes to around 1800 nits, which is good. Under normal conditions, the brightness hovers at 700-800 nits and also has good visibility under direct sunlight. There is also 3160Hz PWM dimming, which helps prevent eye strain when viewing content in the dark.
In terms of colour temperature, there are three colour settings to choose from: Vivid, Natural, and Pro, which include Brilliant and Cinematic modes. If you choose the Natural mode, the colours look natural and close to real-life tones, which covers the sRGB colour space, whereas if you switch to Vivid and Pro modes, the colours look punchier, and both of them cover the DCI-P3 gamut. You can set the colour temperature to a warmer or a cooler tone using the temperature slider.
The display has support for HDR, so you can stream HDR on YouTube, and the presence of Widevine L1 ensures that you can stream HDR content on OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime, etc. easily. However, there is no Dolby Vision support, which is slightly disappointing. The display supports an optical in-display fingerprint scanner, which works accurately and is faster in daily usage. Overall, the display is great for multimedia consumption.
OnePlus Nord 6 Performance:
The OnePlus Nord 6 is powered by the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset, which is slightly more powerful when compared to the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset on the OnePlus Nord 5. The Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset is an octa-core chipset which has 1x3.21GHz Cortex-X4 core, 3x3.0 GHz Cortex-A720 cores and another 2x2.8 GHz Cortex-A720 cores, with 2x2.0 GHz Cortex-A720 cores and is based on an efficient 4nm process and coupled with an Adreno 825 GPU.
In terms of daily usage, which includes scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, taking images and videos from the cameras, gaming, etc., the smartphone felt smoother to use without breaking a sweat. The 165Hz display works really well with smoother transitions and animations. In terms of gaming, all heavy games like BGMI, Genshin Impact, and Call of Duty Mobile ran smoothly at the highest graphics settings.
In BGMI, the smartphone ran smoothly with the graphics set to Smooth and frame rates set to Ultra Extreme graphics with no stutters or lags as such. During gameplay of BGMI, the smartphone maintained 140-150fps most of the time with very minimal frame drops. The dedicated Game Boost includes HyperBoost technology, which provides an instantaneous touch sampling rate of 3200Hz and also allows for optimising frame rates and network data.
The presence of a WiFi G2 chip ensures seamless network connectivity during gaming, thus preventing latency and stutters in challenging network conditions. In graphics-intensive games like Genshin Impact, the smartphone could achieve somewhere around 110-120fps throughout the gameplay and on very rare occasions, it is seen gaming at 165fps. There were a few frame drops noticed when played continuously for 3-4 hours.
The back of the smartphone does not feel warmer because of the massive 33147 mm2 graphene cooling chamber beneath it. The polycarbonate build also dissipates heat faster than a glass build. The area around the camera module does feel warmer at times when you are pushing the frame rates during gaming to their limits. In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone easily maintained a sustained performance of around 70-75 per cent with very minimal throttling present.
These results were obtained without Performance Mode being turned on, whereas with Performance Mode turned on, the sustained performance came to around 65 per cent, which is still good and not an issue. The benchmark scores came out good but slightly lower compared to the ones with Performance Mode turned on. In terms of network connectivity, you get support for all bands of 5G and good carrier aggregation.
The OnePlus Nord 6 is available in two variants: 8GB/12GB LPDDR5X RAM with 256GB storage, having UFS 4.0 speeds. It is good to see that OnePlus is providing 256GB storage from the base variant itself, and storage speeds are now UFS 4.0 compared to UFS 3.1 speeds on the OnePlus Nord 5.
OnePlus Nord 6 Software:
Like the OnePlus 15 series, the OnePlus Nord 6 also runs on the latest OxygenOS 16 based on Android 16 out of the box. OxygenOS 16 brings newer animations and transitions throughout the interface, and you get a host of customisations where you can change icon shape, size, colour and fonts. The newer redesigned lock screen has a lot of customisations, and Always-On display works flawlessly along with it. The Flux Theme 2.0 lets you add different texts, widgets and much more to the lock screen.
Even on the home screen, you can reshape application folders with dynamic layout adjustments, as you can create larger folders and accommodate different applications, where you can increase the font, icon shape, size and also match icon colours with the home screen wallpaper accordingly. There are a lot of AI features that are built in and come in handy in everyday usage, some of which include MindSpace, which lets you save on-screen information and documents and take screenshots.
It is also integrated with Google Gemini, which checks the content in MindSpace and creates an itinerary of it. You can get MindSpace if you press the Plus Key placed on the left side of the frame. The Plus Key provides a lot of functionalities, like you can set different sound profiles, which include Vibrate, Ring, and Silent. Long-press the button to record audio and save it in the OneNote application. The Live Alerts feature works well, providing information, and now it supports more applications than before.
Some of the AI features include AI Writer, which helps to rewrite, summarise, generate text and social media tones with adjustable captions in videos; AI Document Scanner lets you scan documents and removes any unwanted noise in the document or fingerprints, AI Scan inteligently scans the images present in the gallery application and removes unwanted noise and shadows in images, AI Portrait Glow adjusts the background lighting in portraits and removes noise in background.
AI Unblur and AI Enhance also work well for portraits. AI Perfect Shot works well at removing blinking and also changes facial expressions in photos. The sound recorder gets live transcription, which means whatever sound is recorded has live captions, and AI Summary summarises all of the content in a proper manner. OnePlus Connect is present, which lets you pair the smartphone with a desktop or PC and use the content of the smartphone on it.
Open Canvas is present, which ensures seamless multitasking as you can use two applications simultaneously in split-screen. In terms of software updates, OnePlus has kept the same policy as its flagship series, i.e. four years of Android OS and six years of security patches for the OnePlus Nord 6, which is a good improvement over the OnePlus Nord 5.
OnePlus Nord 6 Cameras:
The OnePlus Nord 6 sports a dual camera setup which includes a 50MP f/1.8 Sony LYT-600 sensor for the primary camera with OIS and an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera. On the front, there is a 32MP f/2.0 selfie camera, similar to the one on the OnePlus 15R. The primary camera sensor seems to be a downgrade when compared to the OnePlus Nord 5's Sony LYT-700 sensor on paper, but with the newer chipset onboard, there is not much of a difference.
The images from the primary camera have sharper detail, a wider dynamic range, and less background noise. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening. The contrast is slightly on the higher side, and white balance is handled very well. The colours are slightly punchier when compared to the ones on the OnePlus Nord 5, which provides more natural-looking colours.
In terms of HDR images, the OnePlus Nord 6 tries to oversaturate colours to a greater extent, but the noise remains under control, and the dynamic range is wider. The human skin tones look good but have a warmer tone. There is oversharpening at times in the background, though. The 50MP images come out with sharper details and a good dynamic range with less noise in the background, but compared to 12MP images, the details look a tad softer.
The 2x zoomed images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. At night, the Auto Night Mode gets triggered automatically, which means the details look sharper with a wider dynamic range and less noise in the background. The colours look natural, but at times there is oversharpening present in the background. The white balance is good, and contrast is on the higher side.
The details in shadows look good, and in very low-light areas the camera struggles at times to capture light and provide details. Without Auto Night Mode, things are not up to par, as there is a consistent drop in image quality since noise is on the higher side and details look softer, with a slightly weaker dynamic range when compared to the ones taken on the OnePlus Nord 5. The 2x zoomed images at night come out with sharper details, but the noise is on the higher side.
The images from the 8MP ultrawide camera come out with sharper details, with wider dynamic range and less noise in the background. There is distortion around the edges, with some oversharpening in the background. The details look slightly better than those of the OnePlus Nord 5 thanks to the better image processing of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset on the smartphone. The contrast is good, and white balance is handled very well.
At night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out with good details, but they tend to look softer, with oversharpening present in the background. The colours look saturated, though, but the dynamic range comes out as average, and OnePlus still needs to fix the issues through a future software update. The noise is well under control, but it is still on the higher side. The distortion around the edges is clearly visible when you zoom in on the images.
In terms of portraits, the primary camera can take some very good portraits, which come out with natural-looking colours in the background, and the edge detection is also good. The background blur is well implemented, with less noise in the background. In terms of selfies, the 32MP camera on the front takes some very good selfies that have sharper details and a wider dynamic range, with less noise in the background.
The skin tones look natural but do look overprocessed at times. The selfie portraits come out with sharper details and proper edge detection, with some noise around the corners. However, when you compare the selfies of the OnePlus Nord 5, there is a slight improvement in terms of colours, which do not oversaturate, but the field of view is still larger on the OnePlus Nord 5 due to the 50MP front camera.
In terms of video, the primary camera can record 4K videos at 60fps, and the front camera can record 4K videos at 30fps, whereas the ultrawide camera is restricted to 1080p videos at 60fps. There is even slow-motion video recording at 1080p at 240fps. The videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details and a wider dynamic range, and since OIS is present, it helps to mask noise to a greater extent. The 4K videos have slightly higher noise in the background.
When switching to 1080p videos at 60fps, the Ultra Steady Mode kicks in, resulting in videos with sharper details, saturated colours and almost no noise in the background. The dynamic range is wider, and contrast is good with proper white balance. The videos from the ultrawide camera have decent detail, but they look softer, and the noise is on the higher side. The colours look saturated, but videos taken at night suffer from oversharpening and look washed out.
The videos from the front camera have sharper detail, a wider dynamic range, and less background noise. The skin tones look natural, and there is no drop in quality either. The white balance is handled well. The same goes for the selfie portrait videos, where you get good edge detection and proper background blur, but it does suffer from focus issues at times and slight inconsistency in colours.
OnePlus Nord 6 Battery Life:
The biggest highlight of the OnePlus Nord 6 is the gigantic 9000mAh battery, which is much larger than that of its predecessor, the OnePlus Nord 5, which came with a 6800mAh battery. With OxygenOS 16 and a slightly more powerful Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset underneath, we do expect an improvement in battery life, and the smartphone clearly delivers it when you see the daily usage.
With normal usage that includes streaming social media, browsing through webpages, or other lighter multitasking, the smartphone easily lasted for two and a half days with charge left. The standard screen-on time came around 10.5-11 hours, which is by far one of the best figures on any OnePlus smartphone to date and the best in the premium mid-range segment. Even the ideal battery drain remains normal, with no significant drop in battery percentage.
With heavy usage that includes rendering videos, taking images and videos using the camera, and playing heavy games like Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc. for a longer duration, the smartphone easily lasted for one and a half days with some charge left. The standard screen-on time came to around 7-8 hours, which is good considering the efficient chipset and the larger battery.
In terms of charging, OnePlus has bundled the smartphone with an 80W SuperVOOC fast charger inside the box. With the 80W fast charger, the OnePlus Nord 6 easily clocks from 0 to 100 per cent within 1 hour 10 minutes, which is quite fast considering the larger battery underneath. The first 30 minutes charge it from 0 to 55 per cent. There is also support for 27W reverse wired charging, which means you can use the OnePlus Nord 6 as a power bank to charge other smartphones.
OnePlus Nord 6 Audio Quality:
The OnePlus Nord 6 has dual stereo speakers where the top earpiece and the bottom firing loudspeakers together produce a stereo sound experience. Even at the highest volume settings, the sound does not feel distorted or muffled. There is also support for LHDC and LDAC support so you do get an immersive audio experience when using any TWS or wireless earphones.
Verdict:
As an overall package, the OnePlus Nord 6 delivers an almost flagship experience in almost all aspects while playing it safe. The smartphone brings a sturdy and durable build and design with a great display paired with stereo speakers for multimedia consumption. The performance and gaming are something which the smartphone has nailed perfectly, as the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset handles everything thrown at it. The software experience is unmatched with OxygenOS running underneath.
There are a host of AI features which come in handy in daily usage, and the presence of Plus Key to the side aids it further. Even the software update policy is very good when compared to other smartphone brands. It may not be the best, but still OnePlus is punctual in terms of software updates. In terms of cameras, you do get a downgraded primary camera when compared to the OnePlus Nord 5, but it feels improved in terms of image processing and video.
The massive 9000mAh battery provides solid battery life and provides the best figures till now in the premium mid-range segment. The 80W fast charger inside the box charges the smartphone quickly, and the reverse wired charging capability comes in handy as always. However, there are certain trade-offs seen on the smartphone. Firstly, the build is still polycarbonate instead of glass, which is slightly disappointing considering its price.
The gaming experience is flagship-level, but at times the back does feel warmer, and the 165fps gameplay is somewhat inconsistent, with slight frame drops noticed. The cameras are not the best in class, which clearly shows the compromise made by OnePlus, as it suffers in low-light scenarios, and the ultrawide camera provides average output. Even the 80W fast charger provided inside the box is USB Type-A to Type-C instead of Type-C to Type-C.
So when you compare it to last year's OnePlus Nord 5, you are getting better performance, an improved battery life, a higher refresh rate display and better durability with a proper IP rating. However, the OnePlus Nord 5 slightly edges it out in terms of primary camera performance, but the OnePlus Nord 6 provides better colour accuracy and contrast. So as an overall package, the OnePlus Nord 6 is a solid premium mid-range smartphone for people who want the best performance and battery life over optics.
However, the higher asking price of the OnePlus Nord 6 is hard to justify given its position in the market, but you are still getting a lot for the money.