OnePlus Nord N300 review – Simple but not perfect

We’ve all heard the saying that fortune favors the bold. It’s a good motto to live by, reminding you to take risks and that sometimes they’ll pay off. OnePlus nailed the concept when it crashed the budget market with its earliest Nord phones, blending modest specs, an attractive design, and an approachable price tag — a significant step away from its then-typical flagship killers. Some of the best smartphones were made by Shenzhen. best affordable phonesYou could buy it (especially in Europe) during the budget resurgence. However, it’s found it much tougher to replicate that success at the lowest tiers of the Nord range with the US-centric Nord N family. Our OnePlus Nord N300 Review will show you if OnePlus can reverse that trend.

• OnePlus Nord N300 (4GB/64GB): $228

The OnePlus Nord N300, a successor of the unspectacular, arrived in October 2022. OnePlus Nord N200. It’s about as straightforward as a US exclusive can be, coming in just one color with just one storage configuration and offering support for just one carrier — T-Mobile. The simple setup offers a level of efficiency that would make even Henry Ford blush, and it comes in his favorite color — Midnight Jade (it’s black in disguise).

The Nord N300, which is the most affordable member in the OnePlus family of devices, keeps things very simple in design. It features a plastic frame and back panel with a Panda Glass display. The panel at 90Hz houses a 16MP selfie cam in a small central recess. It then drops down to HD+ resolution instead the Full HD+ of its predecessor. You’ll find a fingerprint reader on the right side, the volume buttons and a SIM tray on the left, and a headphone jack and speaker flanking the USB-C port on the bottom. The rear plastic panel is finished in a light textured sandstone, drawing your attention to a high-gloss camera bump. It houses a 48MP primary sensor and a 2MP depth sensor, and has AI Dual Camera branding.

Inside the plastic construction lies Mediatek’s 6nm Dimensity 810 chipset. It’s the powerhouse of the sub-$250 Nord N300. It comes with 4GB of RAM, 64GB expandable storage and the same 4GB of RAM as the Nord N200. OnePlus retained its hefty 5,000mAh lithium battery, but it charges at 33W rather than the 18W rate previously.

Our OnePlus Nord N300 arrived equipped with Android 12 and the August 20,22 security patch. It was almost immediately updated to the September 2022 security patches. Unfortunately, two years of regular security patches will cover most of the Nord N300’s support, as it’s only slated to receive a single Android OS update to Android 13.

The OnePlus Nord N300 comes in a sturdy box. It also includes a USB A charger, a USB A-C to USB C cable, and some paperwork.

T-Mobile Exclusive: The OnePlus Nord N300 is not available for purchase. You have the option to choose between the Uncarrier and its companion. Metro by T-Mobile subsidiary, but you won’t find this Nord on Amazon or at Best Buy.

We’re always ready to praise a big battery paired with a mid-range 5G processor, and the Nord N300 is no exception. Its Dimensity 810 processor won’t set much of anything on fire regarding raw numbers, but it delivers 5G speeds and easily tackles daily tasks. I had no problems bouncing between social media and email while keeping the processor cool, and light gaming isn’t off the table. You’ll have to set titles like Genshin Impact to their lowest possible settings for any hope of a good time, but less intensive options like Fallout Shelter (which nobody else plays anymore) are more the Nord N300’s speed.

The Nord N300 sounds pretty good, whether you’re gaming or streaming. It has the following features stereo speakersThe earpiece comes with one down-firing unit. Granted, the dedicated speaker does most of the heavy lifting, but it’s tough to argue with the results at this price. I played the trailer for Rian Johnson’s upcoming film Glass Onion at full volume and had no complaints with the dialogue, though there’s some noticeable distortion in the soundtrack.

The 5,000mAh battery will last you no matter what your Nord N300 poison. I was able manage a day-and-a-half to two days of mixed use in Standard Mode. High Performance Mode yielded slightly lower results. Either way, when you drain the hefty cell, you’ll have quick 33W wired charging to get you back on the go. I found that it takes approximately 80 minutes to recharge the battery from empty to full using the included cable and charger. The fact that it’s a USB-A charger in 2022 isn’t great, but at least it still comes in the box.

Although there’s not a ton to say in favor of the Nord N300’s design, it does offer a few nice touches. The 6.56-inch display is solid. 90Hz refresh rate, which is smoother than we’ve seen from several devices nearly twice the price. The Nord N300’s haptics are decent, offering light feedback while typing with slightly more force when you exit an app or minimize the keyboard — a clear improvement over the N200.

OnePlus will also continue to use the headphone jack for an additional year, a feature that is becoming increasingly rare. I didn’t use it a ton during my testing, but it’s always nice to have audio options, especially on budget phones where they’re not quite extinct just yet.

While the OnePlus Nord N300 gets quite a bit right in terms of pricing, performance, and charging, it comes with just as many — if not more — cost-saving compromises. First, you need to consider the build quality. The plastic that OnePlus chose feels very plasticky. There’s a noticeable give when you push on the back panel, and it doesn’t take much to scuff or scrape the frame. It’s not all that exciting to look at, either, with flat sides, a flat back, and only the glossy camera bump to spice things up.

While we’re talking about plastic, we may as well talk about color. OnePlus calls its finish Midnight Jade. But it could have been called Midnight. It’s just about impossible to detect any hint of green with the naked eye, but that fits if you’re looking at a piece of jade in a dark room in the middle of the night.

Even though side-mounted fingerprint scanners are not recommended, having a sustained momentI was frustrated with the OnePlus Nord N300. The fingerprint reader is located almost at the right edge of the right hand side and is extremely sensitive. It rarely identifies my fingerprint on the first attempt, but the capacitive sensor tries again almost immediately — often before I can adjust my finger. My PIN is often entered more often than I would like, but the keypad placement remains about halfway up the screen. This almost always means that I need to adjust my grip in order to trigger the fingerprint reader again.

OnePlus also made some interesting choices with the Nord N300’s display. For starters, it shifts from Gorilla Glass 3 to Panda Glass — essentially a more affordable Chinese alternative. The selfie camera occupies a central, waterdrop-design notch, which could be considered a downgrade over the N200’s corner-positioned punch-hole, depending on your style preferences. OnePlus dropped to a sub-1080p resolution on the Nord N300. It’s fine for some YouTube streaming but noticeably soft at other times, and the display struggles to stay bright enough in direct sunlight.

The Nord N300’s questionable choices continue once you fire it up. The phone is locked T-MobileOnly T-Mobile, which means that you get all the bloat the Un-carriers offer. This includes a McAfee security application, a dedicated mobile hotspot apps, Scam Shield and T-Mobile Tuesdays. It’s a whole lot of magenta on an otherwise light Oxygen OS skin. You can delete about half of the extras — thankfully — though T-Mobile Play will be there to stay no matter what you do.

The lackluster software commitment only adds insults to injury. One year of Android version support isn’t good enough when budget phones from Motorola, Samsung, and Google are reaching beyond, and two years of security coverage isn’t much better. The Nord N300 was able to get the September update quickly, but it did not receive the software patch until November.

OnePlus must have heard someone, somewhere, talking about how it’s not the number of cameras you have, it’s how you use them. It finally decided that more isn’t better and dropped the third lens from its most affordable Nord. The macro lens that was too weak is now gone. The primary sensor has been increased from 13MP up to 48MP and a depth sensor of 2MP for good measure. The Nord N300 is limited in its useability and has many limitations.

I tried the 48MP sensor in as many situations possible during my time with this phone and came up with mixed results. The main shooter defaults to taking 12MP images, but you can also opt for full resolution if needed. Either way, it delivers decent details at 1x and 2x zoom via digital crop — the two default settings in the OnePlus camera app. The image below of a stone structure is sharp throughout. Portrait edge detection on the lightpost next to it is also good. However, the lack of an ultrawide or a telephoto shooter limits the camera’s potential.

Also, see: Here are the best budget camera phones

The color recreation is the area where the Nord N300 shines brightest. Any lessons learned from the company’s partnership with Hasselblad have been quite clearly restricted to OnePlus flagships. The tamer color science is nowhere to be seen as the saturation on the N300 is dialed up to 11. The rich colors work great sometimes, as in the case with the maple leaf and metal sunflower. But blow out the image other times, like when the pumpkins and grass are above the ducks.

As mentioned, there’s no dedicated zoom lens on the Nord N300. You can get reliable shots with the 1x and 2x zooms, thanks to a quick crop from the main sensor. However, the quality drops as you pinch in more. Below, the bricks appear flattened in the 5x zoom photo. The yellowing leaves behind begin to bleed. Even though background details are less sharp at 10x zoom the dormer windows are still sharp enough.

Stabilization was my biggest problem when I zoomed in. The Nord N300 is not able to compensate for shaking hands so I found myself holding my breath and tap the shutter button several times to get decent shots.

I must give it to OnePlus, the Nord N300’s night mode impressed me. The image comparison below used a one-second timer, and the difference is night and day — pun intended. It’s much easier to make out the plants around the pumpkin, even if the details are a bit soft. The other image of pumpkins further down still has soft details in the background, but the saturated colors work in the Nord N300’s favor for once. It’s easy to make out each gourd in the foreground, though the small pumpkins on the vine look like little more than red balls.

The Nord N300’s 16MP selfie camera is a bit of a mixed bag. Based on the images to the left, I was ready to give it my approval. But, I was not so sure about the second set of selfies. The portrait effect washed out almost everything, making a red brick building look mushy in orange and white. Maybe it’s a result of standing in the shade with a bright background, but it’s still not a problem we see with most selfie cameras.

OnePlus Nord N300 users will not be able to record 4K video for the next year. The 48MP primary camera and 16MP selfie camera record 1080p at 30 frames per second. They are comparable to the Galaxy A13 5G 5G and Galaxy A23 5G budget models, but they do not compare well with stronger mid-range competitors.

The OnePlus Nord N300 is not able to make bold decisions. It rides on a simple design, a decent CPU, and a long-lasting, big battery. Depending on your needs, those features might even be enough to sway you — especially for just $228. Nord’s most affordable version retains creature comforts like a headset jack and expandable storage. Its 33W wired charging is superior to many of its budget rivals.

However, the Nord N300’s lack of flexibility is its downfall. One Android update and two years worth of security patches should not be accepted, especially when budget and mid-range rivals are beginning to promise longer future support. The cheap-feeling construction and limited display protection feel similarly short-sighted, and the T-Mobile exclusivity limits the Nord N300’s reach. The overall potential of the camera is limited, and it is difficult to take truly pleasing photos due to the inconsistent color science.

The OnePlus Nord N300 is difficult to recommend if you compare it with the competition. The Nord N300 is the most expensive option, but you can increase your budget to get it. The Nord N300 is available for purchase. Samsung Galaxy A23 5G ($249.99 at Amazon) or OnePlus Nord N20 ($299.99 at AmazonBoth devices offer Full HD Plus displays, additional RAM and storage options. Samsung’s budget device has the better software commitment of the two — the Nord N20 matches its N300 counterpart. OnePlus offers 33W charging, which gives it a slight advantage over the Galaxy A23 5G for when you need a top up.

Samsung has a lower-tier 5G competitor in the form of The Galaxy A13 5G ($249.99 at Amazon). The display suffers from similar issues with resolution and brightness, but its main camera is more consistent, it offers extra RAM and storage options, and Samsung’s update commitment is second to none.