OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G Review – Pros and Cons, Verdict

OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite has been announced in the Indian market with a starting price of Rs 19,999, For a while now, OnePlus has been branching out into different segments of the mobile market, with the Nord brand catering to a more value-focused audience. Competing in the Rs 20,000 segment is already a very tough challenge for all OEMs owing to the competent offerings. Is there anything that can set the Nord CE 3 Lite apart in a sea of ​​similar niche devices? Let us know in this full review of the handset.

Decision

The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite is largely similar to its predecessor but offers some improvements in the audio setup, charging capabilities, and resolution of the primary camera. While its photography and processing power may impress you, the Nord CE 3 Lite has passed the litmus test of being able to deliver a good overall experience in its segment.

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• In terms of visual changes from the previous iteration, the Nord CE 3 Lite includes two huge camera rings instead of three smaller ones. The optical equipment housed inside remains the same, but it gives the illusion of improved image-capturing capabilities. As far as the materials used are concerned, the back panel is made using glossy plastic, which might scratch a bit easier than I would have liked. I got the pastel lime color variant, which is a soothing and subtle light green colour. On the downside, the Nord CE 3 Lite retains the 3.5mm headphone jack, which seems almost like an alien feature nowadays, but I appreciate it nonetheless. However, what I don’t like is the continued exclusion of the handy alert slider.

• The phone has a moderate thickness of around 8.3mm and weighs 195 grams. Other design elements are standard and include a stereo speaker setup, a power button with an integrated fingerprint scanner on the side, and a USB Type-C port at the bottom.
• Display-wise, the CE 3 Lite has a slightly larger 6.7-inch display than last time around, but it still uses an LCD panel instead of AMOLED. The refresh rate and resolution remain the same at 120Hz and FHD+ respectively. While viewing angles are decent, the screen only achieves up to 680nits of peak brightness, which is a hindrance in sunny outdoor conditions. In terms of its viewing experience, the display has 8-bit color depth and a hint of saturation even with the default color setting. For OTT platforms, the certification is Widevine L1 for HD streaming. Also I noticed some backlight bleeding around the punch-hole camera at the top.

• As for the cameras, this time the primary sensor is the 108MP Samsung HM6 shooter, while the macro and depth sensors remain the same at 2MP each. Photos in daylight are decent but there is some room for improvement in the dynamic range. Many of the high-risk areas are whitened out on several occasions, which robs the scene of detail. Focus and shutter speed are fine and color output is a bit muted. There’s a 3X mode on the viewfinder that will crop in a 108MP full-resolution shot, and the results are great.

• I am disappointed by the lack of an ultra-wide sensor which matters a lot more than macro and depth shooters. The close-up macro shots I took weren’t very impressive and the edge detection could also be improved with portrait mode. In terms of low-light images, the Snap failed to impress me, with the level of detail at the edges of the frame being a big issue. Even when tapping the viewfinder, the outer area of ​​the frame was rarely pulled into focus. Exposure metering looked fine and highlights were well defined as well. However, the dedicated Night Mode is of little help in extremely low-light conditions. Lastly, the selfie camera is satisfactory, and is capable of capturing good facial details and skin tones. It’s no different from every other 16MP shooter in the affordable segment.

• The Qualcomm Snapdragon 695G is the silicon option on the Nord CE 3 Lite, just like last year’s Nord CE 2 Lite. The problem is that since 2022, there has been a jump in the processing prowess on most smartphones that fall in the 3CE price range. As such the device has decent benchmarking numbers, but it certainly isn’t among the top performers. On Antutu, the device’s overall score was 408,711 and Geekbench 6’s multi-core result was 2,124. Now, these aren’t bad numbers in themselves, but it wouldn’t be hard to best the device in performance by offerings running on the Snapdragon 778G platform. Still, users with relatively low processing requirements will be able to multi-task effectively on the CE 3 Lite. The CPU Throttle benchmark showed that the handset was able to maintain its peak performance up to 89 percent, which can be considered quite good.

• The phone packs 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM which can be expanded up to 8GB via virtual swap memory. Internal storage is up to 256GB UFS 2.2 and there’s a microSD card slot that can expand it up to 1TB. The largely stereo speaker setup impressed me, especially how loud it can get without losing depth. The side-mounted fingerprint sensor works as advertised and the registration process is also fairly straightforward. The phone also has support for all the popular sub-6GHz 5G bands, both SA and NSA. My time on Jio’s Noida circle was satisfactory, as was the quality of the microphone and earpiece.

• Nord CE 3 Lite running OxygenOS 13.1 based on Android 13. As I’ve said in my previous reviews of OnePlus devices recently, OxygenOS is moving closer to Oppo’s ColorOS. Some examples of this include very similar themes, icon packs, and quick settings. I like that there’s less bloatware than what you’ll see on Oppo phones. You can read my OnePlus 11R review for more details on the software experience.

• The handset packs a 5,000mAh battery, which is pretty standard in this price segment. It also comes with 67W SuperVOOC charging capability that can charge the phone from 0 to 100 percent in about 45 minutes. Battery life itself is nothing out of the ordinary, with screen-on time being in the six-hour range without using any 5G capabilities.

final call