OnePlus Nord 5 Launch

So, this past week, I’ve had my SIMs stuffed inside this here OnePlus Node 5, the successor to the absolutely ruddy lovely Nord 4. You see, the Node 4 was the smartphone equivalent of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons or Bonjovi’s Slippery When Wet. Just an absolute gosh darn masterpiece from its throwback metal design to its supremely slick software. So, how do you follow up an absolute banger like that? Well, OnePlus has tweaked and polished and generally bugged about with quite a few bits for this year’s Node 5, although not always with positive results. It will cost you 400 here in Blighty. And here’s my full in-depth OnePlus Node 5 Launch review. And for more on the latest and greatest tech

DESIGN & BUILD

Now, one of my favorite bits of the Node 4 was that gorgeous, sleek metal finish. But apparently the people have spoken and according to OnePlus at least what they actually want is simple refined design. In other words, a smartphone that looks

like all other smartphones. So unfortunately what we get here with the Nord 5 isn’t a glorious refinement or evolution of that throwback metal design from the Nord 4. What we get is this. The people have spoken and as usual, the people are quits. It’s you. You’re the reason we can’t have nice things. So, I somewhat tragically the Node 5 sports a regular glass back like pretty much all of its rivals. I mean, fair play, it does look rather smart. Certainly quite inoffensive, but it just doesn’t stand

out in any way. Although, I the subtle almost purpley glow of this here Phantom Grey model is rather nice. Your alternative launch models are dry ice, which is a smashing light blue color, and a marly type design that I can’t remember the name of, but at least it’s a bit more standout. And at least OnePlus was sensible enough to slap a matte finish on this back end, so it doesn’t get very groy or grimy. You’ll just occasionally need to give it a bit of a buffing. Although that camera bump

isn’t exactly subtle. Does stick out a wee bit, which unfortunately means the Node 5 does fail the jiggle test. Now, the Node 5 has slightly grown in size compared with the Node 4 to a positively trouser expanding 6.83 in. Although, mercifully, you do at least have reasonably skinny bezels surrounding that screen. So, it’s not a comedically massive phone. It doesn’t feel like you’re trying to stuff a tablet into your pants or anything, but it is rather iPhone yet again quite flat edges.

There’s not much curvature around back, just a wee bit around the corners to make it a little more comfortable to clutch. You do have plastic edging here on the Nord 5 as well, which shows it as a more budget friendly option, but overall at least it seems pretty rugged. No scratches or scuffs anywhere on this thing to speak of. You’ve got a pre-installed screen protector on it, and it is IP65 rated. not fully IP68 water resistant like some rivals, but it can still get pretty ruddy damp without a worry.

Battery Health

of course, you’ve got that speaker cleaner feature again, just in case any watery guff infiltrates the bottom. So, overall, the design is all right, but it certainly is a downgrade compared with the Node 4. Not going to have any Parisians creaming their cakes anytime soon. But on the flip side though, that Oxygen OS 15 just as gloriously smooth as ever, feels so responsive with these super slick animations, complete with four guaranteed OS updates and 6 years of security patching thrown on top. Andyeah, that’s not quite as generous as some rivals like Samsung and Google who offer sort of six or seven OS updates, but it’s kind of hard to grumble about. To actually unlock this Wii bugger, you’ve got yourself an optical indisplay fingerprint sensor like most rivals, and it’s pleasingly responsive. I’ve had absolutely zero jip from it this entire time. And as always, Oxygen OS, highly customizable, lots of different themes that you can personalize. You p around with the likes of the fingerprint

animations. You got a bit of edge lighting action. And if you’re not a fan of something, you can generally change it. So, if you don’t like the way that the notification center and the control center are split apart, well, no bother. You can sort that out with just a quick tap. And you can drag it down from anywhere on screen or replace that gesture with a good bit of shelf action. But the big change for the Node 5 is certainly the introduction of that plus key. And this of course replaces the

iconic longstanding alert slider. Although you can effectively turn the plus key into another alert slider, but performing the exact same functionality just in a slightly different way. And yes, it certainly does appear to be an idea that is possibly cribbed from another manufacturer. In fact, if you go into the Node 5’s settings menu and dive into the plus key section, OnePlus is rather shamelessly and hilariously not even trying to mask its influence here. And I found I did get used to the plus

key pretty quick. It’s perfectly positioned and I never accidentally activated it when I didn’t want to. Mostly because you have to press and hold it in for it to actually do anything. You can’t just give it a quick tap. And got to say that old alert slider I did find occasionally I would accidentally nudge it into loud or silent when I was slipping the phone into my pocket. So this is probably actually a better option. As I said, you can basically make it mimic an alert slider. I’ve mostly stuck with the do

not disturb functionality cuz that’s quite handy to slap on before I start shooting a video, etc. Unfortunately, the plus key isn’t as customizable as I would have hoped or liked and certainly not as customizable as Apple’s effort. You can’t map it to any app that you’ve downloaded, for instance, or create your own macro. But of course, that is something that could be quite simply sorted in a future update. And of course, all the usual excellent classic Oxygen OS features are present and

correct, including a good bit of open canvas style split screening, so you can quickly switch between two apps without things getting all cramped. Good bit of zen modes, of course, quite handy if you want the entire metal smartphone hat world to piss right off for a bit. Not that I’m bitter about that or anything. And of course, you got all the obligatory AI shenanigans stuffed on here as well. AI translation, AI search, yada yada yada. And of course, all the usual Google shenanigans, including

Gemini and a bit of Circle to search as well, if you want to know a bit more about something you’ve just spotted on the internet or whatever. Oh, and OnePlus has chucked a generous 256 gigs of storage into the Nord 5. You can upgrade that to 512 gigs by chucking a bit more cash at them. That model is £499 here in Blighty. Now, let’s have a bit of a chat about the display tech, shall we? .

DISPLAY

Now, OnePlus has smashed a swift OLED display on the front end of the Nord 5. There’s a lot to love here andindeed there is a lot of screen because it’s a 6.83 in mega bastard. Thankfully the 1.5K resolution keeps visuals crispy sharp. Got HDR10 streaming support in the likes of Netflix, so gorgeous contrast and also quite poppy colors on the default vivid mode. You can tone that down if you want. In the display settings, you’ve also got a display P3 gamut mode and the brightness peaks at just under 2,000 nits, which is more than enough to see what is going on even in the most powerful face melting of

sunshine, which we have actually experienced here in Blighty while I’ve been testing this thing. Just left it on the auto brightness and even when I was wearing shades outside with the sun literally glaring off that screen, I could still clearly read text, see what was going on, etc. You’ve also got proper PWM dimming for anyone who’s a bit more sensitive to OLED flicker. And it maxes out at 144 hertz refresh rate as well if you happen to play any games that support that. And Aqua Touch is

back, baby, and still works an absolute treat. So, as you can see, that screen still pleasingly responsive even when it’s absolutely saturated. And the OnePlus Node 5 also boasts a proper decent stereo speaker setup. Even the earpiece effort isn’t CAC. It’s quite loud and clear and music doesn’t sound too tiny at all. Although, as always, I would of course recommend hooking up a Bluetooth speaker or headphones if you do want to enjoy some tunes. Absolutely zero issues with the wireless streaming

GAMEPLAY

shenanigans. Got full or reality support as well, which can automatically tweak and fine-tune that sound on your behalf depending on what you’re actually up to. And then for the performance, OnePlus went with the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, not the latest, freshest its Gen 4, which is of course stuffed inside of some rivals like the Poco F7. And that’s probably because apparently OnePlus has been working behind the scenes with Qualcomm to fine-tune this chipset for some time for optimized performance. And it’s

backed by either 8 or 12 gigs of RAM. I’ve got the 12 gig, which is that 499 pond model. And yes, combined with that silky smooth Oxygen OS experience, everything runs beautifully here on the Node 5. Certainly no issues with multitasking. And if you are into a bit of gaming, well, good news. The likes of Bther and Waves ran absolutely fine, even when I absolutely pumped up all of the visual settings, that Adreno 735 GPU can cope just fine. I only saw a couple of brief jutters in the frame rate over

time. Although admittedly, the Note 5 did get rather warm around back after just 20 to 30 minutes of gaming, and that is despite the massive vapor chamber that OnePlus has shoved in here, which apparently has a 7,300 square mm area. And they’ve also chucked in a bit of bypass charging as part of the excellent built-in Oxygen OS game mode, so you can keep the phone plugged in while you’re gaming, but it just prevents the battery from charging at the same time to stop the phone from getting even hotter. Other gaming modes

delights include a voice changer, which of course I have to use when I am gaming online with strangers. Not because I’m terrified that someone’s going to recognize they’re playing against the legendary Uncle Spurt Zedlist internet celebrity, but just because it’s hilariouslying weird. But just because it’s hilariouslying weird. Now, the OnePlus Node 5 sports a 5,200 mAh capacity battery. A slight downgrade from the Node 4. and certainly not the 7,000 MIA beast that some leaky bloss

were hinting at before the Nord 5 actually launched. But thankfully, unless you’re a bit of a weather and waves addict or whatever, it doesn’t really matter that the battery is pretty teeny compared with some rivals like the Poco F7 because actual battery life is still rather splendid. If I wasn’t doing any gaming, the lowest I managed to actually get that battery meter after a full long intensive day was around 30%. And that was with a full 90 minutes of Android Auto streaming action, almost an

BATTERY

hour of video chat, and plenty of camera play, lots of recording and photo shooting. And so, I certainly never managed to actually get this thing in the battery saver mode at the end of a very long day, unless I was gaming, in which case the power is sapped pretty quick. Certainly with titles like Weather and Waves, for instance, you can get around 3 and 1 half to 4 hours of gaming on that from a full charge before the Node 5 is completely wiped. But of course, it does fare much better with less demanding games like Call of Duty,

PUBG, etc. You can at least double the amount of time you can get gaming on this thing. And when you do want to power it back up again, well, the Node 5 supports 80 W Super Vast Charger, which is pretty bloody good for a mid-ranger. Although it is still a slight downgrade from the Node 4 which supported 100 watt fast charging and yeah there’s bugger all wireless support once again. So let us conclude this lovely bit of Nord 5 review action with a squint at the old camera tech. And what you have here is a

50 megapixel primary shooter using the Sony LYT700 sensor slightly upgraded from the LYT600 of the Nord 4 complete once again with OIS. And yes, that is backed by your basic bog standard ultra wideangle shooter. Now, the Node 5 apparently nicks all of those lovely image processing algorithms from the OnePlus 13 flagship, and certainly in HDR type situations, it’s a massive success. I was impressed by the level of detail in dimmer areas without resorting to oversaturating everything in the image,

CAMERA REVIEW

iPhone style. That said, occasionally because of some sort of process and brain fart, the Pro XDR Smarts did not kick in, which resulted in a dimmer, flatter photo. Overall though, colors appear more natural rather than artificially sweetened, while my ambient snaps also came out quite well without any obvious detail drop off. Portrait smarts are pretty decent, too. And while the Node 5 isn’t as reliable as the OnePlus 13 for action shots, it’s really not bad at all. In fact, besides the

complete lack of zoom action, which you will find on some of the OnePlus Node 5’s rivals, like the Nothing Phone 3A Pro, for instance, it’s hard to really grumble much about the camera setup here. The digital zoom ain’t great, but it works all right as long as it’s not too dark. And even the ultrawide shooter is okay as long as that lighting again isn’t too rubbish. And yes, you’ve got all of the obligatory AI photo editing gubbins slapped onto the Node 5, including the recomposition tool. And

you can basically crop in or out for you just to refframe things. You got the reflection eraser, which can be quite decent. The unblur tool, which doesn’t really do too much like all other unblur tools I’ve tested. Got to have minimal blur for it to really have any effect. And even then, it’s kind of minimal. And of course, you got the usual selection of bonus modes slapped on here, including a bit of high-res action and a dedicated pro mode, which can shoot in RAW format. And then for your video type

shenanigans, you can capture footage at up to 4K resolution at 30 or 60 frames pers. And the video capture is absolutely fine. That focus generally knows what it’s doing. Visuals are quite crispy on the ultra HD setting. Stabilization is good. And on the sound front, your point of view audio is clearly picked up, although it could be a little bit louder from the other side, the bit where the camera lenses are actually pointing. But the big update for the Note 5 generation is the 50meg selfie cam using Samsung’s GN5 sensor

with, as you can see there, a good bit of autofocus action. And the result is some startlingly sharp selfies which will make you actually consider hoying on the beauty mode if your face has like mine aged as well as a glass of milk sat in the hot sun. And again, portrait mode is on point with fully adjustable bokeh. And as with those rear cams, you can once again capture 4K ultra HD footage at either 30 or 60 frames per second with the Node 5. Again, with pretty solid stabilization. And at least the

audio capture is pretty clear from this side as well. Not too troubled by gusty conditions, etc. And there you have it, my lovelies. That in a tasty wee nutshell is my full final frank review of the OnePlus Node 5 after using it as my full-time smartphone for a week. And as the successor of one of the best mid-range mobiles of last year, got to say mixed emotions. I really did have my fingers, toes, and all of my floppy extremities crossed for some sort of glorious evolution of that throwback metal design. So, I’ve got to say the

Note 5 in comparison aesthetically at least feels rather bland. And a couple of bits have actually been downgraded since the previous generation, such as the battery. Still, the battery life is good. Performance is solid. The camera setup is absolutely a winner, if not quite as flexible as some rivals like that Nothing Phone 3A Pro. And Oxygen OS is still an absolute banger. So, would I recommend the OnePlus node 5? Yes, absolutely I would. But I would say it does have some very strong rivals in

2025. The likes of the Nothing Phone 3A and 3A Pro. Got a fresh new Poco F7. Lots and lots of mid-ranges. Go check out my roundup of the best mid-range phones right now for a full comprehensive list cuz I really can’t be bothered to rattle them all off now. After all, there’s whiskey to be drunk. But certainly, please let us know what you reckon of the OnePlus Node 5 down in the comments below. Please book subscribe and ding that notifications bell while you’re sort of lingering down

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