OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite review

Verdict

An intriguing mix of old and new, the OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite has some obvious strengths, but an already-aging chipset and short-sighted software support hold it back from being an affordable mid-range recommendation worth holding onto.

Introduction

OnePlus’ Nord line slots neatly into the mid-range segment, this year manifesting as three tiers of device; the most modest of which is the OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite. Mouthful of a name aside, the CE 4 Lite aims to deliver as much from the more premium Nord CE 4 while keeping costs down.

This sub-£300/€330 phone places its focus on display and battery, contained within a sharper design and sporting new software tricks within the latest release of the company’s OxygenOS user experience.

Design

• Eye-catching colourways
• Plastic build attracts smudges and lint easily
• First Lite Nord that’s IP-certified against dust and water

Compared to last year’s model, the Nord CE 4 Lite sports a cleaner, more squared design that I think looks more contemporary and premium; not least because of the move away from flat colours to a reflective finish on its back that plays with light in interesting ways. India gets the most bombastic ‘Ultra Orange’ finish, but in the rest of the world, the Mega Blue and Super Silver (pictured) colourways aren’t half bad either.

The plastic build feels sturdy in the hand, but the glossy finish on all but the frame is an absolute nightmare for picking up smudges and pocket lint; so unless you opt for a case, expect to forever be polishing it if you like your phone presentable at all times. There’s also no three-stage physical alert slider here, rendering the design a little less original compared to some of OnePlus’ higher-end offerings (including the OnePlus Nord 4).

Even with a larger battery than its predecessor, the 4 Lite is both fractionally thinner (8.1mm vs 8.3mm) and lighter (191 grams vs 195 grams), meaning it’s comfortable enough to use for extended periods.

The trickle-down benefits of this Nord generation mean this is the first Lite to tote IP-certified protection against dust and water ingress, also found on the Nord CE 4. A rating of IP54 is behind what you’d find on the best smartphones out there but it’s a nice addition that only ups the durability factor, compared to previous models.

Screen

• 6.67-inch Full HD+ 20:9 120Hz panel
• First Lite Nord with an OLED display
• Generational upgrades render it a better display, come rain or shine

One of the biggest upgrades between generations has to be the Nord CE 4 Lite’s display. The most noticeable change is the welcome switch from an IPS LCD panel to OLED tech, meaning better contrast with deeper blacks, more vibrant colours and the potential for greater power efficiency; especially if you like dark mode or an AoD (Always-on Display).

The phone actually uses the same Samsung E4 AMOLED tech found on the OnePlus 11, which also grants it significantly better brightness output compared to the Nord CE 3 Lite’s screen. It now peaks at 2,100nits (versus 680nits), ensuring better-looking streamed content and gaming, while an overall brightness improvement (1,200nits) means it’s much easier to see outdoors too, even on a sunny day.

The British Summer was also kind enough to lend a hand in testing out another trickle-down benefit from OnePlus’ more premium recent offerings: Aqua Touch.

An algorithm helps figure out which touch inputs are coming from the user, and which are erroneously coming from water droplets (like rain), ironing out the jittering and mistouches you might have encountered with wet touchscreens in the past. In practice, it works pretty well and I was able to watch YouTube without the playhead skipping about the place, while typos when messaging were only ever relegated to my fat fingers.

I was less enthused by the pre-fitted screen protector, if only because – like the phone’s back – it attracts fingerprints and smudges mercilessly. The shift from a capacitive to an in-display fingerprint sensor sounds cool, but it’s too low down on the display and a touch slower by comparison too.

The screen also still outputs at up to 120Hz for nice smooth, responsive UI interaction, but it only steps between 60Hz and 120Hz when set to ‘auto’, meaning weaker power optimisation than panels on more premium devices.

Performance

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G chipset
• 8GB RAM (LPDDR4X) + up to 8GB via RAM Expansion
• 300% Ultra volume mode

One major surprise that raised an eyebrow at the Nord CE 4 Lite’s reveal is OnePlus’ choice of processor. It runs on the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 found in both the CE 3 Lite and the CE 2 Lite before it; a 6nm chipset that was originally introduced back in 2021 – that’s ancient in mobile chipset years.

Despite the chip’s age and underwhelming benchmark scores, however, the combined effect of OnePlus’ software optimisations and that snappy 120Hz display mean the CE 4 Lite feels fine – nice even – to use in day-to-day situations.

Do I wish app load times were shorter? Sure. Do games default to the lowest visual settings and frame rates by default? Absolutely. Out of the box, though, this Nord delivers a perfectly acceptable user experience for its lower mid-range standing, at least for the time being.

8GB of inbuilt RAM can be supplemented by the system letting you turn up to 8GB of the phone’s UFS 2.2 storage into additional virtual RAM, which is handy when it comes to multitasking and cutting down those app load times, even if neither memory nor storage are the fastest around these days.

One performative upgrade that the CE 4 Lite’s marketing material loves to shout about (OnePlus’ website literally highlights this detail in ALL CAPS) is its ‘300% Ultra Volume Mode’ (up from 200% on the CE 3 Lite). When you turn the volume up to full, pressing ‘up’ on the rocker an additional time sends the phone’s speakers into overdrive.

At 100% volume, the CE 4 Lite does a surprisingly stellar job of offering enough clarity and detail without distortion to beat out the superb (but also four times more expensive) Sony Xperia 1 VI  – a phone known for its excellent stereo speakers – in terms of loudness.

With 300% mode engaged, while the phone is undeniably louder still, any semblance of sound quality crumples; highs peak at a sharp hiss, mids remain mostly intact, while the loudness also highlights the speaker’s inability to render bass tones effectively, purely as a result of physics.

Camera

• 50MP Sony LYT-600 main sensor
• First Nord Lite with OIS (optical image stabilisation)
• Video tops out at 1080p @ 30fps

A glance at the phone’s back and you’d be forgiven for assuming the Nord CE 4 Lite shoots with a main and an ultra-wide camera, however, that 2MP secondary sensor is purely there to support the primary camera with depth data; meaning you’re really only shooting with a single rear snapper here.

OnePlus has traded the 108MP primary camera on the CE 3 Lite for a smaller 50MP sensor this generation; the same newer Sony LYT-600 module found on the Nord CE 4; one tier up in the series. While a smaller sensor with fewer pixels and only a 2x lossless sensor crop (versus 3x previously) sounds like a pretty damning downgrade on paper, there’s one big difference that works in favour of this new Lite Nord: OIS.

While pixel binning and electronic image stabilisation (EIS) worked well enough on last year’s Lite in most conditions, low light shooting was easily its weakest attribute and the OIS system here goes some way to pulling back images shot in dingy lighting from useless to usable. It can help with static video shots too, however, when walking or in bumpy conditions, most of the time the stabilisation is too jerky against the footage to be effective.

Elsewhere, it’s a more familiar shooting experience, with decent-looking imagery, provided you don’t pixel-peep too closely(fine detail doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny, becoming a little muddy up close), while post-processing perhaps working a little too hard to tidy up scenes and boost colours in a lot of situations.

High contrast or more dimly-lit scenarios do highlight the sensor’s limited dynamic range and colour capture, while portrait mode is perhaps a little too heavy handed; especially when macro shots come with a pleasing enough natural depth fall-off anyway. Speaking of macro, if it wasn’t already apparent, the near-useless dedicated macro sensor from the last Lite has been nixed, but I don’t miss it and neither will you.

Noticeable shutter lag and video still topping out at 1080p at 30fps are likely both symptoms of the CE 4 Lite’s use of that older Snapdragon chipset, as other phones around this price can manage higher resolution and faster frame-rate capture.

Software

• OxygenOS 14 atop Android 14 at launch
• Two years of OS and three years of security updates promised

While I prefer my Android user experiences closer to stock – as delivered by the likes of Google’s Pixels, Sony’s Xperias and Motorola’s phones – OxygenOS is one of the more appealing heavy Android-based experiences out there, and the Nord 4 CE Lite retains a lot from the company’s higher-end software offerings.

While you don’t get the full ‘Trinity Engine’ experience of OnePlus’ more premium devices, a portion of the technology – RAMVita and ROMVita – are on hand to keep both memory and storage in as ship-a-shape as possible, behind the scenes.

OxygenOS also grants plenty of customisation over its look and feel, offers useful multitasking tools and shortcuts – even straight from the fingerprint sensor on the lock screen – and boasts an additional depth of control over things like scheduled power profiles and ‘The Shelf’, an iOS Control Centre-like home for your widgets.

For all there is to enjoy within OxygenOS as it appears on the Nord CE 4 Lite, there are a few things holding the experience here back. For one, if you’re looking to snap up a phone that rides the latest wave of AI-powered functionality, beyond AI Smart Cutout and object removal within the OnePlus Photos app, you won’t find much else beyond Android’s native intelligent features, as supplied by Google.

Second, the 4 Lite’s more affordable standing means the user experience comes with a little out-of-box bloat; not the company’s own apps (although there are some that duplicate Google’s native offerings), but the likes of Booking.com and some ad-riddled pre-loaded games. Thankfully, they can be uninstalled.

The most egregious issue of the lot, however, is the phone’s lacklustre software commitment. OnePlus was pushing the envelope at the upper end of its portfolio before Google and Samsung blew the doors off the industry with a whopping seven-year promise of both OS and security updates across their mid-range and premium devices, and yet the Nord CE 4 Lite comes with the promise of only two years of OS updates and three years of security.

I’d now consider this below industry standard, even in the mid-range space and it’s one of the easiest things OnePlus still has time to change to give more affordable offerings like the 4 Lite more life out of landfill.

Battery Life

• 5,110mAh battery in most markets (5,500mAh in India)
• 80W SuperVOOC wired fast charging
• Two days of use per charge

This 2024 Nord line is the first generation to push past 5,000mAh and in the case of the CE 4 Lite, that takes the form of a capacious 5,110mAh cell (tested in this review), unless you’re in likes of India, where EU regulations can’t reach; meaning users there get an ever larger 5,500mAh battery inside their Nords.

Discrepancy aside, this is one of the phone’s biggest selling points. Paired with the relatively modest hardware at work, I was excited to see just how much life I could get out of the phone, and sure enough, that large cell delivers.

In testing, the CE 4 Lite served up an impressive 10.5 hours of screen-on time on a single charge, confidently making it a two-day phone; even with extended gaming and streaming in that time. As an example, an hour of Netflix and 30 minutes of light gaming – both at 50% brightness – sapped 5% and 3% of charge, respectively. That’s up there with some of the best in the business right now, including the aforementioned Xperia, iPhone 15 Plus and the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

As for charging, the Nord CE 3 Lite was fast (at up to 67W) but the 4 CE Lite is faster, topping out at 80W when paired with a compatible SuperVOOC charger. Outside of India, OnePlus doesn’t ship this Nord with a power adapter in-box (although the included red USB cable does support peak charging speeds), so you’ll have to fork out extra if you don’t already have one.

I tested the phone with the OnePlus 11’s 100W SuperVOOC power adapter and as promised, the phone refilled completely in approximately 50 minutes, with a 50% charge taking only 23 minutes. If this were a more premium device with dual-cell battery architecture, then that 80W peak would likely refill the phone even faster.

OnePlus has also rated the battery for 1,600 cycles before losing 20% of its original charge capacity, so longevity shouldn’t noticeably diminish over the average lifetime of the phone. 5W reverse wired charging is on the table too and if you don’t have a SuperVOOC charger but do have a modern PD-standard charger, you’ll still be able to get up 55W into the Lite, which is still faster than the latest iPhones, Galaxys and Pixels.

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