OnePlus 13 Review: Refining a Winning Formula

Last year’s OnePlus 12 was the favorite of many critics like me who kept coming to the device despite having all the flagships at my disposal. The device was the pinnacle of the OnePlus experience, so I was curious about what the next device would have in store for us. Well, having used the latest flagship from OnePlus for over a week now, I think I have the answers. So keep reading as I share my thoughts and experience in this review of the OnePlus 13.

OnePlus 13: Specifications

Here are all the key specs of the new OnePlus 13 that you can go through if you want a brief overview of the device.

OnePlus 13: Box Contents

In the current era where phones come bundled with a mere cable, OnePlus still manages to deliver one of the best unboxing experiences. The OnePlus 13 box includes the device itself, a textured silicon case, a SIM ejector pin, a Type A to C cable, and a 100-watt SuperVOOC charger. Not to forget the typical set of paperwork.

Three-Piece Elegance, One Premium Package

We have the dark blue Midnight Ocean variant with us which is 0.4mm thicker and 3g lighter than the other two Black and White options. OnePlus has shifted a lot of things this year in terms of the aesthetics. Gone is the metal curve from the rails extending to the camera bump. The back, front, and sides have also gone flatter this time around.

However, I believe this design is an upgrade. The phone takes on a more professional look, highlighted by OnePlus’ use of microfibre vegan leather. It gives the phone a velvet-like feel, akin to the leather found in the steering wheel of a high-end automobile. The shiny metal lining and flat sides provide dimension to the design. Further accentuated, thanks to the Hasselblad branding which is moved outside of the camera bump.

The ergonomics of this phone do justice to its design as the soft flat edges don’t dig into my hands when holding the device. I am glad the designers included that because the phone is wider and flat sides would have made it uncomfortable to hold. Going around, there are the volume and power buttons on the right, and the alert slider on the left. The slider has also changed with better travel and a flat exterior. So it is easier to use now.

At the bottom of the phone are the USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 charging port, speaker grill, mic, and SIM tray. On the top, you’ll find two additional mics, the IR blaster and the secondary speaker grill. There’s also a fourth mic on the camera bump. There’s IP68 and IP69 protection so you can easily submerge the phone in water if you feel daring.

All the praises I sang for the back carry forward to the front as well. That’s because the OnePlus 13 comes with a phenomenal quad-curved 2K 120Hz AMOLED display. It is similar to the one used in the Oppo Find X8 Pro but with higher resolution. It has the new LTPO 4.1 technology for faster switching between refresh rates and Dolby Vision support. The 10-bit panel has 100% Display P3 coverage and gets OnePlus’ own Ceramic Guard protection.

I ended up enjoying the latest season of Squid Games on the device. It was the perfect fit to test out the display. The colorful environment of the show and characters looked so rich and stunning on display, while the dark gloomy backdrop of the interiors came out detailed. I must say that the blacks are calibrated quite well this time.

Sunlight didn’t become an issue as the device supports 4500 nits of brightness but that is when playing HDR content. Typically it can touch 1600 nits which is sufficiently bright enough. At least I didn’t face any issues with it. There’s also 2160Hz PWM dimming to mitigate the effects of screen flickering on the eyes. This year, OnePlus went with an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint instead of an optical one and the difference in unlocking speed is immediately noticeable.

The stereo speaker setup is good and pairs well with the display. The separation is about 40-60 with the primary speaker at the bottom doing most of the work. There’s no tearing or echoing when you push the volume to the max which is a plus in my books. However, I feel OnePlus should look into improving audio with the next batch of devices.

Performance That Lives Up to the Mantle

The OnePlus 13 comes with this year’s flagship chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite. It garnered a lot of hype for offering 45% more performance over the 8 Gen 3 which is a massive year-on-year jump. You can learn more bout it in our dedicated benchmarks overview. This brawny chipset has 12/16/24GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB/512GB/1TB of UFS 4.0 storage. With the specs detailed, let’s run some benchmarks.

The phone did exceptionally well in Antutu and Geekbench but the CPU throttling results were underwhelming. It constantly struggled and dipped down to the red which is not a good sign.

Now on to my favorite portion, which is gaming. The phone flawlessly ran any game I threw at it starting with Call Of Duty Mobile. I played it at Medium + Ultra graphics and it didn’t budge from the 120FPS even when the battle got dicey. It was the same case with PUBG Mobile where I enjoyed 120FPS at Smooth with Extreme+ settings.

Jumping Genshin Impact. I decided to stop playing safe and put the graphics to high and framerate to 60FPS. During the gameplay, there were minor hiccups when the framerate dipped to 50 at times, but it quickly recovered and offered a smooth overall experience. Here’s a quick rundown of the graphic settings of the games I have played on the phone:

The thermals remained around 38 degrees which is good. The credit for this goes to the new Dual Cryo-velocity vapor chamber which is larger than the one on the OnePlus 12. It is 9925 mm2 in size and features two chambers for better heat dissipation.

Everyday performance is top-notch on the OnePlus 13. There are no stutters, and you’d be hard-pressed to come across one. That’s also in part thanks to OxygenOS 15 (review). It is the latest flavor of the company’s software skin based on Android 15. We have discussed its new features here but in short, it feels like OnePlus went back to its roots and improved on all the aspects fans were upset about. However, ads and bloatware have started to mud the experience of the once clean OS.

The animations are slick, and there are a few design improvements that long-time OnePlus fans will undoubtedly love. It even takes up 20% less system storage than before. OnePlus promises 4 years of software updates and 6 years of security fixes for this smartphone. It is a reasonable figure since supporting a phone over a long time adds up to the cost of the device and they wanted to keep the price low.

There are AI Notes to improve or paraphrase your writing, Intelligent Search and Circle to Search, and image editing options. Out of all of them, the Reflection Eraser is my favorite. I could finally fix my old images that were ruined due to reflection from other objects.

To back up this level of performance, the OnePlus 13 packs a 6,000mAh battery capacity. This puts the 5910mAh capacity of the Oppo Find X8 Pro to shame. This dual-cell battery can last you around 8 to 9 hours on a normal day. I got 7 and a half hours on a day when I played Genshin for more than an hour without rest. It doesn’t even take long to top it up with the bundled 100-watt SuperVOOC charger that takes 43 mins to fully charge the device from 5% to 100.

The phone also supports wireless charging and can charge at 50 watts with an AirVOOC charger. But I was hoping that this phone would be the first flagship to include the new Qi 2 standard. But it doesn’t which is surprising because there are official cases for the phone that have a magnetic coil. Even OnePlus themselves have come out with a MagSafe-like charging puck for this specific device.

Not Your Usual Camera Affair

On the camera end, the OnePlus 13 features a 50MP Sony LYT-808 main sensor with f/1.4 aperture size. Then there’s another 50MP Sony LYT-600 3x periscope lens with a 73mm focal length. The trifecta is complete with a 50MP ultrawide sensor with a 120-degree field of view. The selfie shooter in the front is a 32MP camera.

The daylight photos from the 23mm main lens came out sharp, vibrant, and full of details. The colors are a bit boosted but that’s the result of the Hasselblad tuning. So folks who want social media-ready clicks like you truly will be quite satisfied with it. However, the 2x results are not that impressive. The quality is not up to the mark and I know this is a crop of the main lens, but the post-processing isn’t doing its magic here.

At night, the OnePlus 13 holds its own pretty well by taking some neat-looking low light photos. We took out the phone to capture the New Year season in Delhi and the photos are awe-inspiring. It addresses my biggest issue and that is handling light and exposure. The light sources don’t come out as over-exposed, and the details are kept intact, preserving the festive appeal of the photos we took.

The 73mm 50MP periscope camera is a downgrade from the 64MP sensor from the OnePlus 12. But it captures some really good photos, that have a cinematic look to them. Every shot is stunning to look at, even if you are a novice at taking photos. This is especially great for clicking portraits of human subjects. However, the drop in resolution does hurt photos when you start zooming in because the details get washed out post 10x and then you’re at the mercy of post-processing.

The 50MP 15mm lens delivers some sweet ultrawide and macro shots. It has a wide field of view identical to the Find X8 Pro and higher than that of the OnePlus 12. It lets me take some amazing shots without backing up too much. This high-resolution sensor is great for capturing rich ultrawide’s in most lightning situations highlighting the grand nature of its subjects.

The 32MP selfie photos don’t disappoint either. The skin tones remain natural, there’s no excessive beautification going on by default, and it retains several details. The exposure is well maintained if you look at this photo of me, where the phone handled direct sunlight and still managed to keep the details of the tree in the shot.

On the video side of things, the phone can capture 8K videos at 30FPS from the main lens, and 4K 30 and 60FPS videos with all the cameras. Even the front camera can do 4K 60 so vloggers take note. I like the fact that you can take 4K videos even with the steady video mode and also record Dolby Vision videos at the same resolution. There weren’t any focus-hunting issues, even when switching between lenses while recording.

OnePlus 13: Polished to Perfection?

I wouldn’t shy away from admitting that over the past few years, the OnePlus flagships have gone a bit boring for me. The company always pushes the boundaries in terms of performance, and that is something we have come to expect. Even with cameras, OnePlus started showing improvements with the 9 series. The only thing that needed some polishing was the design and I feel OnePlus 13 nails it.

The look of the phone just makes me want to flaunt the phone in public, and dawn a professional look to match with the device. While it is not a major jump in any department, honestly where can you even go from the top? But there was always a missing piece of the puzzle with OnePlus phones that kept bringing you back to the idea of a budget flagship which has been addressed here. The OnePlus 13 is an easy buy and offers an experience that you are sure to enjoy.