OnePlus 13R review: A flagship phone in every way but price

The OnePlus 13R has a big challenge ahead of it, and it only has its predecessor to blame. Last year’s OnePlus 12R was a magnificent phone, delivering big performance and pace-setting battery life in a device that cost less than $500, at least in the U.S., where a cheaper model was made available.

That would be a tough act to follow under any circumstances, but then OnePlus dropped the low-cost option from this year’s lineup. Now you’ve got only one OnePlus 13R model to choose from, and good luck getting it for less than $500.

Fortunately, for OnePlus, its latest midrange phone manages to overcome that disappointing first impression with some big improvements over last year’s model. Like other R series phones from OnePlus, the 13R takes the best premium features from a just-released flagship — the OnePlus 13 in this case — and offers them in a lower-cost version.

As a result, the OnePlus 13R has a faster processor, better battery life and much more powerful cameras when compared to last year’s well-regarded OnePlus 12R. Throw in more AI capabilities, and it’s easy to see why the OnePlus 13R impresses, even if it’s been priced out of the range of the best cheap phones. Our OnePlus 13R review looks at what you give up by opting for the OnePlus 13R instead of the OnePlus 13 and why that may be worth the $300 you save from the flagship’s starting price.

OnePlus 13R review: Specs

OnePlus 13R review: Price and availability

Call it Schrödinger’s price hike, as in the U.S., you will pay the exact same price for the 256GB version of the OnePlus 13R as you did for the OnePlus 12R — $599. But OnePlus also sold a 128GB OnePlus 12R for $499, and that configuration is no longer available with the OnePlus 13R. To put it another way, you may not be paying more for this year’s version of the phone, but you don’t have the option of paying less.

In the U.K., there is no such ambiguity. The OnePlus 13R costs £679, a £40 increase over what the OnePlus 12R cost.

The $599 starting price for the OnePlus 13R lands it nearly perfectly between the $499 Pixel 8a and the $649 Galaxy S24 FE. The regular OnePlus 13 flagship starts at $899, so you’re saving significant cash by turning to the midrange model instead.

You can currently pre-order the OnePlus 13R from the phone maker ahead of the phone’s launch on January 14. When the OnePlus 13R goes on sale in the U.S., you’ll be able to buy it from Best Buy as well as directly from OnePlus, with availability at Amazon coming later.

OnePlus 13R review: Design

The OnePlus 13R shares its look with the OnePlus 13, though you won’t find the Hasselblad branding near the circular camera array on the back of the midrange phone. That’s one of the areas where OnePlus has scaled back on the OnePlus 13R’s features, but we’ll see more as this review progresses.

The phone features an aluminum frame with Corning’s Gorilla Glass 7i providing protection against scratches and other damage. An IP64 water resistance rating provides protection from splashes, but you can’t dunk the phone in water or blast it with high-pressure water jets like you can with the OnePlus 13. I can’t speak to how durable all this makes the 13R given my relatively limited time with the phone, but the design does have a premium feel that disguises just how little you have to pay for this phone.

Because of its 6.78-inch screen, the 6.4 x 3 x 0.32-inch OnePlus 13R towers over the 6.1-inch Pixel 8a. Instead, the OnePlus 13R is closer in size to the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE, another phone that copies many of the features of its flagship siblings and repackages them in a lower-cost device. Anyone with small hands will struggle to use the OnePlus 13R one-handed, but at 7.3 ounces, the phone is easy to tote around.

OnePlus offers a choice of two colors — the silver Astral Trail or the black Nebula Noir. My review unit came in the former color option, and while the silver hue lacks a colorful punch that I prefer in my phones, I did find the faint concentric circles etched into the back of the phone to be a clever design flourish.

An optical under-display fingerprint sensor is the 13R’s main unlocking method, though OnePlus also includes a Face Unlock feature. I found the fingerprint sensor responsive and accurate enough to make it my primary way of operating the phone, even if it’s a downgrade from the ultrasonic sensor used on the OnePlus 13.

OnePlus 13R review: Display

The 6.78-inch ProXDR display on the OnePlus 13R shares much in common with the OnePlus 12R’s panel, right down to the 2780 x 1264 resolution, the adaptive refresh rate that scales from 1Hz to 120Hz and the listed peak brightness of 4,500 nits. You’ll never achieve that kind of brightness in a real world setting, but I had no problem watching an old episode of “The Muppet Show” streaming on Disney Plus in direct sunlight, with the phone’s brightness setting only three-quarters of the way to maxing out.

That said, the test numbers we got when using a light meter in our lab are far short of what OnePlus promises. With HDR enabled, the OnePlus 13R’s screen got as bright as 746 nits. Under similar circumstances, the Pixel 8a reached 1,329. The Galaxy S24 FE has more accurate colors than either the OnePlus or Google models.

This may be an instance where the numbers don’t tell the story. Using both phones side by side in the sunlight, I moved the brightness slider to about 25% on both the OnePlus 13R and Pixel 8a. I was better able to make out details on the OnePlus 13R screen. So I wouldn’t dismiss its display as too dim, even with the low light-meter reading.

Watching the trailer for Thunderbolts on the OnePlus 13R, I was impressed by how the display handled colors, clearly differentiating between the magenta of the stretch sedan Red Guardian was driving and the deeper crimson of his uniform. Indeed, lab results confirmed that OnePlus 13R can show off a lot of color — 171.6% of the sRGB spectrum in its default Vivid mode and 121.6% of the more demanding DCI-P3 color gamut. For context, the Pixel 8 has respective sRGB and DCI-P3 scores of 126.5% and 80.6% in its default adaptive mode.

Color accuracy varies wildly depending on what display setting you use. The OnePlus 13R’s Delta-E score of 0.3 in Vivid isn’t as accurate as the Pixel 8a’s 0.24 result. But switch to Natural mode on both phones, and the colors get more accurate on the OnePlus 13R — 0.21 vs. 0.29. (the closer to zero, the more accurate the colors.)

OnePlus 13R review: Cameras

The $599 starting price for the OnePlus 13R can partially be explained by a decision OnePlus made to upgrade the rear cameras on the new phone — specifically the lens that accompanies the main and ultrawide cameras.

The OnePlus 12R offered a dedicated macro lens, but OnePlus swaps that out for a 50MP telephoto camera. That lens seems to specialize in portrait shots, with the camera defaulting to a 2x zoom when you switch to Portrait mode in the Camera app. But you can also zoom in on any subject with a 2x optical zoom and algorithms cleaning up any shots up to 4x to remove the noise that can creep in as you zoom closer.

Otherwise, the general camera specs remain unchanged from the OnePlus 12R. The main camera uses a 50MP sensor, though OnePlus says it’s now incorporating a Sony LYT-700 that captures more light than the sensor inside the OnePlus 12 could. An 8MP ultrawide shooter rounds out the rear camera setup.

Do these changes make a difference? I put the OnePlus 13R’s cameras up against the Google Pixel 8a, our pick for the best camera phone among midrange devices.

This photo of an elaborately decorated bench illustrates the different approaches the camera phones take. The OnePlus 13R tends to favorite brighter colors, to the point where the processed image is more colorful than the actual scene its captured. The Pixel 8a favors a more balanced approach that yields more natural-looking shots.

In this case, however, the emphasis on color elevates the OnePlus photo. I prefer how it makes the dark blue of the building stand out more; in the Pixel 8a, that color fades into the background. The lighter blue of the bench in the 13R shot may not be as accurate as in the Pixel 8a photo, but it makes the text easier to read.

A candelabra aloe plant photo also benefits from the OnePlus 13R’s emphasis on color, as those reddish-orange blossoms really pop against the green background. The Pixel 8a has opted to focus on the green fronds of the aloe plant and as a result, the orange bloom looks a little out of focus. The overall tone is darker, too, especially compared to the bright scene that the OnePlus 13R has produced.

So what happens when the light isn’t as abundant? My daughter and I hiked into the redwoods near dusk when not a lot of light was peaking through the treetops. The resulting shot of her posing next to a downed redwood looks fine when captured by either phone, but I think the Pixel 8a does the better overall job here, as you can make out more details like the rings of the tree.

The OnePlus 13R has a richer tone, and my daughter’s skin isn’t as washed out as it is in the Pixel 8a photo. But the tree is the focus here, and the OnePlus 13R doesn’t highlight as many details as the Pixel 8a manages to.

Turning to the zoom lens, a 2x zoom in on a monument in the redwood park shows how the OnePlus 13R’s color emphasis doesn’t always serve it well. The moss growing on the rock and the fern off to the right certainly look brighter and more colorful in the OnePlus 13R. But that’s once again at the expense of detail — zooming in, you can actually read the text on the plaque in the Pixel 8a shot. It’s harder to make out in the OnePlus 13R photo.

That said, whatever algorithms OnePlus is using to help with zooms beyond 2x are clearly on point in this 4x zoom on an elaborate dragon carving. The image is sharp and focused when captured by the OnePlus 13R — you can even see the scales on the dragon’s neck and colors are well-balanced, too. While it lacks a dedicated zoom lens, the Pixel 8a does keep things in focus, but it struggles with the sunlight and produces a somewhat washed-out image.

Cats don’t always make the best subjects for a portrait shot, but mine managed to sit in place long enough to snap a pair of dueling portraits with the OnePlus 13R and Pixel 8a. The OnePlus 13R’s effort isn’t bad here, though its background blur catches both the cat’s back and some of the whiskers on the right. It also had a hard time getting all the details of my cat’s right eye. The Pixel 8a’s effort is much better balanced, though it does lose some of the cat’s eyelashes in the background blur on the right. Otherwise, the entirety of the cat’s body stays in focus.

Don’t overlook the ultrawide lens on the OnePlus 13R, which performed admirably when I captured a photo of this bridge going across the Russian River. Once again, we get a more colorful image from OnePlus, which really helps call out details in the sky itself, as well as the fence lining the right side of the bridge. The Pixel 8a turns to a warmer tone, that some people will prefer, though I think it makes the overall image look a little flat.

The Pixel 8a has been my default choice for night photos, but the OnePlus 13R may force me to rethink that stance. The latest OnePlus phone did a much better job capturing these holiday decorations, keeping the lights in check, and even leting you see background details that get lost to shadows in the Pixel 8a image. I especially like how the individual purple lights appear as visible pinpoints in the OnePlus 13R photo.

Up front, the 16MP selfie cam on the OnePlus 13R turns in a credible shot with portraint mode turned on, though some parts of the background are blurred better than others. The right side of my beard also gets caught up in the blur in some places. The Pixel 8a shot, while smoothing over some details in my face, has a better composed shot here.

I’ve put the Pixel 8a through a lot of photo face-offs, and most of the time, Google’s phone smokes the competition. That isn’t the case here, as the OnePlus 13R holds its own against this top camera phone, even beating out Google with some images thanks to the way it emphasizes color. I still think the cameras on the Pixel 8a are better performers overall, but if you like images with bright colors, the OnePlus 13 has you covered.

OnePlus 13R review: Performance

Opting for the OnePlus 13R instead of a more premium device such as the OnePlus 13 means you’re not getting the latest silicon to power your phone. That’s not really the trade-off it sounds like, though, as OnePlus has a habit of using year-old chipsets in its R Series devices. That means you won’t get leading-edge performance from OnePlus’ midrange phone, but it’ll be close enough not to really matter.

So it is with the OnePlus 13 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 that provides this phone with its processing muscle. If the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 sounds familiar, that’s because it powered many of 2024’s Android flagships, including the OnePlus 12. Yes, you’re going to see better performance from Snapdragon 8 Elite-based phones like the OnePlus 13, but the OnePlus 13R is at least going to be in the ballpark.

In Geekbench 6 results measuring CPU performance, the OnePlus 13R trails the single- and multicore results posted by the OnePlus 13 by a noticeable margin. But the more relevant comparison is with the OnePlus 12, which produces scores that are slightly better than the 13R but only by 4% on the single core test and 5% on multicore. There’s a similar gap with the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE, whose Exynos 2400e chipset is similar to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

To put it another way, the processor on the OnePlus 13R performs in line with what you would have seen from 2024’s best Android phones. And in the case of the Tensor G3-powered Pixel 8a, the OnePlus 13R posts much better Geekbench numbers.

To see how the OnePlus 13R handles graphics, we ran 3DMark’s Wild Life Unlimited test, where the new phone posted a score of 115.3 frames per second. That’s virtually identical to the 116.4 fps result turned in by the OnePlus 12 and well ahead of the Galaxy S24 FE (86.6 fps) and Pixel 8a (50.9 fps).

It’s not all good news from our performance testing. When we had the OnePlus 13R transcode a video with Adobe Premiere Rush, it took the phone 1 minute and 23 seconds to finish the task. That’s worse than a lot of other comparable phones, with only the Galaxy S24 FE’s 1:19 time approaching the OnePlus 13R. This could be an instance where OnePlus hasn’t optimized its phone to run a particular program, as the OnePlus 13 produced a disappointing result on the same test.

The OnePlus 13R is clearly being positioned as a low-cost alternative to the best gaming phones, as OnePlus is talking up the phone’s larger Dual-Cryo Velocity Vapor Chamber, aluminum frame and under-display temperature sensor. All of these features work together to detect rising heat and cool the phone down before performance falters.

I did notice the outside of the phone getting warmer when I tested out a bunch of AI features before immediately leaping into a lengthy gaming session with PUBG Mobile. But the performance never lagged when I found myself locked in firefights, so I believe the OnePlus 13R can handle whatever you want to throw at it.

OnePlus 13R review: Battery life and charging

OnePlus increased the battery on this year’s R series phone to 6,000 mAh, which is a nice uptick from the 5,500 mAh cell in the OnePlus 12R. That didn’t translate to a huge gain in battery life, but given the OnePlus 12R’s 18-hour time on our battery test, the 13R had a pretty high bar to clear.

And yet, clear it the OnePlus 13R did. When we had the phone surf the web continuously over cellular, it lasted for 18 hours and 49 minutes before running out of power. That’s 37 minutes better than the OnePlus 12R’s average, though about an hour short of what the OnePlus 13 did on our test. Nevertheless, both of the latest OnePlus phones have landed at the top of our best phone battery life list. Had we disabled the default adaptive refresh rate setting and locked the screen at a 60Hz rate, we could have pushed the result past the 19.5 hour mark.

Even with the display refresh rate fluctuating, the OnePlus 13R will easily outlast other midrange phones, based on their battery test performance. The Pixel 8a lasted 11 hours and 21 minutes while the Galaxy S24 FE held out for 11 hours and 38 minutes. Neither of those times are within shouting distance of what the OnePlus 13R can do.

OnePlus says the OnePlus 13R can support up to 80W wired charging speeds in the U.S.. (You can’t wireless charge the phone — another trade-off for that lower price.) However, the charger that ships with the phone in the U.S. is a 55W SuperVooc Power Adapter. As a result, a drained OnePlus 13R got to an average charge of 60% in our testing after 30 minutes of charging. Had we kept the phone plugged in, OnePlus says we should have gotten a fully charged phone after 54 minutes.

OnePlus 13R review: Software and AI

After treating AI features as an afterthought in 2024, OnePlus has increased the number of tools powered by artificial intelligence with its latest phones. That includes the OnePlus 13R, which offers the same AI capabilities you’ll find on the OnePlus 13. In that sense, it’s a lot like what Samsung has done with the Galaxy S24 FE and the rest of its Galaxy S24 models, where a lower-cost model doesn’t skimp on the AI capabilities found on more premium phones.

I just wish the AI features on the OnePlus 13 series had some more polish. It’s not that the current tools are bad, but they lack the refinement you get from AI features on Samsung, Google and Apple devices.

AI Notes is a perfect example of my frustrations with OnePlus’ approach to AI. On the phone’s built-in Notes app, you can turn to AI to format notes, expand on the ideas you’ve jotted down and more. I tried using the formatting tool to a list I had started on the pros and cons of rooting for various baseball teams, and the AI dutifully added headings and subheads as you might expect. But it also started to rewrite my note, using a tone that sounded nothing like my own voice.

In fact, many of the AI Notes tools end up rewriting what you’ve jotted down, and not always for the better. Hitting the Polish command on a list of ideas on where to visit during a trip to Southern California produced text that read like it had been lifted from a tourism brochure. It’s a very blunt approach to AI when more exact tools are called for.

Other AI offerings on the OnePlus 13R work better. Circle to Search is here, and it’s as effective as it is on any Android phone. OnePlus Intelligent Search feature helped me quickly track down a document I had stored on the OnePlus 13R, though it probably would have been just as easy to launch the My Files app to track it down. (I’m guessing the value of Intelligent Search will become more apparent the longer you have your OnePlus 13R and the more things you stash on it.) And a suite of AI-powered photo editing tools in the built-in Photos app can clean up your images, too, though some are more effective than others.

I turned to AI Reflection Eraser to reduce — but not totally eliminate — glare off a helicopter window when I took an aerial photo of Kauai many moons ago. And AI Eraser successfully removed a photo-bomber peaking into the corner of a shot I had taken of the Marine Corps Marathon, with no lingering artifacts suggesting he had ever been there. (The Remove People and Paint Over tools in AI Eraser proved more effective for me, as I found the Smart Lasso feature more difficult to control.) I had less success with the detail-boosting and blur-removal tools, but I’d wager those work best in very specific situations.

A compare button shows you before and after versions of your edited images so you can see what the AI tools have done — an addition that I found pretty helpful. I wish OnePlus made it easier to tell which of the photos in my library were the AI-edited versions and which were the originals, though. I had to dig into the photos’ metadata to confirm, as there doesn’t appear to be any visual cue.

Like the OnePlus 13, the OnePlus 13R can count on four years of Android updates, plus another two years of security support. That’s more generous than what OnePlus offered the 12R last year, but it’s still short of the seven years that Pixel 8a users get. The Galaxy S24 FE receives seven years of updates, too.

OnePlus 13R review: Verdict

The OnePlus 13R sticks to the gameplan of delivering many, though not all, of the OnePlus flagship’s top features, but in a pirce that’s much lower. About the biggest thing you could ding this year’s model for is not having a price that’s as low as last year’s offering.

But look at the changes OnePlus made with the 13R. The OnePlus 12R lacked a telephoto lens so OnePlus added one to the new phone. That, along with some additional improvements to photo processing, creates a camera phone that’s better able to compete with the Pixel 8a. The OnePlus 13R also retains the top-level performance and long-lasting battery that made the OnePlus 12R such a great value.

The beefed-up AI features on board the OnePlus 13R could use some work, and if you’re more invested in AI’s potential in mobile, you’ll want to consider the Pixel 8a or Galaxy S24 FE instead, as those phones offer more evolved tools. But if the traditional metrics of camera, performance and display are what you base your buying decisions on, the OnePlus 13R delivers it all, at a still-significant discount from what you’d pay for flagship versions of those features.