OnePlus 13 review: The best flagship experience under ₹70,000

Over the years, OnePlus has steadily evolved its number series from being ‘flagship killers’ to to striving for flagship status.. However, the company has often fallen short in one area or another—until now. The recently launched OnePlus 13 stands out as the company’s first complete flagship offering much of what premium devices from Samsung and Apple deliver, and in some cases, even more.

The OnePlus 13 is around ₹5,000 costlier than the asking price of last year, but it adds a whole host of features that make it a proper flagship device, including IP68 and IP69 protection, an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, a much more powerful processor in the Snapdragon 8 Elite, a bigger battery and support for MagSafe accessories.

I’ve been testing the OnePlus 13 for the past 15 days, and here’s how the smartphone performed in the real world.

Unboxing and design:

OnePlus 13 comes in a red coloured box with the letter 13 plastered on the top and OnePlus and Hasselblad branding finding a place at the bottom. Inside the colourful box you get the phone itself, a 100W SUPERVOOC adapter, a standard OnePlus red coloured type A to type C cable, a SIM ejector pin, a black coloured case and some documentation.

While the OnePlus 13 retains much of the design of its predecessor,subtle changes have been made to make device look much more premium and a little less bulky. For instance, the Hassleblad branding is now out of the camera module and instead placed right beside it with a straight strip highlighting it beautifully. The aluminium frame remains the same but the removal of curved display (more on this later) make for a more solid grip.

OnePlus’ iconic alert slider is still there and the IR blaster that was added last year continues to be a mainstay in this year’s flagship as well and so is NFC. But its the upgrades that OnePlus made this year that really stole the show.

OnePlus 13 come with an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor feels significantly faster than OnePlus 12’s optical sensor. It also comes with an IP68 + 69 rating (up from IP65 on OnePlus 12) which means that the phone can be submerged in up to 1.5 meter of water for up to 30 minutes and also handle hot water jets.

One thing I really liked about the OnePlus 13 is that weighs in at around 213g (almost 10 grams less than OnePlus 12) while packing in a bigger battery and without any other compromise to the hardware. That being said, the OnePlus 13 was still a little heavy and slightly larger for my palm and I really hope that OnePlus takes a leaf out of Vivo X200’s playbook to improve the dimensions on OnePlus 14.

Display and battery:

OnePlus boasts the same 6.82-inch QHD+ 120Hz AMOLED display with 4,500 nits peak brightness (1,600 nits on HBM) as its predecessor, but it features the newer BOE X2 2K+ quad curved panel and LTPO 4.1 technology.

The display continues to be one of the strong points of OnePlus’ number series and it can easily go head to head with the Apple and Samsung’s of the world with good viewing angles, excellent colours true-to-life colours and slim bezzels. I also had no problems with the OnePlus 13 in bright outdoor conditions where it even surpassed the brightness levels of iQOO 13 and Vivo X200 that I have also been testing.

OnePlus 13 gets a 6,000mAh battery (up from 5,500mAh from last year) and support for 100W of wired fast charging and 50W of wireless charging. OnePlus has also launched a few cases (sold separately) with the OnePlus 13 which help the phone take advantage of all the MagSafe accessories in the market.

While the most Chinese flagships launched in the last month have come with a massive battery, the continuation of wireless charging and even support for MagSafe accessories does make the OnePlus 13 standout in a crowded market.

As for battery life, let me put it this way, OnePlus 13 can easily last a full day even more power users but the relatively moderate users like me will find that it can last over a 1 ½ day with a screen of time of over 7 hours.

Software and performance:

While the OnePlus 12 with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 was already pretty powerful, OnePlus 13 takes the performance to another level with the inclusion of Snapdragon 8 Elite. In case you have have been living under a rock, this chip is flagship SoC from Qualcomm which comes with many firsts including Oryon architecture, hardware accelerated ray tracing and support for AAA titles.

In reality, however, much of the prowess of the new chip is not yet practical and one is left to just admiring the smoothness with which the phone runs.

On the software front, OnePlus 13 runs on Oxygen OS 15 based on Android 15 with promise of 4 years of OS updates and 6 years of security patches. I feel this is perhaps the only area where OnePlus is severely lagging behind the Google Pixel’s Samsung Galaxy lineups that offer much longer 7 years of OS updates.

There’s been a lot of chatter about the new OxygenOS 15 and for good measure. The new UI feels much more fluid with improved animations and app closing/opening times along with some handy features like live alerts, aka iPhone’s Dynamic Island and Open Canvas (OnePlus’ improved split screen system).

The AI features which were first teased with OnePlus Nord 4 (review) and OxygenOS 15 are now fully a part of OnePlus 13 including AI summary, AI speak (only in Chrome browser), AI transcript and summary for recorder app, AI detail boost, AI eraser, AI Unblur, AI Relfection Eraser and course Circle to Search but all of them require an internet connection to run. Truth be told, though, apart from AI Eraser and AI transcript (for certain people), you would not be using most of these features but it’s still kind of nice to have them bundled with the OS.

What’s not nice is the adware that OnePlus is adding even to its flagship models. OnePlus 13 comes pre-installed with a ‘Phone Manager’ and ‘App Picks’ while the infamous ‘Global Search’ that we encountered first with the OnePlus Nord 4 is also present here but it isn’t turned on by default meaning that there are no ads in the app drawer as of now.

Camera:

OnePlus 13 packs the same 50MP Sony LYT-808 primary lens and 32MP Sony IMX615 selfie shooter as the OnePlus 12 while the ultra-wide angle lens has been upgraded with 50MP Samsung ISOCELL JN5 sensor. The telephoto lens, however, has seen a downgrade – at least on paper- from 64MP OmniVision OV64B lens on the OnePlus 12 to 50MP Sony LYT-600 shooter on the OnePlus 13.

OnePlus 12 was already had a very capable camera setup and the the OnePlus 13 has only improved on it. I compared the OnePlus 13 with some of its recently launched counterparts like the X200 in order to ascertain where it stands.

One thing you notice right from the start is that OnePlus is prone to more cooler colours while Vivo and iQOO deliver warmer tones in the images. The primary camera is pretty great both phones taking eye-pleasing images in natural lighting conditions but Vivo generally has better details. Things change for the worse in night and artificially lighting conditions where both phones boost the colours but Vivo still much closer to natural image while OnePlus struggles sorely.

Both OnePlus 13 and X200 are capable of taking good looking portrait shots but Vivo has slightly better detailing and colour accuracy. However, Vivo, tends to overbrighten the face during certain portrait shots while OnePlus gets it closer to natural skin colour. The X200 does provide more options for portrait shots with lenses varying from 23mm to 100mm while OnePlus 13 offers 1x, 2x and 3x portrait shots like last year.

OnePlus 13 does hold a slight edge in macro shots with detter details and sharpness. But Vivo is a clear winner when it comes to zoomed-in shots, with the X200 capable of capturing good-looking images even at 25x zoom, while OnePlus clearly struggles with shots beyond 10-15x zoom.

The biggest letdown with OnePlus 13 for me is with the selfie camera. On its own, OnePlus 13 does a decent job with selfies but when compared against the likes of Vivo X200, the latter turns out to be a far ahead with better skin tones, dynamic range and an overall more balanced image.

Overall, while OnePlus 13’s cameras still fall a little behind Vivo’s flagship series, they are more than workable for the price range.

Verdict:

OnePlus 13 starts at a price of ₹70,000 and at this price it is currently the most complete Android flagship one can buy with a mix of good quality display, massive battery, fast wired and wireless charging, premium design and long software update policy. The addition of IP68 + IP69 water resistance rating and fast in-display ultrasonic sensor are the added cherry on top.

However, OnePlus would want to focus on improving the selfie cameras and night time performance of rear cameras in order to retain the edge in this highly competitive flagship market.