OnePlus Nord 2
Price: £399 from fave.co/387fxaI
The OnePlus Nord 2 has a lot to live up to. Last year’s debut Nord was my favourite mid-range phone of 2020, a near-flawless blend of design and performance that genuinely made it difficult to justify spending more – even on OnePlus’s own flagships.
With a more competitive midrange market this year – driven by mounting pressure from Xiaomi and Realme – OnePlus would have to pull out all the stops to impress as much this time around.
The Nord 2 doesn’t quite pull it off, which is only to say: the Nord 2 is good, and maybe even great, but not quite the all-singing, all-dancing spectacular it felt like the first time round.
DESIGN
While the first OnePlus Nord took some inspiration from the flagship that preceded it, the Nord 2 more directly apes the entire design of the OnePlus 9.
That’s most obvious in the phone’s camera module, which moves the flash and drops the Hasselblad logo, but otherwise appears identical to the camera set-up on that premium phone.
You’d think that as a cheaper device the Nord 2 might thus look like a bad knock-off of its big brother, but in fact this phone arguably has the edge.
For one thing, it’s slimmer. At 8.3mm it’s not quite thin, but
