OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G Review: What’s special about it?

May 15, 2023, 08:50 AM
by Shahriar Rabab

UNB News
Publish- May 15, 2023, 08:50 AM
Shahriar Rabab
Update- May 15, 2023, 09:09 AM

OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5g

OnePlus Technology, the subsidiary of OPPO, has steadily expanded to include midrange and budget devices in its product line. The Nord CE series were the perfect mid-range with the Lite being their budget offering. This year, the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G was released on April 11 2023 in China with a subsequent global release. The CE 3 Lite successes the CE 2 Lite with some interesting developments. Let’s have a look.

Key Features of OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite

Design and Build Quality

The OnePlus Nord CE 3 is a through-and-through budget device. The build material may reflect on that but rest assured, the CE 3 Lite is a well-built hefty device at 195 gm. The phone has a glass front, plastic frame, and back with a glossy finish to emulate the glass-back design. The front glass is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass.

The Nord CE 3 Lite moves away from the design elements of its predecessor, the CE 2 Lite. Instead of dual tone back with a separate camera housing, users will be getting a flush glossy back with two protruding camera sensors, much like the iPhone 12.

However, the quirk is somewhere else. Users would be surprised to see that even though there are two camera cutouts on the back, the official spec sheet mentions triple camera setup. That is because one of the camera cutouts, specifically the bottom one, houses two camera sensors. It’s a unique design choice that helps to keep things minimal at the back.

Coming to ports and buttons, the volume rocker and the sim tray are situated on the left of the device with the power button being on the right. The power button also doubles as the fingerprint scanner on the Nord CE 3 Lite.

Being a budget device, the headphone jack is also present on the CE 3 Lite, right beside the Type C charging port. A single-firing speaker also finds its place at the bottom. The top of the device is flush with just the secondary noise cancellation mic for better call clarity.

Overall, the design is a slight move towards minimalism from the CE 2 Lite. Whether that is a good thing or bad remains subjective.

Display

The display on the Nord CE 3 Lite is an IPS LCD one. The choice of LCD panel is understandable given the budget it comes at. However, the lack of an AMOLED panel is somewhat made up by the 120 Hz refresh rate and FHD+ resolution. The panel boasts around 550 nits of typical brightness with 680 nits of HBM. Though these aren’t industry-leading stats in any way, it's still decent for its price.

Speaking of quality, the panel is exactly as you’d expect LCDs to be. The blacks aren’t deep black and there are some color shifts in extreme angles. Other than that, the smooth scrolling and accurate color recreation make for a compelling and interactive experience.

Camera

The Nord CE 3 Lite features three cameras on the back. The main camera is a whooping 108 MP one with the complementing two sensors being a 2 MP macro and depth sensor. It’s clear that the 108 MP sensor is the key player here as it will be doing all the heavy lifting.

OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G

In broad daylight, the pictures come out decent with detailed sharpness and accurate colors. The portrait mode may be a hit or miss at times given that edge detection sometimes fails to accurately detect hair or clothes.

Night time photography has been improved a lot thanks to the higher resolution camera. The pixel binning technology allows to merge the 108 MP images into 12 MP ones and produces an overall sharp image. You may still notice grains here and there at extremely low lights but that is about it.

There is also a 16 MP front camera which does a decent job of capturing casual selfies. The videography of the CE 3 Lite has been limited to 1080P at 30 fps.

Overall the camera performance of the CE 3 Lite isn’t spectacularly great. It's on par with other budget devices around the same margin but it doesn’t really have anything that will set it apart from the rest.

Processor and Performance

The processor on the Nord CE 3 Lite is the Snapdragon 695 5G based on the 6 Nm architecture. The octa-core processor has a 2 2.2 GHz Kryo 660 Gold and 6 1.7 GHz Kryo 660 Silver chip design with Adreno 619 GPU.

The 695 series is actually the latest in the 600 series entry-level Snapdragon processors enabled with 5G capabilities. The processing power doesn’t really see much of a jump. Is it possible to run high-end 3D games on the device? Yes definitely. But they will work best on moderate graphics settings. Even then the all-plastic device may considerably heat up after a few rounds.

The CE 3 Lite is actually perfect for casual users. The smooth OS combined with a fast refresh rate makes for a snappy user experience in day-to-day use.

Battery and Charge Time

The battery on the Nord CE 3 Lite is 5000 mAh. Considering the power consumption of the processor, the 5000 mAh choice seems to be about right and on par with the competitors. Sers should consistently get around 6 to 8 hours of SoT out of the device. As for charging, the Ce3 Lite has 67W wired charging which can take the device from zero to 80% in 30 minutes.

Price of OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite

The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite is available in India for 19,999 INR for the base 8/128 GB variant. That price roughly translates to around 26,135 BDT (1 INR = 1.31 BDT). But the actual price may differ once the device becomes officially available in Bangladesh.

Final Words

Gone are the days when OnePlus used to be the flagship killer. Instead, now there’s a flurry of devices from the company each year catered to different budget levels. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. At its core, OnePlus still focuses on value generation.

That is why users will be getting a great display, performance, and battery out of the OnePlus Nored CE 3 Lite 5G. The camera can use some post-processing improvements but other than that, there’s no reason to not consider this device for those on a tight budget.