OnePlus 13R review: This solid, reliable performer is smooth and responsive in pretty much any tasks thrown at it
The OnePlus flagship series that includes the R model has been doing well for the company for a while. The 12R was perhaps the best value for money device OnePlus had launched in a while. So, filling its shoes with 13R may not be easy. Priced at Rs 42,999 (before any offers) for the base model, let's check if it does the price tag and the predecessor any justice.
The first thing you might notice about the 13R is its flat 6.78-inch display (19.8:9 aspect ratio) and flat sides with no curves that the 12R had. It has a lot blockier design with rounded corners and is closer to the Nord 4 in terms of look and feel than the 12R. I prefer the 12R's design over this but that isn't to say this is bad design by any means. The sides are made of anodised aluminium while the back has glass and the front has Gorilla Glass 7i. The back houses the triple camera system on an elevated circular cutout near the corner with small OnePlus branding in bang middle of the back. Weighing a little over 206 grams, the phone comes in Astral Trail and Nebula Noir colours (the one I tried).
The device has 6.78-inch (2780×1264) AMOLED LTPO display with upto 120Hz refresh rates. It is sufficiently bright and has good viewing angles. It handles HDR white well and can handle dark scenes and contrast better than the competition.
Coming to the camera department, the device features a triple camera system on the back – a 50MP (f/1.8) main camera, a 50MP (f/2.0) telephoto camera, and an 8MP (f/2.2) ultrawide camera. The phone can take some detailed and crispy shots with good dynamic range and colour depth. Main and telephoto cameras can shoot 4k videos at 60FPS. Ultrawide shots could have been a little better in terms of sharpness as well as contrast. The front-facing 16MP (f/2.4) camera can take 1080p videos at 30FPS and can take some nice selfie shots with good colours and subject details though there's no autofocus.
The OnePlus 13R features Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset (3.3Ghz octa-core processor, Adreno 750GPU and x75 5G modem) along with 12GB or 16GB LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB or 512GB UFS4.0 internal storage. Running on Android 15-based OxygenOS 15 with the February security patch in place, this phone is smooth and responsive in pretty much any tasks thrown at it. Apps open and close without any lags, scrolling inside social media apps is also smooth. The only place where it showed slight sluggishness is when the display resolution is set to highest instead of the default (2376x1080) but it isn't always noticeable. For gaming, the phone doesn't disappoint either – can play a game like Genshin Impact at 60 frames and BGMI at near 120FPS with HDR enabled, with frame boosting from game mode, which is not common at all. AI features such as object eraser and ‘Circle to search’ are there with slightly better editing capabilities and fewer errors this time.
Powered by a 6,000mAh battery single cell, the phone expectedly lasted over a day almost on every full charge with 2 SIM cards in use. You can charge it from 1% to full using the bundled 80watts SuperVooc charger in about 50 minutes, which is slightly more time taken than its predecessor but it is no way a deal breaker by any means.
The WiFi and GPS on the phone didn't cause any trouble and showed reliable performance throughout. 5G on the device is nearly as good as the OnePlus 13 with only slightly less reliability indoors on most occasions. Loudspeakers in the device are sufficiently loud and clear though only for personal gaming and video playback.
Wrapping it up, the OnePlus 13R comes across as a solid and reliable performer on most counts. You get a really nice and responsive display, a long battery life and no major heating issues. Camera performance is not quite the best in the price range but it's still good for most occasions.
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