OnePlus 13 is an excellent smartphone but…

Quinten Jochems

OnePlus regularly releases new phones and you can read the reviews on pcactive.nl, such as the OnePlus 12. Read the review of the logical successor to this smartphone here: the OnePlus 13. And at the end of this week you can read it on pcactive. nl the review of the OnePlus 13R.

Design
The OnePlus 13 is available in three colors: Midnight Ocean, Arctic Dawn and Black Eclipse. What makes this phone unique is that with each color you have a different material on the back. With Midnight Ocean you have a back made of microfiber vegan leather material which provides a soft back and the feeling of a premium design. It also feels very nice to have in your hand. Arctic Dawn gives you a more typical phone feel because it has a glass coating which gives it a more typical feel and look. The Black Eclipse has a wood-like back that is made with a black rosewood grain glass process. This process gives the feeling of really realistic wood. The phones are 162.9mm high and 76.5mm wide. The thickness varies per color: both Arctic Dawn and Black Eclipse are 8.5 mm, but Midnight Ocean is 8.9 mm ‘thick’. The phones also differ minimally in weight: both Arctic Dawn and Black Eclipse are 213 grams and Midnight Ocean is 210 grams.
In addition to the smartphone, you will find a USB-C cable, SIM card pin, safety guide and a manual in the box. The OnePlus 13 has both an IP68 and IP69 certificate, so it can withstand immersion in fresh water up to 1.5 meters deep for 30 minutes and water jets up to 80º C. The OnePlus 13 also has a USB-C port and no 3.5mm jack connection, but you need that separate headphone connection less and less often and the speakers sound good…
It is nice that this OnePlus has a physical alert slider: this allows you to switch between ringtone, vibrate and completely silent modes via a slider on the left side of your phone.

Screen
The OnePlus 13 has a 6.82-inch Amoled screen, which is fairly standard for most phones. The contrast of this phone is good and the black is really solid black, the image does not seem to have been edited, which is nice. It is striking that DisplayMate’s QHD+ (3168×1440 pixels) 120Hz ProXDR screen has received a DisplayMate A++ grade. In every situation I’ve used it, I’ve never had any problems viewing my screen. This screen has a peak brightness of 1600 nits and 4500 nits when you play HDR content.

Processor, memory and battery
The performance of the OnePlus 13 is excellent with the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset and 16 GB of RAM that you can expand to 28 GB of RAM by using 12 GB of your internal storage.

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This combination ensures that you hardly ever experience any stutters while gaming, even when checking with higher graphic settings I barely noticed anything while gaming. While gaming, you also have the option to change your battery mode in the built-in game engine. This way, your smartphone ‘consumes’ less battery and more battery for better performance while gaming. You also have the option to enable Championship mode: this will ‘turn off’ everything except the game and this should ensure optimal performance. This does mean that you have to turn off Championship Mode to exit the game. The OnePlus 13 has a silicon nanostack battery, which provides a 6000mAh battery. This means that your battery will last a long time: with normal power it lasts almost 2 days. You can charge this phone ridiculously quickly with the optional 100W charger. You can also charge the OnePlus 13 via 50W wireless AIRVOOC, but this is also not included in the box.

Cameras
It is not without reason that OnePlus collaborates with renowned camera brand Hasselblad, because the camera island of the OnePlus 13 is excellent and the quality is reflected in the photos. The camera island has 3 different 50 MP cameras: first of all, it has a 1/14 inch 50 MP Sony LYT-808 main camera that allows you to take beautiful photos of almost anything. This camera ensures that everything looks neat.

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It also has a 120-degree wide-angle camera, with which you can photograph large landscapes or a large group of people without losing details.

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Finally, the OnePlus 13 has a Triprism Telephoto Lens. In phones with a Single Prism Design, the light first passes through a prism, which provides a longer focal length. With the Triprism Telephoto Lens, light passes through three prisms, which provides an even longer focal length. That means the OnePlus 13 can achieve a focal length of 73mm (3x) with less space, because the Triprism Telephoto Lens is 24% smaller and 30% lighter. This way you can take beautiful photos with it.

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Communication
The OnePlus 13 has 5G internet and also has NFC with which you can, for example, pay for purchases with your phone. The OnePlus 13 is also equipped with Bluetooth 5.4 and Wi-Fi 7.

Software and Update Policy
The OnePlus 13 uses Android 15 as the operating system and gets four years of OS updates and 6 years of security updates. The phone is not cheap and 4 years of OS updates is on the meager side, also considering the competition from Samsung and Google smartphones.
The OnePlus 13 also includes OnePlus’ own shell with their own OxygenOS that is built for AI. For example, you have 4 different options for the camera to sharpen your photos with AI in different ways. It also has AI functions in collaboration with Gemini, such as Circle to search: if you hold down your navigation bar, you can circle something on your screen and it will be looked up on Google.

Prices and availability
The Oneplus 13 will be available from January 7 at a suggested retail price of €999 with a storage configuration of 256 GB or for a suggested retail price of €1149 for 512 GB. Both have 16 GB of RAM that you can expand to 28 GB with your internal storage. The OnePlus 13 is available on OnePlus.com, but also at Coolblue, MediaMarkt, Bol, Vanden Borre, Fnac, Mobiel.nl, KPN, Telenet and Proximus in the colors: Midnight Ocean, Arctic Dawn and Black Eclipse

Conclusion
The OnePlus 13 is an excellent phone for almost every user thanks to a premium design and feel, excellent cameras, excellent screen, it charges very quickly and scores good performance while gaming. As a real area for improvement, we would like to see more years of Android updates.

Positives
+ premium design and feel
+ excellent camera
+ excellent screen
+ charges very quickly
+ good performance during gaming

Negative point
– less update policy