OnePlus 13R Review: A Safe Bet, But Is It Enough?

The OnePlus R series has a special place in my list of favorite Android devices. That’s because it delivers high-end specs, at a mid-range price which is true to the OnePlus motto we adore. However, the series has gone a bit stagnant lately and fans are demanding something fresh. So now that the OnePlus 13R is out, does it bring any substantial changes? Having used the phone for now, I’ll address this and other questions in this review.

OnePlus 13R: Specifications

Let’s look at the specifications of the OnePlus 13R before go in-depth into the device itself. Here’s a quick overview:

OnePlus 13R: What Do You Get Inside the Box?

The box of the OnePlus 13R contains all the essentials including the phone itself, a textured silicon case, SIM ejector pin, a Type A-to-C cable, an 80-watt SuperVOOC charger, and some paperwork.

Gone Flat or Gone Wrong?

We have with us the Astrail Trail variant of the OnePlus 13R but the phone also comes in a black Nebula Noir color. Lately, flat displays have made their way back into fashion in smartphones and the OnePlus 13R joins that trend. It ditches the curves for a more boxy look with flats all around the device. This makes the phone less slippery but at the cost of the premium aesthetics that the 12R had. That is despite the device having a metal frame sandwiched between the glass panels.

The completely flat sides also make the phone a bit uncomfortable to hold even though they are slimmer at just 8mm thickness. I wish they had taken inspiration from their own Nord 4 and went with curvier sides. Those uneasy aesthetics are also a result of the wider footprint of the device. The 13R weighs 206 grams and the dust and water protection goes up to IP 65 from 64.

Taking a look around the phone, we have the typical power and volume button placement on the right. On the left side, there’s the alert slider which is thicker now making it easier to grip and toggle. The bottom is where you’ll find the USB 2.0 charging port, speaker grill, SIM slot, and microphone. At the top resides the secondary speaker grill, IR blaster, and another mic.

When it comes to overall opinions on the design, I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I admire what they did in the rear with the matte texture and camera island. However, I am not a fan of fully flat sides and have expressed the same sentiments for other smartphones that include them. But some of my other Beebom coworkers like this design, calling it practical. So whether or not you like it is now purely subjective.

Confronting the display, we have a 6.78-inch 1.5K AMOLED panel which has departed its curved ways and gone flat this year. This is an LTPO 4.1 display that can quickly jump between 1-120Hz refresh rate. Apart from ditching the curved sides from the OnePlus 12R, the rest of the prospects remain identical to the older R-series devices. And there is nothing wrong with it.

These are almost the top-notch specs that one could ask for, and it isn’t easy to do better from here without increasing the price. The panel itself is crisp and vibrant and makes up for an amazing content viewing experience. While I am not a fan of the flat design myself, I have to admit that the curves hindered watching anything in landscape orientation and caused accidental touches which are no longer an issue.

The bezels are almost uniform, with an unnoticeable thicker bottom chin. The OnePlus 13R can get plenty bright in direct sunlight with 1600 nits of brightness that can go up to 4500 nits when playing HDR content on the device. Since we’re on the topic, it sports HDR10+ and has Gorilla Glass GG7i for protection.

But watching is one part of the equation, but what about listening? The OnePluss 13R has a stereo speaker setup which has become common these days, These boom boxes have a 30-70 split. This means that the primary speaker grill is louder than the one on the top. However, the sound itself is quite enjoyable. It’s clear, gets loud, and has no tearing effect at high volumes to speak off.

One Hot-Headed Fellow

The OnePlus 13R features 2023’s premium SOC, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. It is clocked at 3.3 GHz, features the Adreno 750 GPU, and is coupled with 12/16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256/512GB of UFS 4.0 storage. So the specs are not shabby at all. But that’s not enough to prove their real power through popular benchmarks and here are the results.

In Antutu and Geekbench, I got pretty comparable scores as other flagship devices with the same chipset. But the phone struggled during the 15-minute CPU throttling test. It constantly kept diving down to the red even though high-performance mode was active. But we all know, benchmarks don’t tell the complete story so let’s switch to to gaming.

I played Call Of Duty Mobile at Medium+Ultra graphics. The 13R had no issues playing the game with the framerate mostly staying close to 120FPS. If you want to avoid all dips, you can go with the Smooth option. PUBG Mobile played the best it can offer the new 120FPS option with Low with Extreme+ settings. I didn’t encounter any performance hiccups even when hot dropping in Sanhok.

Next, we booted up Genshin Impact. With High graphics selected, I started playing a few challenges and the device started to get warm after about 15 minutes. The framerate was set to 60, but it lingered around the 55-60 mark. and touching 50 on occasions which isn’t bad.

However things took a turn for the worse with Warzone Mobile. It was set to Peak graphics and Uncapped FPS and this one pushed the limits. The game started smoothly at a tight 60FPS, but the performance throttled to 50FPS after a few matches. The main concern was the phone that was getting alarmingly hot, reaching 44 degrees Celsius. This is the case despite the 13R featuring a bigger Dual-Cryo Velocity vapor chamber.

Apart from that debacle, the phone didn’t give me any pain points in everyday use. The performance is what you would come to expect from OnePlus now. Fast, fluid and fun are all the adjectives that come to mind when describing it. And that’s thanks to OxygenOS 15, the latest iteration of the company’s software skin.

It is based on Android 15 and like I said in my OnePlus 13 review, manages to fix most of the issues OOS fans have had with the UI. These changes include better animation, the new dual-tone theme, and the minor adjustments that we have covered in a seperate read. OnePlus has promised 4 years of Android updates with upto 6 years of security patches.

There’s also a decent array of AI features, like AI notes, Smart Replies, AI Detail Boost, AI Unblur, and Intelligent search. These are quite intuitive and I have been enjoying the new image editing tools, ever since we got our hands on OxygenOS 15. But there are some disappointing elements that I can’t gloss over. Like the new Security and Marketplace apps that add unwanted bloat to the skin. While it isn’t riddled with ads, it’s no longer the lightweight UI we grew to love.

As for battery, the OnePlus 13R rocks a mighty 6,000mAh cell that doesn’t go down easy. Honestly, I had a lot of trouble depleting it and took me an entire day of playing games and watching movies when it finally gave up. I usually got an average screen on time of around 8 and a half hours, and that is when I was glued to the device.

In normal usage, I don’t think you will need to charge it before a 2 day period making it a perfect companion for weekend trips. But if things start to look bad, it’s 80Watt SuperVOOC charger can replenish its battery in less than an hour. The timing isn’t accurate as at times we got 45-50 minutes but it is close to the promised 52 minutes time by OnePlus. Sadly there is no wireless charging to speak of.

A Promising, But Inconsistent Camera Setup

The cameras on the R series usually a backseat but the 13R brings another passenger that could change this arrangement. It has a main 50MP Sony LYT-700 lens with f/1.8 aperture, an 8MP ultrawide angle lens with 112 degrees of field of view, and a new 50MP 2x optical telephoto lens. On the front, there’s the familiar 16MP shooter.

The camera samples captured by the OnePlus 13R are clear, in focus, sharp, and detailed in daylight situations. Colors are not too boosted and mostly preserve the natural look of the shot. I can say they are on par with their predecessors since they both use the same optics. The focus takes a second at times, but the rest of the aspects are generally pretty good on the device.

The phone does struggle with challenging lighting situations like dimly lit rooms, a cloudy day, or nighttime photos. The captures look clean at first but fall apart on closer inspection. The issue is that it overblows the exposure, so any light source will appear too bright making it difficult to focus on the details, and even the subject at times. This issue is carried over to the telephoto and the wide-angle lenses.

The ultrawide photos are decent, to say the least. You’ll be pleased with them as long as you don’t look closely. The measly 8MP lens can only do so much when the company refuses to upgrade. But I am happy that the color parity is pretty close between the main and the ultrawide lens. It can hold its own in daylight photos, and even indoors given that it is well-lit.

The new 50MP 2x telephoto is the X factor of the 13R that I was looking forward to. It brings much-needed improvement to the zoomed photos, and the 50MP bandwidth allows it to capture a good amount of details in the shot. Its capability shines off in portrait and close-up clicks of human subjects. I like the bokeh effect that it creates, though it does look artificial at times.

But I enjoyed zooming in with this camera on random things around the office park. So much so that most of my camera samples are filled with telephoto shots. However, it suffers the same nighttime issues that I have explained above.

As for the front-facing camera, it clicks neat social media-ready photos with slightly boosted colors. But the skin tones preserve their natural elegance, and beautification filters are kept to a minimum. So the photos have this warm feel to them that looks natural with a tint of vividness. The portrait mode is as effective as creating a good bokeh as the back shooter but I feel the results could be better.

Coming to videos, the phone can record 4K videos at 60FPS, and 1080p 60FPS with the Super steady mode enabled. I recorded a few clips as I took a tour of the Christmas celebrations in Delhi, and the footage was stable and didn’t come across any jarring problems. Again, the focus takes a second to stick to the object, but the rest of the things were on par with what we have come to expect from OnePlus.

Is OnePlus 13R Worth the Upgrade?

The OnePlus 13R is a pretty safe bet from the company that only features a few tweaks from its predecessors. The design is a topic for contention, but there are some major updates over the last model. That includes the new 50MP telephoto lens, the larger 6,000 mAh battery, and grippy aesthetics. These changes do push the bar for the R series of devices, but not by much.

So if I look back and see the overall picture then the OnePlus 13R is a pretty good option if you are in the market for a decent mid-range device that will last you for years to come. Or maybe you don’t want a phone with curved sides and looking for a phone with a flat display, then it could be the one for you. But if you already have a OnePlus 12R, or even 11R then there is nothing much for you to make the switch. Hopefully, next year we get a big enough upgrade but not this time.