OnePlus 13R
Not as cheap as the Pixel 8a, but battery life and overall performance make it a strong choice at this price
The bright, sharp screen displays colours accurately
SCORE
PRICE
12GB/256GB, £566 (£679 inc VAT)
from oneplus.com
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he OnePlus 13R offers much of the same character as the OnePlus 13 (see p72), but for £220 less. You still get a 6.8in screen, the same 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and they even look similar: its aluminium frame comes in silver “Astral Trail” or black “Nebula Noir”, with Corning’s Gorilla Glass 7i for protection against scratches. An IP64 rating means it can handle splashes, too, though you can’t dunk the phone in water or blast it with high-pressure water jets like you can the OnePlus 13.
While the OnePlus 13R’s display is just as big as the 13’s, it has a lower 1,264 x 2,780 resolution. That’s still sharp (it works out to 449ppi), and the adaptive refresh rate scales dynamically from 1Hz to 120Hz. It’s bright, too – I had no problem watching films in direct sunlight – and colour performance is impressive, with 172% sRGB coverage in its default Vivid mode and 122% of the wider DCI-P3 colour gamut. In all it’s a very good-looking screen, and while the under-display fingerprint sensor is optical rather than ultrasonic I found it responsive enough to use as my primary way of unlocking the phone. There’s face recognition, too.