Best OnePlus phones 2024

The best OnePlus phones cover a surprisingly wide range of phone types despite the company's limited number of phones. The portfolio ranges from a pricey foldable to a surprisingly well-specced budget option, with the midground supported by a few other models for those looking between the extremes.

OnePlus specializes in offering impressive specs, especially screen size and charging speed, while undercutting its competitors on price. Its phones' photography skills have undergone impressive developments in recent years too, with the OxygenOS skin of Android also seeing work to make it just as useful and powerful as rival devices' software. All this is why you'll see a OnePlus phone or two on our best Android phones and best phones overall guides as well as here.

If you're determined to keep things focused on OnePlus right now though, read on to see our ranking of the best OnePlus phones we've tried to date, as well as descriptions and test data to explain why we put them in this order. We hope this will help you find your next device in a Fast and Smooth way - just like OnePlus would want.

The quick list

The best OnePlus phones you can buy

The best OnePlus phone overall

It feels like the best part of half a decade's efforts to crack the flagship phone market have finally come together in the OnePlus 12. It's got the quality and breadth of features that previous top-tier OnePlus phones have always missed one or two checklist items from, and even if it's more expensive than the OnePlus 11 that preceded it, it's still cheaper than equivalently sized and specced Androids from other brands.

The standout features, as you'd expect, are battery life (enhanced by an enlarged cell) and charging speed. The 12 comes with a 100W wired charger in the box (80W in the U.S.), and can also be powered up at 50W wirelessly. But don't forget the top-notch chipset and display either, which help deliver the rest of the all-rounder experience.

Read our full OnePlus 12 review.

The best OnePlus phone value

OnePlus' R models have not come to the U.S. and Europe prior to the 12R, and all we can say is better late than never. In exchange for an older chipset, less hi-tech display and cameras (including a macro sensor in place of the telephoto), OnePlus knocks a few hundred off the price, and increases the battery size.

The result is a mid-range phone with a surprising amount in common with a full-blown flagship device, and the current second place on our best phone battery life page, with first place belonging to a premium gaming phone almost twice the price.

If your priority for your new phone is the most power at the least cost, then the OnePlus 12R will be worth the trade-offs for you. Just be aware that the cheapest version is tragically not on offer for U.K. buyers.

Read our full OnePlus 12R review.

The best premium OnePlus phone

Thanks to some help from sister company Oppo, OnePlus' maiden voyage into the world of foldables turned out brilliantly. The OnePlus Open is our favorite foldable around right now, due to its compact folded size and light weight, lengthy battery life and impressive specs like 512GB of storage by default, two 48MP cameras and a 64MP telephoto one on the back, and the Open Canvas system that lets you open and work between multiple apps very easily.

This is a foldable phone though, which means it's not the best photography phone, even among OnePlus' own phones. There's also no wireless charging, which is an odd thing to leave out on a premium phone, but unfortunately this is something OnePlus has missed off of its phones historically. If you can live with that though, there's little to turn you off of this impressive example of a foldable phone.

Read our full OnePlus Open review.

The best budget OnePlus phone

The OnePlus Nord N30 5G (or OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite if you're outside the U.S.) is very affordable but still spoils you in some areas. Most notably that it gives you 50W charging and a 120Hz display in a device that costs less than $300. The battery life is strong too.

Its biggest limitation is photo quality, which could be a dealbreaker for some of you. This is unfortunately the literal price of making a cheap phone, as is the Nord N30's low-powered chipset. So hopefully if you want to save money, you will focus on the great display, charging and battery instead.

Read our full OnePlus Nord N30 5G review.

What to look for in a OnePlus phone

When shopping for the best OnePlus phones, keep in mind that OnePlus divides its smartphone product line into two different categories. The more expensive OnePlus flagships usually cost $700 and up and pack in the best features OnePlus has to offer. OnePlus Nord devices are the phone maker’s budget devices — prices are lower and features are scaled back, though you’ll still find a few notable capabilities.

OnePlus used to release flagships twice a year — once in the spring, followed by a T series version of that same phone in the fall. But OnePlus has changed a lot in recent years, so it's hard to predict what the company will do next. You can play the waiting game forever with OnePlus, so it's best to just go for the phone that stands out to you at the time it makes sense for you to upgrade.

How we test the best OnePlus phones

We take the same approach to finding the best OnePlus phones as we do any smartphone we review, running various tests and benchmarks. We use Geekbench 6 to measure overall performance and 3DMark Wild Life to test graphics performance. For real-world testing, we use Adobe Premier Rush to transcode a video, timing how long it takes. (This test does not work on all devices due to app compatibility issues.)

In our lab, we test the brightness of the phone’s display as well as how colorful each screen is (using both the sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamut). We measure color accuracy as well.

We have a custom battery test in which we have phones surf the web continuously over a cellular connection, timing how long it takes until they run out of power. We also time how quickly a phone can recharge, checking the battery status after 15 and 30 minutes.

Finally, to test cameras, we take the best OnePlus phones out into the field and shoot photos of landscapes, portraits, night images and other shots. We compare those shots to similar images captured by phones with comparable specs and prices.