The OnePlus 13 is here and it seems like it might be really good.
That's the vibe you'd get from reading reviews, which dropped on Tuesday. Everyone from CNET to The Verge and TechRadar is singing the praises of OnePlus's $899 flagship, though not without some criticism along the way. Between seemingly fantastic battery life, capable cameras, and a reasonable price, reviews indicate the OnePlus 13 may be "the one to get" if you want to live outside of the Apple, Google, and Samsung ecosystem.
(Note: CNET and Mashable share the same parent company, Ziff Davis)
Most of these reviews are overwhelmingly positive about the OnePlus 13. Let's find out why.
The most noticeable constant across nearly every OnePlus 13 review is praise for its battery life. Take it from TechRadar's Philip Berne, who flatly called it "the best I’ve ever experienced from a mobile phone."
Under lab testing, TechRadar was able to get nearly three hours of juice more than the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which is a couple Benjamins more expensive than the OnePlus 13. Berne also noted the astonishingly fast charge speeds of the OnePlus 13, whether wired or wireless. According to Berne, wired charging got the phone past 50 percent in 15 minutes, while it could get a full charge wirelessly in an hour.
The OnePlus 13 sports a stylish-looking triple-camera setup on the rear, with matching 50MP standard, telephoto, and ultrawide lenses. According to most reviews, you can get some gorgeous shots out of this phone, though it may be a step behind the most expensive Apple devices. Interestingly, however, CNET's Andrew Lanxon found that the default camera settings made images look unnatural and, frankly, bad. According to Lanxon, the thing to do is switch the settings to "Master Mode," and then not touch anything else.
Doing so made colors and shadows look more natural, which Lanxon praised as being more "authentic-looking" than what the default settings produced. According to him, the standard settings out of the box is are "quite frankly ruining the images."
Aside from battery life, another thing nearly every reviewer took time to note was the OnePlus 13's high degree of physical durability.
To be more specific, the OnePlus 13 carries an IP69 rating, which in layman's terms means it can withstand high pressure water blasts to some extent. That's...cool, but the bigger worry for most people will be whether or not the phone can survive being submerged underwater. Good news! Thanks to its additional IP68 rating, it can. According to The Verge's Allison Johnson, she could "sleep better at night knowing that my phone will likely survive a dip in a body of water."
Lastly, OnePlus has one major, objective disadvantage compared to the likes of Google and Samsung: software support. PCMag's Sarah Lord called it a "missed opportunity" by OnePlus because it only carries four years of software support, as opposed to the seven that Google and Samsung offer. Security updates also only last six years, compared to the seven that Google and Samsung provide.
Only four years of software updates for a flagship-quality phone is sure to disappoint some people who want to buy a phone and use it for a very long time. But, with every other positive quality the OnePlus 13 apparently has, maybe the gamble is worth it.
