OnePlus Nord 6 hands-on review

Camera

The Nord 6 has a set of dual cameras on the back and a single front-facing camera. The cameras are the biggest difference between the Nord 6 and the Turbo 6, with OnePlus making some welcome changes to the former to make it viable for markets outside of China.

On the back, the Nord 6 has a 50MP Sony LYTIA-600, the same as on the Turbo 6. The monochrome depth sensor on the Turbo 6 has thankfully been replaced with an 8MP OmniVision OV08F ultra-wide camera. Finally, on the front is a 32MP OmniVision OV32C with autofocus, which is the same as the one used on the OnePlus 15R, and replaces the 16MP fixed-focus camera on the Turbo 6.

As for video specs, the main camera on the back can record up to 4K at 60fps. The ultra-wide camera, disappointingly, can only do 1080p video, which is only at 30fps. Moreover, if you set the main camera to 4K or 60fps, the ultra-wide selector disappears, which could confuse some people.

The front camera can record up to 4K resolution, but the frame rate is locked to 30fps, even if you drop down to 1080p or even 720p. In comparison, the 50MP front camera on the Nord 5 could do 4K 60fps. We have seen OnePlus do inexplicable camera downgrades throughout last year, and this just seems to be one of them.

The camera application is the same as what we have seen on recent OnePlus phones. It has all the requisite options and is designed well enough not to get in your way while shooting.

Main camera

Getting to the image quality, the main 50MP camera on the Nord 6 does well, with mostly accurate colors and white balance, and a reasonable level of detail in them.

We would say mostly accurate colors and white balance because OnePlus cameras sometimes miss white balance completely. As long as the frame has a lot of context cues for the camera software to work with, the white balance turns out fine. But the moment you narrow down on something, the camera's white balance starts missing the forest for the trees and becomes entirely inaccurate.

White balance issues

For example, you can see in these samples how the white balance is fine in the shot of the leaf on the red soil below, as long as the rest of the background is in frame, but the moment the camera is panned down to just the leaf, the image loses all warmth, and the red soil becomes a pale brown. The same thing happens when you get close to certain objects or zoom in, thus getting rid of more of the background imagery, causing the auto white balance to get confused.

Moving on, we were curious to see how the Nord 6 main camera would compare against its predecessor's. After all, the sensor on the new phone is physically smaller, and that is rarely a good thing.

Main camera: Nord 6 • Nord 5

The good news is that the Nord 6 can flex its more powerful processor and more mature processing to produce better-looking images. The detail and colors both look better in the Nord 6 images. The Nord 5 sensor is still objectively superior, and we could see this when looking at the RAW files, which were a bit sharper and had less noise on the older phone. However, this difference simply does not reveal itself in the JPEG files, and if that's how you mostly shoot with your phone, then the Nord 6 should feel like an upgrade.

As with the other Nord phones, the Nord 6 still does not come with a dedicated telephoto camera. The 2x mode is also not impressive, as the results can be quite soft and blurry at times, and any further zooming produces largely unusable images.

Main camera 2x mode

Interestingly enough, the 2x images from the Nord 5 looked noticeably better, and to a surprising degree. We aren't sure if the Nord 5 is flexing its hardware advantage here or if something simply isn't right with the Nord 6 digital zoom, as the RAW files from both phones did not look noticeably different in 2x.

Main camera 2x mode: Nord 6 • Nord 5

Finally, getting to the ultra-wide camera, we are looking at the same sensor as on last year's model. The detail once again looked better on the Nord 6 compared to its predecessor, but this isn't a particularly great sensor, and the images are largely still passable at best. It certainly beats not having an ultra-wide camera at all, as on the Turbo 6, although that is a rather low bar to clear.

Ultra-wide camera

The 32MP front camera once again chooses to save images in the full upscaled 32MP resolution rather than its obviously native resolution of 8MP. As such, the images don't look great when viewed closely but are just fine when viewed at a resized 8MP size. However, this camera is a straight downgrade from the 50MP Nord 5 sensor, which can capture more detail, especially in low light, and also records videos at 60 fps.

Selfies: Nord 6 • Nord 5

Finally, the Nord 6 captures good-quality 4K video from its main camera.

The ultra-wide footage is once again passable, but we really expect more now, even in this price range.