A refined revision: OnePlus 11R

While OnePlus’ R-series is normally the budget value for money refinement of its flagship lineup, the brand has brought out the OnePlus 11R, which brings some of the best features of the OnePlus 11, but at a more budget-friendly flagship affordable price. Let us see what the OnePlus 11R has to offer.

Display

The design closely resembles that of the OnePlus 11- with a soft matte finish on the glass back panel. The 11R is quite slim and the soft silicon case in the box is a reassuring addition. 

The OnePlus 11R sports an impressive  6.74-inch AMOLED edge-to-edge display which supports refresh rates of up to 120Hz. Colours are rendered well, along with excellent contrast and black levels. 

While the 11R does miss out on Dolby Vision and Atmos support, the support for HDR10+ makes it an ideal device for media consumption on platforms like YouTube, Amazon Prime, and Netflix.

Also read: A mellow melody: OnePlus Buds Pro 2 review

The top and bottom firing speakers are quite loud and a pleasure to catch up on New York Times’ The Daily podcasts. 

Spending some quality time playing Call of Duty Mobile was pretty enjoyable! The gameplay was fluid, with the phone supporting very high graphics and churning out a consistent 60 FPS through the session.

The 1,450 nits of peak brightness help with visibility in direct sunlight, for a quick check of emails and messages in the parking lot before starting work for the day. 

Camera

The OnePlus 11R features the Sony IMX890- the same sensor found in the OnePlus 11. However, it lacks the Hasselblad collaboration. The 11R is no slouch though, and photos taken in the day render well without any artifacts or colour issues, the night shots also are passable for social media.

The triple camera setup produces mixed results
| Photo Credit: Bijoy Ghosh

The 2-MP macro camera struggles with fixed focus and white balance issues and is not something I wanted to reach out for often on the phone. The 16-MP front-facing camera can work in a pinch for those video calls.

Performance

The 11R is an ideal phone for the price
| Photo Credit: Bijoy Ghosh

The OnePlus 11R features the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset with the Adreno 730 GPU. The unit I reviewed had 16 GB RAM and 256 GB storage. During gaming, the device did get hot – maybe courtesy of the glass finish at the back. However,  the overall performance didn’t take much of a hit.

On synthetic benchmarks, the OnePlus 11R scored 7,80,812 points on AnTuTu, placing it way below the OnePlus 11’s 1,15,0541 score but above the OnePlus 10R 5G and the Google Pixel 7.

The phone comes with OxygenOS 13 and the interface is fluid and easy to use. There is not much bloatware other than the company’s own apps which include the IR blaster that can be used to control your TV, AC, and more.

Battery

The OnePlus 11R was easily able to chug through over seven hours of screen-on time  – with an hour or so of video calls, two hours of gaming, and some mixed usage on MS Outlook, Teams, and the camera. 

The OnePlus 11R has a 5,000 mAh battery and support for 100W SUPERVOOC, which allows for fast phone charging from 0 to 100 per cent in under 40 minutes.

Verdict

The OnePlus 11R is the best bang for the buck for those looking for a phone to be their daily driver. With impressive performance and decent battery life, this is just-below-flagship- levels of awesome, without the premium price tag.

OnePlus 11R

Pros: Value for money specs, fast performance, bright AMOLED screen

Cons: Heating issues, poor macro snaps