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We got to the OnePlus 13 party late – but I think it’s better to be late than never. So, here it is. The OnePlus 13 in the Arctic Dawn color – and I do think that this phone is… well, let’s find out in today’s review.
Performance
First thing first – the performance. The OnePlus 13 is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite and I have seen many people saying that it performs better than the other flagships in the market today with the same chipset. That pretty much is my main reason to review the OnePlus 13.
So, I did the gaming test – but had a new trick up my sleeve. We can now find out the render resolution of some games like Genshin Impact, Zenless Zone Zero, and Wuthering Waves by using the built-in camera feature.
This is a big revelation because we know that the render resolution on the OnePlus 13 across these 3 games are lowered. For Genshin Impact, it’s about the same as the small Galaxy S25, whereby Zenless Zone Zero is way smaller, and Wuthering Waves is basically running on 720p.
That’s why the FPS is so good and the heat is so low – OnePlus drastically lowered the rendered resolution. I’d still argue that even with lowered render resolutions, it still cannot maintain 60fps in Zenless Zone Zero. No Snapdragon 8 Elite phones can maintain it at 60fps, by the way.
Also, I should mention that it doesn’t matter if we play these games with the phone at 1440p or 1080p resolution – it’ll still be at the same render resolution regardless of whatever screen resolution we’re using.
Screen
Speaking of the screen, this OnePlus 13 comes with a 6.82-inch OLED screen with 120Hz refresh rate at a maximum resolution of 3168×1440. Pretty high, honestly.
The maximum brightness is a bit funky. It did spike to 1320 nits, but that’s not sustained. It eventually stabilizes at around 1260 nits – and that’s a pretty good brightness level nonetheless.
Now, there are 3 different color modes to be selected in the settings menu. By default, it is using the Natural color mode – and the colors are quite desatured since the DCI-P3 coverage is at 73.75%
If we change it to the Pro color mode though, it doesn’t actually change much? It’s pretty much the same as the Natural color mode.
Then finally, the Vivid color profile. It’s going to crank up the DCI-P3 color gamut coverage to 98.67%. It’s going to look way more vivid than it originally is.
So, if you want to use the OnePlus 13 with more vivid colors – just change it to the vivid color profile. Otherwise, don’t bother. The Pro color profile is pretty redundant since it’s so similar to the Natural color profile.
Also, the OnePlus 13 uses a quad-curved screen. I’m personally not a fan of curved screens – but it does look nice. There is kind of like a raised lip on the glass itself – but it’s not a big deal. I can’t feel it with my fingers but it’s there.
Battery life
How about the battery life then? Well, the OnePlus 13 comes with an equivalent of a 6,000mAh battery or a 22.92Wh battery. The battery life is all over the place, honestly. I tested it with 1440p resolution and it lasts for 18 hours and 15 minutes – but when I did the test again with the 1080p resolution, it lasts for only 15 hours and 10 minutes?
I can’t really make sense of this but there are reports from other OnePlus 13 users that says the battery life is kinda iffy with the latest update too. So, I can’t really confirm anything about this.
Charging speed
The charging speed though – this is something that I can’t really test since – if you see this box from the side, there is no charger included in the box. So, we’re testing the USB-PD PPS compatibility instead.
It’s actually quite good. With the default out-of-the-box settings, the OnePlus 13 takes in 45W but it has a whacky charging curve. The thermal limit for this setting is 37.5°C, but it still needs less than an hour to charge from 15% to completion.
If we head into the settings menu and enable the Smart Rapid Charging option, then it changes the way the phone charges. The temperature is held at the limit of around 37.5°C instead of jumping up and down but maintains at only 41W at most. However, it doesn’t actually matter since the charging speed doesn’t change much.
Software
How’s the software then? It is running on the latest OxygenOS 15 on top of Android 15. I think we have to rip the bandaid off and just confront the reality – it’s basically the ColorOS 15 but without the bloatware.
OxygenOS is clean. Yes, there are some preinstalled apps like Netflix and Fitbit – but they can be uninstalled easily.
OxygenOS 15 in general, is very smooth. The animations are nice and the features are pretty much the same as what we’ve seen before. The Aqua Dynamics feature works the same as before, and the Shelf is also the same as before. I still wish that we can add homescreen widgets here – and I’ve been asking for this for a few years.
We also have the Smart Sidebar which also has the AI Speak and AI Summary features if we’re reading stuff on a website. These two features are actually very useful since they can just bypass all the ads on a webpage and summarize everything for you.
Otherwise, the OnePlus 13 still has one of the same alert slider at the side – and I still love it.
Design
And there’s also another thing that we need to talk about – the design. You see, OnePlus 13 looks basically the same as the OnePlus 12 from last year. And the same as the OnePlus 11. I do think that this design is now OnePlus’s identity – and if they choose to use the same design across a few generations, then I don’t see a problem.
It’s sleek, nice to hold, and also this design works. There is no reason to purposely redesign a phone just for the sake of a new design. Also, it seems like the camera bump got a bit thinner?
Camera
But, how’s the cameras of the OnePlus 13 then? It’s powered by a triple 50MP camera setup – and unfortunately, I am still super sick while testing the OnePlus 13 – so I didn’t get to test the cameras much.
To have a look at all the pictures taken with the OnePlus 13, watch our video at the top of this review.
A few more things to mention
Okay, a few more things to mention – the OnePlus 13 is using a USB 3 port at the bottom for fast file transfers, and it can output display via this USB-C port too. But it only mirrors the screen since it doesn’t have any special features like desktop mode.
At least for our region, we have dual SIM card slots, and also an IR blaster at the top of the phone.
Should you buy the OnePlus 13?
So, should you buy the OnePlus 13? At the price of RM4,399 for the 512GB storage variant, I do think that it’s at a competitive price. It is a good phone with a very lightweight skin, has a great design and also pretty good cameras – depending on your taste.
The battery life is quite inconsistent at this point whereby the performance is nothing to shout about since it’s just as expected. Actually, the hype around OnePlus 13’s performance is kinda false since they lowered the render resolution by so much.
I honestly think it doesn’t have much of an upgrade over the previous generation, kind of in a similar situation as the Galaxy S24 and the Galaxy S25 series.
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