There is a familiar feel to OnePlus product releases—each new device introduces fresh technology, improved user experiences, and occasionally a game-changing feature that excites smartphone fans worldwide. The OnePlus 13R is no exception—in fact, it’s even better. This latest OnePlus phone offers solid performance, long battery life, and a smooth interface.
Though the OnePlus 12R stood out in the previous generation for delivering strong performance at a more modest price point, the 13R takes things further by enhancing specifications, refining the camera system, and expanding battery capacity. The OnePlus 13R solidifies the brand’s reputation for delivering impressive technology that not only keeps pace with trends but often surpasses them—all at a price point that’s hard to beat. The OnePlus 13R is only $599 USD.
From the moment I unboxed the OnePlus 13R, I was impressed by its clean and modern design. The Astral Trail and Nebula Noir colourways offer two distinctive but equally stunning options—I have the Astral Trail for testing and love the look. It delivers a design reminiscent of last year’s model but remains unique enough to stand out in a crowd.
To keep the phone free from scratches and marks, OnePlus uses Gorilla Glass 7i, a tougher glass from Corning that protects both the front and back. An aluminum frame wraps around the perimeter, providing a subtle sheen while maintaining a secure grip. If you’ve handled the OnePlus 12R, you’ll notice an evolutionary design theme, with slightly more refined edges and a symmetrical camera bump on the back. The OnePlus 13R feels incredibly solid in hand—something you don’t typically expect from a mid-tier device. Despite its elegant look, the phone never feels fragile during use.
“The OnePlus 13R solidifies the brand’s reputation for delivering impressive technology that not only keeps pace with trends but often surpasses them—all at a price point that’s hard to beat.”
According to OnePlus, the mid-frame of the OnePlus 13R integrates a built-in firewall design for heat dissipation, which pairs with the enlarged vapour chamber I’ll discuss shortly. A pass-through vent near the top edge is visible but subtle enough to maintain the device’s seamless look. Another highlight is the phone’s IP65 rating. While it’s not the highest-tier rating available (such as IP68 on the OnePlus 13), it still offers a fair degree of protection against rain and dust. As OnePlus notes, this rating does not safeguard against saltwater or certain cleaning liquids, so users should treat it as an additional layer of protection rather than a challenge.
One of my favourite features, the Alert Slider, remains but with a slight twist—it’s now on the left side, presumably for convenience in portrait usage and to boost antenna performance when gaming in landscape mode. For those who have grown to love OnePlus phones for their physical toggle for ring, silent, or vibrate modes, the slider’s presence is a welcome indication that the brand is paying attention to its user base.
OnePlus devices have consistently earned praise for their performance, and the OnePlus 13R is no exception. Beneath its polished white exterior, the smartphone features the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, paired with a robust 12 GB of LPDDR5X RAM. Compared to mid-tier phones still relying on last year’s chips and 8 GB of RAM, the OnePlus 13R feels much closer to the flagship level consumers expect.
From the moment you power on the OnePlus 13R, it becomes evident that everything—from app launches to transitions—is nearly instantaneous. Gamers, in particular, will appreciate its capabilities. Thanks to an advanced GPU and improved CPU scheduling, frame rates remain steady even in demanding titles. During testing, games such as Genshin Impact, Diablo Immortal, and Honkai: Star Rail all ran flawlessly, with consistently smooth frame rates. What is even more impressive is how quickly the phone performs multitasking, making transitions feel seamless. Considering the price of the OnePlus 13R, this level of performance is remarkable—a sentiment that recurs throughout this review.
The OnePlus 13R maintains relatively cool temperatures even during gaming or complex tasks, thanks to its Dual Cryo-Velocity Vapor Chamber system. A phone’s performance depends heavily on its ability to dissipate heat, and having a cooling solution that matches the processor’s capabilities is essential. In real-world tests, heavier gaming sessions generated some warmth, but not to the extent that the device became uncomfortably hot. This difference is especially noticeable when performing resource-intensive tasks like video editing or 3D gaming, where the cooling system ensures consistent performance.
To ensure all your media and gaming look fantastic, the OnePlus 13R features a stunning 6.78-inch ProXDR flat display. With a resolution of 1.5K (2780×1264, 450 PPI), it delivers brilliant picture quality with exceptional colour reproduction and clarity, noticeable when streaming high-resolution content, browsing detailed photography, or reading smaller text.
“From the moment you power on the OnePlus 13R, it becomes evident that everything—from app launches to transitions—is nearly instantaneous.”
Notably, the display reaches a peak brightness of 4,500 nits, making it possible to use even on bright days. This means you shouldn’t have much trouble reading messages or shooting photos in direct sunlight. After testing it for a few weeks, I am thoroughly impressed. Granted, given the dark days of winter here at CGMagazine HQ, there’s less sunlight, but I’ve experienced no issues even on the brightest days, with the screen offering fantastic clarity and vibrancy.
As with its flagship 13, the OnePlus 13R features a dynamic refresh rate that scales from 1 Hz to 120 Hz, ensuring fluid menu transitions and animations without draining the battery when you’re simply reading text. Aqua Touch 2.0 and the new Glove Mode further enhance the display experience. Aqua Touch 2.0 ensures your finger inputs remain accurate even if the screen or your hands are wet, while Glove Mode maintains touchscreen responsiveness when wearing gloves up to 0.5 cm thick. This practical feature might not stand out on a spec sheet, but it’s invaluable when standing in the cold or cycling in chilly weather and needing to glance at navigation.
To keep the screen running for days, OnePlus has equipped the 13R with the same 6,000 mAh battery found in the 13. While this has become more common in recent years, my time with the phone showed it makes a noticeable difference, especially for users who push their phones during daily use.
For those constantly checking emails, streaming videos, or gaming on the go, this level of battery life is invaluable. In practical terms, many users can expect a day and a half of moderate usage before needing to recharge. I managed to stretch the OnePlus 13R to a full two days of use without needing to recharge—something unimaginable for a budget or even flagship phone just a few years ago.
When it’s time to recharge, OnePlus continues its tradition of fast-charging technology with 55W SUPERVOOC in North America. The company claims the OnePlus 13R can charge to 100 per cent in just 54 minutes, and in my testing, that estimate held up, give or take a few minutes depending on usage during charging. While it’s not as fast as some of the 80W or 100W standards seen on newer devices like Xiaomi phones, it’s more than sufficient to keep you untethered from an outlet. During testing, including scenarios with multiple daily charges—such as quickly topping up before a work event—the battery life proved reliable, easing concerns about midday power drops.
Unfortunately, unlike the OnePlus 13, the OnePlus 13R does not feature wireless charging. However, if you use one of the official cases, the magnetic back allows compatibility with many accessories typically reserved for the iPhone and select Android phones—a welcome consolation prize.
Despite its price point, the OnePlus 13R offers a solid camera experience—arguably even at a flagship level—even though it does not feature the Hasselblad branding found on its higher-end counterpart. The phone includes a triple-lens array with two 50-megapixel sensors—one for the primary wide camera and another for 2x telephoto shots—alongside an 8-megapixel ultrawide lens. On paper, this setup may sound similar to other multi-lens smartphones, but one critical difference stands out: the primary sensor is the Sony LYT-700, which boasts a higher Full Well Capacity than previous OnePlus sensors, enhancing low-light performance, particularly for night photography.
“Despite its price point, the OnePlus 13R offers a solid camera experience—arguably even at a flagship level…”
When testing the OnePlus 13R in real-world scenarios, low-light shots demonstrated improved brightness and clarity compared to earlier R-series phones, though the differences can be subtle unless closely examined. For instance, capturing night scenes in southern Ontario produced less grain, and the camera’s built-in software algorithms effectively prevented highlights from washing out in well-lit areas, such as street lamps or car headlights. While not perfect—some challenging scenes revealed noise in shadowed corners—the performance is a marked improvement. The software doesn’t quite match the level seen on the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL, but it comes close, with only minor differences.
The second 50-megapixel sensor enhances portraits with a 2x zoom factor—an improvement over digital zoom, which often results in image softness. The additional brightness provided by the sensor ensures night-out portraits pop with greater clarity and vibrancy. Another interesting feature is that “special algorithms” activate when zooming beyond 4x, combining multi-frame data to maintain sharpness at greater magnifications. In testing, this worked well, though, like most digital zooms, it won’t replace professional equipment. However, for social media or capturing memories, it is more than sufficient.
Finally, there’s the 8-megapixel ultrawide sensor, which is designed to provide a broad perspective for scenery or group photos. This was the camera I found the least impressive. It’s fairly standard, but the consistency of colour reproduction across lenses is notable. Compared to other mid-tier phones, this triple-array system feels the most unified in overall look and feel. Colours translate more uniformly, so photos taken with different focal lengths don’t appear drastically mismatched. To put it bluntly, the overall camera system won’t outperform the best photography-focused devices on the market, like the OnePlus 13 or Xiaomi 14 Ultra, but it’s more than capable for day-to-day use and creative experimentation.
This brings me to the software side of the OnePlus 13R, which I would describe as solid but not particularly noteworthy compared to other Android phones on the market. Oxygen OS 15 is, for the most part, a pleasure to use. I have gone on record as someone who does not love Android skins, but this OS is for the most part snappy and improves on some of the annoyances I have with Andropid as a whole.
The small touches look good, and the design elements throughout feel well-thought-out and clear to use. I honestly never use the shelf feature, but it is nice if you want a range of widgets to jump into quickly, but the real story is how snappy everything feels.
OnePlus has stated that they’ve made tuning adjustments beneath the surface to improve the overall feel of the OS, and it shows—this is one of the most fluid user experiences I’ve had on a smartphone. The software also incorporates a parallel processing model, using sophisticated scheduling to prevent background tasks from slowing down your current activities, whether that’s gaming or taking photos. Swiping between screens, launching the camera, and multitasking all felt fast and fluid during testing. That intangible sense of “smoothness” is something older OnePlus phones already excelled at, and the 13R continues this tradition, which I’m glad to see.
As it’s now 2025, AI was bound to make an appearance, but at least OnePlus has implemented it intelligently, resulting in a range of genuinely useful tools. Building on elements introduced with last year’s software, users can now leverage tools like AI Detail Boost, AI Unblur, and my personal favourite, AI Reflection Eraser, to refine photos.
Meanwhile, advanced productivity features, such as Intelligent Search, draw on Google’s Gemini models to enable natural language searches within files. While I primarily used these tools for testing, all the AI features were solid. That said, I will personally use AI Reflection Eraser for my work. I cannot count how many times an image has been disrupted by a reflection—being able to remove that is genuinely exciting and something I look forward to using more, whether out and about or at events.
At the end of the day, the OnePlus 13R is a fantastic mid-level device that punches well above its weight class. It delivers exemplary performance, supported by a temperature management system that ranks among the best in the industry, and finishes with a software experience that is both nimble and forward-looking. Its new triple-camera system, while not revolutionary, makes respectable strides in quality. Add in a 6,000 mAh battery and consistently fast charging, and the phone becomes a confident recommendation for nearly anyone seeking a top-tier Android experience without the flagship price tag.
OnePlus has taken a proven formula—speed, battery efficiency, and user-friendly design—and refined it with new scheduling architecture and an upgraded camera system that practically guarantees a smooth, future-proof phone. By combining formidable performance, forward-thinking software, and robust design into a single package with the OnePlus 13R, the company stays true to its original flagship-killer ethos while continuing to innovate in meaningful ways. For those looking for a device that blends flagship-level power with reliable longevity, the OnePlus 13R is likely to leave a lasting impression.
