OnePlus 13R review: the best $600 you can spend on a phone this year

How do you create a successor to one of the best smartphone values in years? That’s the task OnePlus faced when creating the OnePlus 13R.

The OnePlus 12R was one of 2024’s best smartphones by a long shot — delivering powerful specs, a premium design, and capable software at an unbelievable $500 price. It was one of my favorite phones of last year, and I’ve been eager to see how the OnePlus 13R would succeed it.

I’m happy to report that the OnePlus 13R is every bit as good as the 12R — and notably better in some key ways. The higher price means it’s not quite as immediately jaw-dropping, but after spending a couple of weeks with the OnePlus 13R, I’m struggling to think of another $600 phone that’s more worthy of your money.

OnePlus 13R specs

The OnePlus 13R has a simple but effective design

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The OnePlus 13R is very much a function over form smartphone. It’s not the most visually striking handset out there, but it’s simple, practical, and leaves you with very little to complain about.

A matte aluminum frame is joined by a matte glass backside, no matter which color you choose. I have Nebula Noir (aka black), though I’d recommend getting the Astral Trail color if you can; it has a lovely spiral pattern emitting from the camera that looks quite striking.

OnePlus 13R in Nebula Noir (left) and Astral Trail Joe Maring / Digital Trends

Even in the much more boring Astral Trail color, the OnePlus 13R’s hardware is undeniably strong. The matte finish is classy and doesn’t pick up fingerprints, all of the buttons feel good to press, the alert slider is as satisfying as ever, and the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor is fast and reliable. Once again, there’s an IR blaster if you want to control your TV, air conditioner, etc., with your phone.

The alert slider is still here, and it’s still great. Joe Maring / Digital Trends

OnePlus also upped its durability this year, increasing the IP64 rating from the 12R to IP65 for the OnePlus 13R. The main benefit here is that the 13R is now protected against water jets, and while not as robust as the IP68 ratings we see on more expensive flagship phones, it’s still a welcome improvement.

The OnePlus 13R’s hardware is undeniably impressive.

There’s not much more to say about the OnePlus 13R’s hardware. Sure, it’s a bit boring visually, but functionally, OnePlus nailed everything. The OnePlus 13R is comfortable to hold, well-made, and feels every bit as premium as a $1,000 smartphone. This was a strong suit of the OnePlus 12R, and the OnePlus 13R continues its legacy without a problem.

A high-quality screen with one big change

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The OnePlus 13R has an incredible display. It’s high-quality in every sense of the word and far nicer than you’d expect for a “value flagship” phone.

Specs-wise, it’s pretty much identical to that of the OnePlus 12R. You have a 6.78-inch AMOLED panel, a 2780 x 1264 resolution, a variable 1-120Hz refresh rate, and incredible brightness levels — up to 1,600 nits in High Brightness Mode and up to an eye-searing 4,500 nits for its highest peak brightness. It’s a bright, colorful, sharp, and responsive display with which I’ve had zero complaints.

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The biggest change for the OnePlus 13R is that it has a flat screen compared to the curved edges of the OnePlus 12R display. I didn’t think the curved display was a deal-breaker on the 12R, but I vastly prefer the flat design on the 13R this year. I find it more comfortable to use, and it eliminates the possibility of accidental screen touches (a minor issue on the 12R).

Are the OnePlus 13R cameras any good?

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You’ll find three cameras on the back of the OnePlus 13R: a 50-megapixel primary camera, a 50MP telephoto camera with 2x optical zoom, and an 8MP ultrawide camera rounding things out. The OnePlus 12R had a 50MP primary camera, too, though the one on the 13R is a newer sensor. The 50MP telephoto camera is also a nice change, as it replaces the useless 2MP macro camera that was on the 12R.

Overall, photos from the OnePlus 13R look good. Even without the same Hasselblad integration on the regular OnePlus 13, the 13R still churns out pleasing images with nice colors. I’ve been quite impressed with some of the pictures I’ve gotten. The crashing waves against the rocks of CocoCay in the first photo above were captured perfectly. The black fur on my cat Minnie looks great, too, as does the photo of the wine glass in a dimly lit bar aboard the Allure of the Seas.

The 50MP telephoto camera is solid, too. The 2x optical zoom range won’t give you similar zoom capabilities as you’d find on the Galaxy S24 Ultra or Oppo Find X8 Pro, but it is enough to get a bit closer to your subject and still get a good-looking shot. There’s a noticeable step down in resolution with the 8MP ultrawide camera, but it does a good job of capturing similar colors to the primary camera (something the OnePlus 12R struggled with).

Where the OnePlus 12R’s cameras felt passable, the camera system on the OnePlus 13R is genuinely solid. It’s far from the most exciting camera package available in 2025, but there’s also nothing outright bad about it. So long as you don’t need extreme zoom capabilities on your next smartphone, I think you’ll be pretty happy with what the OnePlus 13R delivers.

The OnePlus 13R’s performance is exceptional

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Powering the OnePlus 13R is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip. It’s not the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite, but it is the same chip used in many of last year’s flagships — such as the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro, and OnePlus 12. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is paired with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM plus 256GB of UFS 4.0 storage.

Looking at Geekbench 6 results compared to the OnePlus 12R, the OnePlus 13R sees a substantial 38% increase in single-core CPU performance, a 23% increase in multi-core CPU performance, and a massive 73% boost in GPU performance. It trails slightly behind the Galaxy S24 Ultra, and the OnePlus 13 with its newer Snapdragon 8 Elite chip is faster yet, but the OnePlus 13R remains an incredibly fast smartphone.

The GPU enhancements are even more apparent when running 3DMark’s Wild Life Stress Test, which runs each phone through 20 minutes of heavy-load performance benchmarking. In this test, the OnePlus 13R sees about 36% better performance with improved stability, too.

Although benchmarks only tell part of the story, real-world use affirms the 13R’s upgraded performance. The phone is blazing-fast, handling apps like Threads, YouTube, Duolingo, and Microsoft Teams with no issue. It’s also done a fantastic job of powering through my Pokémon TCGP addiction, taking on 30- and 45-minute gaming sessions with no frame drops and without any noticeable heat buildup.

Perhaps the best compliment I can give the OnePlus 13R is that using it has felt like using a flagship. It’s handled everything I’ve thrown at it, hasn’t overheated at any point, and has just been a joy to use.

Excellent battery life, slightly disappointing charging

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The OnePlus 12R set records with a 5,500mAh battery, the largest battery at the time for a OnePlus phone. The OnePlus 13R breaks that record just a year later, stepping things up to a gargantuan 6,000mAh battery. As you can probably guess, the OnePlus 13R has incredible battery life.

Just how incredible? The OnePlus 13R is very firmly a two-day smartphone. And, with lighter use, it could probably even creep into three days of usage before you need to put it on the charger.

As an example, I started one day at 8 a.m. with a full charge. After nearly four hours of screen-on time — including 1 hour and 40 minutes of playing Pokémon TCGP and frequent use of Telegram, TikTok, YouTube, and X — I had 61% battery remaining at 11:25 p.m. that night. The next day, I woke up to 58% remaining at 7:45 a.m. and racked up over three more hours of additional screen time. At the end of day two, totaling 7 hours and 13 minutes across both days, I still had 18% battery left at 11:20 p.m.

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I was only able to kill the 13R’s battery in a single day once, and that was during a very busy travel day with lots of Uber, Google Maps, Telegram, X, the Fly Delta app, and taking dozens of pictures. Even then, the OnePlus 13R still performed very well, starting the day at 6:05 a.m. and ending it at 9:45 p.m. with 7% battery after 6 hours and 12 minutes of screen time. This is exceptional endurance and even better than the already excellent battery performance of the OnePlus 12R.

The OnePlus 13R has incredible battery life.

Unfortunately, compared to the 12R, the OnePlus 13R takes an awkward step backward with its charging. Where the OnePlus 12R supported 80W charge speeds, taking the phone from 0-100% in about half an hour, the OnePlus 13R has been downgraded to 55W.

On its own, 55W is a very good number — outperforming the charge speeds of the latest flagships from Samsung, Apple, and Google. A full recharge from 0-100% takes just under an hour, and you can go from 14% to 54% in 15 minutes. That’s great! But I can’t help but still have a sour taste in my mouth knowing that OnePlus can (and has) done better. There’s also no wireless charging, which, while not a deal-breaker, is less easy to overlook when the wired charging speeds have decreased and the price has increased compared to the OnePlus 12R.

OxygenOS 15, AI, and software updates

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The OnePlus 13R ships with OxygenOS 15, OnePlus’ custom interface for Android 15. And you know what? It’s kind of great.

OxygenOS went through a metamorphosis in 2022, switching from the “stock” Android UI it had used for years and taking on a more stylized UI similar to what was found on phones from its sister brand, Oppo. And I hated it. OnePlus made some progress with OxygenOS 14, and OxygenOS 15 is even better.

A core focus of OxygenOS 15 is being as fast and responsive as possible. OnePlus spent an excruciating amount of time explaining this in my briefings, but I can’t deny how big of a difference it makes. There’s a level of fluidity and snappiness to the OnePlus 13R’s software that’s really, really nice.

Open Canvas in OxygenOS 15, letting you bounce between two opened apps Joe Maring / Digital Trends

OxygenOS 15 also adds the Open Canvas multitasking system introduced on the OnePlus Open. It’s a unique take on split-screen multitasking where you can easily bounce back and forth between two apps in mostly full-screen windows. It’s much more useful than Android’s default multitasking system, and I really love it. I’m also a fan of OnePlus’ customization tools, which give you ample control over your always-on display, app icons, accent colors, etc.

OxygenOS 15 customization screen Joe Maring / Digital Trends

There’s also a smattering of AI features included, and it’s about what you’d expect — including unblur and resolution boost photo editing tools, notes summarization, and Google’s Circle to Search. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, and I’ve largely ignored most of it, but it’s there if you want it.

Finally, software updates. OnePlus promises four years of Android OS upgrades and six years of security updates. That’s trailing the seven years of OS/security updates promised by Samsung and Google, but for most people, it should be perfectly fine. I’d love to see OnePlus eventually match the seven-year promise of its competitors, but this is a perfectly acceptable level of support.

OnePlus 13R price and availability

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The OnePlus 13R is available in one configuration (12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage) and costs $600 — a $100 price increase compared to the OnePlus 12R. Rising prices are never fun, but in this case, I think it’s fairly well justified.

For context, the $500 OnePlus 12R came with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, while the $600 model included 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Compared to the base 12R, the OnePlus 13R has more RAM and double the storage, not to mention a faster processor, flat display, improved cameras, longer battery life, and more years of software updates.

The OnePlus 13R is also very well-priced when put against the competition. Its closest competitor in the U.S. is the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE. It costs $650 and has a worse design, flimsy-feeling hardware, a less impressive display, and slower charging. There isn’t any real benefit to it over the OnePlus 13R (unless you really care about Galaxy AI), and it costs $50 more.

The Google Pixel 8a is a better alternative. It costs $100 less than the OnePlus 13R but also brings a longer list of compromises — including flimsy-feeling hardware, one-day battery life, slow charging speeds, a less capable processor, and less RAM and storage. It’s a good $500 phone, but there’s a very easy argument to make for spending $100 extra for the OnePlus 13R.

Preorders for the OnePlus 13R are live now, and regular sales will begin on January 14. It’s available at OnePlus.com and Best Buy.

Should you buy the OnePlus 13R?

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The OnePlus 12R revitalized the value flagship scene last year, and the OnePlus 13R does an incredible job of carrying its torch forward for another year. Yes, it’s more expensive, but the new $600 price is easily justified by the (very meaningful) upgrades.

The flat display is excellent, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is a serious performance boost, the cameras are considerably better, and the battery lasts even longer. Pair that with a good software update policy and well-made hardware, and the OnePlus 13R leaves you with very little to complain about. The slower charge speeds are annoying, as is the continued lack of wireless charging, but they’re minor inconveniences rather than serious drawbacks.

The OnePlus 13R leaves you with very little to complain about.

My conclusion for the OnePlus 13R is similar to mine for the OnePlus 12R. You can absolutely spend more money on smartphones with more bells and whistles — the $1,100 Google Pixel 9 Pro XL and $1,300 Galaxy S24 Ultra are sitting there waiting for you. But when the OnePlus 13R is this good and so much less expensive, why would you?