OnePlus 7T Pro review: A minor tune-up

OnePlus has cemented itself as a cult favourite among smartphone enthusiasts, with a combination of high-end features and an attractively affordable price point. The company’s latest effort to wow fans is the OnePlus 7T Pro, a mid-generation upgrade to the company’s previous OnePlus 7 Pro.

OnePlus 7T Pro review: Design

There’s a limit to how eye-catching a modern smartphone can be, thanks to the fact that most are featureless slabs of black glass, but the OnePlus 7T Pro gets round that with a rather fetching semi-gloss finish, with a two-tone shade that changes slightly when the light hits, in a similar manner to ChromaFlair paint. At 206g and 8.8mm thick, it’s a substantial device, but no more so than you’d expect from a phone measuring the best part of 7in across the diagonal.

Attractive chassis aside, there’s not much to shout about here; the edge-to-edge curved display has become almost de rigueur among high-end smartphones, so it’s no surprise to see it here. Like its predecessor the OnePlus 7 Pro, it’s achieved this with a motorised pop-up selfie camera, which is a fun little quirk, but overall the 7T Pro isn’t breaking any new ground in the design department – in fact, aside from the colour, it’s almost identical to the 7 Pro.

OnePlus 7T Pro review: Display

The same is true of the screen, but that’s not an issue – the 7 Pro’s screen was gorgeous. Measuring 6.7in, the 1,440 x 3,120 AMOLED panel is a sight to behold. Colours are rich and vibrant thanks to a 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut, a brightness of 421cd/m2 is excellent, contrast is perfect, and HDR10+ support offers some handy future-proofing for streaming video content. The screen is set to ‘Vivid’ colour mode, but you can also change over to the 7T Pro’s ‘Natural’ mode for a more sRGB-friendly experience – we measured its sRGB coverage at 93%.

The headline feature, however, is the 90Hz refresh rate. Gamers will be familiar with the benefits a higher refresh rate can bring, but for the uninitiated, it essentially means that on-screen motion looks much smoother. This mainly makes its presence felt in menus, and scrolling through long articles or timelines at 90Hz is a delightful experience. The only caveat is that not all apps currently support 90Hz, although many more will include support as higher refresh rates become more commonplace - so you might experience some jarring switches between higher and lower framerates.

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OnePlus 7T Pro review: Hardware and performance

The OnePlus 7T Pro is a mid-generation upgrade, so it’s in the internal hardware where the bulk of the improvements have been made. It’s been bumped up from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 chip to the slightly newer and more powerful 855+, while its RAM has been upgraded to a single base allocation of 8GB. The 256GB storage allowance is about as generous as you’re likely to see on a smartphone (and good thing too, as there’s no option to expand it), while the 4,085mAh battery is similarly meaty.

The 7T Pro racked up scores of 783 (single-core and 2612 (multi-core) in the GeekBench 5 tests, but all you really need to know about the performance is that it’s about as fast as any other Android device out there. Everything feels very smooth and responsive and we had no problems with it.

Its score of 19hrs 39mins in our battery tests is similarly impressive, and is more than capable of seeing you through a busy day. And on the off-chance that it isn’t, the bundled Warp Charge 3.0 adapter will juice you up fast – we measured an increase of more than 50% after just 30 minutes charging.

OnePlus 7T Pro review: Cameras

Although the 7T Pro includes the same camera hardware as its predecessor (pop-up selfie camera and all), OnePlus has tweaked the software it uses, including a few new features such as a new macro mode, improved video stabilisation and some enhancements to night mode photography.

It’s a solid enough package, on the whole, and one of the better options available at this price range. However, it can’t quite reach the lofty quality standards of rivals like the iPhone 11 Pro Max or the Google Pixel 4 XL.

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OnePlus 7T Pro review: Features

Beyond the previously-mentioned Warp Charge and improvements to its ‘RAM Boost’ technology, OnePlus has added no notable extra features here. There’s still no wireless charging, no IP rating and no expandable storage on offer. None of these are deal-breakers, but OnePlus’ feature-set is starting to look a little less impressive than it used to. There is faster UFS 3.0 storage in play, however, so it’s not all bad.

OnePlus 7T Pro review: Verdict

The OnePlus 7T Pro isn’t exactly a revolution. At best, it offers minor improvements compared to its predecessor, the admittedly excellent OnePlus 7 Pro. If you’re an existing OnePlus 7 customer, it's unlikely you'll be wanted to rush out and upgrade your device, and if you're weighing up between the OnePlus 7T Pro and rival devices, there’s not a great deal in the actual design and engineering of the phone that might tip your hand.

Saying that, it's a bit of a steal. The OnePlus 7T Pro fetches less than £600 before tax. For that, you’re getting a host of top-end features typically reserved for more expensive devices, including a decent camera array, a high-end design and a market-leading 90Hz display.

More modest pricing from recent rivals, such as the likes of Xiaomi and Honor, means that the OnePlus isn’t quite the no-brainer it used to be, but it’s still good value for a phone that can happily keep up with the big boys – if not quite outstrip them.

OnePlus 7T Pro specifications

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