This is the OnePlus 15r.
It is the slightly stripped down version of its more robust (and more expensive) sibling, which I reviewed last month, and on the surface it isn't that much different from the flagship offerings of the regular 15. Which is less of the complaint it used to be as OnePlus has once again packed their device with so much value that it feels downright spoiled to complain about it.
Joonatan Itkonen
Let's get an important caveat out of the way first: I love budget phones. I think they're exciting in ways that most other phone geeks seem to ignore. At this price point, you're bound by limitations that have to serve the consumer.
On a flagship (many of which push the 2000 Euro boundary!), you can just throw in the best of everything and call it a day. But when you're limited to anything below 500 Euros, you have to think outside of the box to deliver a compelling alternative for most.
My partner daily drives the 12R, and before I moved to the S23 Ultra (now the OnePlus 15), I was strictly in the iPhone 13 Mini camp. As a power user, I realize that my daily needs are way off from the demands of normal consumers, whom mostly seem to gravitate towards phones between the 200-400 Euro range. For many, as long as the camera is decent and the phone is snappy, everything else is secondary.
This is the area where OnePlus made its name. It offered a reasonable alternative to the highest tier phones where it felt like you weren't compromising on the essentials. You never settled, so to speak.
Today, the OnePlus 15R starts at 700 Euros. Sure, it will probably have considerable sales offers and other enticements like the 15 did, but this is the baseline. It is unlikely we'll see this line cheaper than that ever again.
OnePlus 15R
+ Still great performance and specs
+ Incredible battery life
+ Camera is surprisingly great during the day!
- ... but still struggles in darker environments
- More expensive than last year, blurring the line between budget and flagship
Battery life and daily use
If the battery life on the OnePlus 15 was incredible, then the 15R rewrites that definition altogether. At 7400mAh, we're talking about a multiple day device. Even power-hungry gamers will be able to get a full day and then some of hardcore gaming.
In my use, which varies drastically every day from super heavy use to almost nothing, I manage a full three days. On a lighter period, I could go longer. Three hours of video from Netflix dropped the battery just 9%, which is an insanely low number. In theory, I could watch all three Avatar movies, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and throw in a couple of episodes of The Mandalorian before the battery needed attending.
Like with the OnePlus 15, the OnePlus 15R sports a Silicon NanoStack Battery, which OnePlus claims to retain 80% of its health after 4 years of use.
When you do have to charge, the 120W SUPERVOOC charger gets you from 10% to full in just around 40 minutes. At home, you can just plug the phone in for 15 minutes and you’re good for an entire day. Here in Finland, the OnePlus 15R does not include a charger in the box like in some regions, so hopefully you already have one of your own. Otherwise you'll have to pony up for one of the bigger chargers out there.
For gamers, the OnePlus 15R allows for Bypass Charging, where you can just plug the phone in for longer gaming sessions and not have to worry about damaging the battery. I once again tested the device with Wuthering Waves and Call of Duty and found both excellent to play at 165hz refresh rates. Like the OnePlus 15, the OnePlus 15R is a delight for gamers and those dedicated on emulating older content on their phones.
Other basics are just as reliable as ever. Phone calls sound crisp and clear and callers reported no issues on my end, either. The speakers are fine, if not particularly incredible, as well. They're not industry leading, but entirely acceptable for gaming sessions, though most reasonably humans will still use headphones.
Bluetooth connections are equally rock solid. I've had my BeyerDynamic Amiron 300 wireless earbuds and, just for fun, a pair of Apple AirPods paired with the OnePlus 15R and I've noticed no issues in latency or drops at any point. Gaming controllers pair wonderfully too, and I appreciate that OnePlus continues to offer an IR blaster for those rare times it comes in handy. It's not necessary, but it's the kind of lovely addition that used to make phones fun.
Like with the OnePlus 15, the 15R is an all-rounder device that is meant to be part of a larger ecosystem than just a singular standout. It does everything you'd want out of a phone, which might sound like boring praise, but it's exactly what manufacturers should aim for.
Like the OnePlus 15, the OnePlus 15R is a delight for gamers and those dedicated on emulating older content on their phones.
Build and display
The OnePlus 15R mimics the design aesthetics of the flagship OnePlus 15 closely. Like its sibling, this isn’t the prettiest or most daring looking phone on the market. It doesn’t look as exciting as the iPhone 17 Pro Max with its divisive two-tone color and camera plateau, nor is it as stunningly slim like the Fold 7 or the trifolding miracles from Huawei.
It is, by all accounts, function over form. The sides are slightly rounded, but also tighter than before. The front is a solid piece of glass with slim bezels and the tiniest pinhole camera for selfies and facial recognition. The back is made from a matte-finished glass with an aluminium frame. It's robust without feeling chunky; hefty without feeling heavy.
Like the OnePlus 15, the 15R is an incredibly durable device. This is a phone meant to be taken outside thanks to the incredible IP66, 68, 69, and 69K ratings, which means the phone is resistant to basically any element you can throw at it.
The screen on the OnePlus 15R is flat with a 6.83-inch AMOLED display with up to 165Hz refresh rates. In general use the phone defaults to 120Hz, which is more than fine. It's only in gaming where it pushes the refresh rates to the maximum.
The 15R also sports the fantastic under the screen ultrasound fingerprint reader, which is by far my favorite in any smartphone out there. Like with the OnePlus 15, this is super fast, accurate, and after a few days you just stop thinking about it entirely. I value reliability over gimmicks, and that's precisely what OnePlus delivers here.
The OnePlus 15R comes with the same quality of life additions its more expensive sibling has, such as the Eye Comfort Mode, which helps immensely with long-term viewing. I doomscroll way more than I should, especially on longer trips, and I read a lot of books and articles as well. I've noticed that with these accessibility settings, my eyes have felt far less strain than before, though arguably I should just use my phone less altogether.
Camera quality
The OnePlus 15R is packed with a decent, if not eye-popping camera setup:
A 50 MP main camera that sports the Sony IMX906 sensor with OIS with an f/1.8 aperture. The ultra-wide camera is 8MP with f/2.2 aperture. Last is the selfie camera that is 32 MP with an f/2.0 aperture.
In daily use, that means crips and clear photos in daylight with increasingly diminishing returns the moment the lights dim.
Macro photography I found to still be a bit of a hit and miss effort. Some objects, like well-lit toys or statues, the OnePlus 15R could photograph like nobody's business. But those all required optimal conditions, and I often ended up with blurry shots when trying to just quickly grab a photo at a store or expo.
The portrait mode does reasonably well in low light, preserving detail in even the trickiest macro shooting and with different zoom levels.
When it comes to mid-range phones, I'm hesitant to test them out like flagships. They're not, and you shouldn't expect the same things out of them – even though they're more capable than ever!
For example, I would recommend the OnePlus 15R for pretty much any normal person in my life as a daily driver. It takes clear, crisp photos that are perfect for preserving memories, sharing on social media, and collecting for personal safekeeping. It is a reliable device that almost always delivered exactly what I wanted out of it. Even though that should be a baseline, most phones still struggle to meet it.
Would I use it for my YouTube videos or vlogging? Probably! The 4K video recording capabilities are more than decent, and the phone is such a powerhouse that you can edit on it without too much of a hassle. In fact, I've got a video review on the OnePlus Pad Go 2 coming up on my channel which is shot, edited, and published entirely on these devices to prove a point. You don't need flagships to produce content.
The regular lens has a sharp foreground focus while the ultrawide camera is perfect for capturing more detail in close-ups.
But it's the daily use that OnePlus 15R gets right. Most folks will snap ordinary things without thinking too much about them apart from getting a reminder or something to quickly tell others about. Personally, I take photos of movies I intend to buy and compare it to my shelves back home to check if I've already got certain editions.
It's here that OnePlus 15R showcases its reliabilty and quality. The regular lens is perfectly fine for snapping daily pics, and the ultrawide lens proved surprisingly capable in getting out even more detail in hurried situations. The two pictures above, taken from my shelf at home, were snapped in a hurry without framing and while throwing on a coat. They provided me with exactly the information I needed, and did so reliably in a way that I didn't have to think about it later on.
In low-light conditions, the selfie camera proved surprisingly decent, even recognizing the painted faces of the Robin Hood cast in the background.
Low-light selfies – and during this time of year, everything is low-light! – are equally decent. Depending on the level of light, you'll probably see some graininess and artefacting in the images, but for social media snaps and sharing, the OnePlus 15R delivers excellent quality and range. It has great background separation and fine detail in things like clothing.
When getting pictures of lounging pets, the OnePlus 15R works just fine, too. The regular lens is the best bet here, as the portrait camera struggled a bit with this floofy monster. But check out how well it handles the detail going from the blanket to the fur and wall and to the drapes in the background in less-than-ideal lighting.
I keep repeating the word dependable, but it's precisely in repetition where the OnePlus 15R shines. Grab a picture and you're done; it should always be that simple, and that's exactly what the OnePlus 15R delivers.
The rear portrait camera struggled a bit with furry companions, but overall provides perfectly fine shots for social media.
I would recommend the OnePlus 15R for pretty much any normal person in my life as a daily driver.
AI and Mind Space
The OnePlus 15R repeats one of the more contentious changes to the OnePlus 15 with the inclusion of the Plus Key, which works the same way as the one found on the iPhone.
It's still customizable to multiple functions, but once again the main and default use case is to save screenshots and memos to the Mind Space.
This AI-laden storage is what OnePlus calls a unified repository of digital memories. In practice, it's more of a generalized version of the Notes app, only more fiddly and less reliable.
In testing, I found that while the Plus Key works just fine for capturing the page you're looking at, it doesn't actually do much more than grabbing a glimpse of the topic. Most of the time it would screencap only what was immediately in view, create an AI-powered recap that often missed the nuance of the topic, and then leave it at that without even a link to the original article itself.
For example, I took a mindspace capture of two news articles as a test to see if it had improved in the past month. The first one, regarding AI use in the gaming industry, once again recapped the recap found in the image, refused to link to the actual article, and did nothing that I couldn't have already done with a regular screenshot or app that saves the link for later reading.
The second shot, where I wanted to save two different sources that looked interesting, only grabbed the headlines, but this time actually looked to have made links to the corresponding websites. No such luck though, as clicking the link to Tom's Hardware, a known tech site, led me to Google Maps for a location along the Umhlatuzana River.
Not great.
Mind Space still has the ability to create an event out of the topic, but that's something Google's own AI already does quite well – and already did way back when it wasn't a privacy nightmare.
OnePlus says the Mind Space is end-to-end encrypted and will only move to another server for quick processing with no trace of your activity otherwise. It sounds good in theory, but we'll have to wait and see how it actually works in practice.
You will get better results if you screencap entire pages at a time, but that just raises the question of why would you? There are better apps to save things for later reading. It all feels like a solution that needed first to invent a problem nobody had.
The idea itself is great and something that everyone in the phone market is currently chasing. Who wouldn't want to have a personal Jarvis at hand? In theory, Mind Space will cross-reference your personal library with references to things you've saved to create recommendations for future events, places, and things to shop.
But in its current state, where the AI struggles to reference details to simple news articles or even fully link back to them, I don't think the reality has caught up with the dream just yet.
Verdict
The OnePlus 15R is yet again a terrific device on paper with specs for even the most demanding mid-range user. In theory, it should be the perfect secondary option for those wanting the most bang for their buck.
But therein lies the problem, as this year the buck doesn't seem to match the bang. At 699 Euros for the base model, there's no question the OnePlus 15R is in the wrong price category entirely. Especially considering how the OnePlus 15, a flagship phone, has already gone on some aggressive sales in this territory already.
It lacks wireless charging and the software update promise just isn't as strong as with competitors. The hardware and cameras are perfectly fine, but at this price point they compete with actual flagships – especially if you're fine with buying something a bit older. When you're going against Google, Honor, and Samsung, you've got to bring stronger game than this. Because right now, the only company that OnePlus outright beats is Apple's iPhone 16e, and that's not a brag that anyone wants at this point.
The OnePlus 15R has the capability to be a fantastic all-rounder phone, and that's not a dismissal or a downplay of its remarkable qualities. If you wanted to, you could essentially use it as a powerful work station of its own.
It's also wonderfully durable and the processor is snappy enough that it won't feel dated for a number of years – most likely longer than OnePlus actually plans to support the device, which is another bummer.
If it were 200 Euros cheaper, it would be the easiest phone to recommend to almost anyone. Something you put in the comparison bin and check just how much singular elements are worth to you. None of its elements are outright bad or dated, but they don't form a compelling enough package like the flagship OnePlus 15 does.
If you're coming off a OnePlus 10 or 11, it makes sense to upgrade. Anything newer and you might as well wait another year. For everyone else looking for a solid mid-tier device that will provide durable quality for at least four years, the OnePlus 15R is a solid recommendation – but maybe wait for a sale first.
