OnePlus 7 Pro Review – A beast at everything, starting at $669

The OnePlus 7 Pro came out in May 2019, launched alongside with the OnePlus 7. This is the company’s first ‘flagship’ phone, meaning this is the first time they’ve gone all out and extended the price range to put more flagship features in their phone. A lot of things that the previous OnePlus phones didn’t have but flagship phones from Samsung, Apple, Huawei and other companies did, are now pretty much present in the OnePlus 7 Pro.

Note – The model being reviewed is a OnePlus 7 Pro 8GB RAM, 256GB Storage, Nebula Blue and was purchased as a retail unit.

So is it worth it? Here’s our review on the OnePlus 7 Pro, focusing on the aspects that matter a lot to gamers.

Tech Specs

The OnePlus 7 Pro’s display is just absolutely breathtaking in all the right ways

The biggest upgrade in the OnePlus 7 Pro over the previous phones is the display. OnePlus calls it a Fluid AMOLED Display. It’s a 6.69-inch 1440p QHD Panel with a 90Hz Refresh Rate, and it’s a beautiful OLED Panel with vivid colours & deep blacks. Oh, and it looks gorgeous with curved sides and no obstructions in the display.

The 90Hz Refresh Rate means the panel can refresh 90 times every second, rather than 60 on most phones (well, every phone except some gaming phones). Using the phone just feels so much more smoother and it feels almost abysmal to use a phone with a 60Hz display. iPhones do seem really smooth but that’s because of the beautiful, smooth animations of iOS, even if all iPhones use a 60Hz display. I’m taking the OnePlus 7 Pro’s display over anything else on the market right now – even the panel is a little far behind the Galaxy S10 Plus or iPhone XS Max it’s still a phenomenal display and the 90Hz Refresh Rate is the very sweet cherry on top.

I really didn’t expect to be using a phone without any notches and side bezels so soon. Phones like the Oppo Find X had futuristic design and were really cool, but came with durability issues , undesirable software, and other concerns which were a big no-no for a proper flagship smartphone. The Verge reviewed the Find X and called it ‘unrefined ambition’ and I’m in complete agreement, they did pave way for better phones in the future though – more on that later.

The build quality and design language of this flagship do live up to its price

The phone is built with an aluminium frame and glass on the front & back. It feels incredibly premium to use, right on par with other flagship phones but it is quite slippery. Also, the phone has the alert slider which has been a really useful feature.

In a year since the inception of motorised camera setups, with many companies trying out different ways to implement the tech, we now have phones powered by motorised setups with reliable build quality. The OnePlus 7 Pro stands up to have good durability, and retains water resistance too (albeit without an IP rating). Dave Lee did his entire review with the phone being underwater, and looking at how the phone fared in durability tests I’m confident that this phone has a good build.

In terms of speakers, this phone has stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos.

These are good speakers with loud sound and above decent clarity, but they’re little far behind compared to the iPhone XS Max or Galaxy S10+ albeit not by much – they’re still a good pair of stereo speakers better than anything they’ve put before.

Oh, and there’s no headphone jack. OnePlus said goodbye to it with the OnePlus 6T, Google did the same with the Pixel 2, and Samsung did with the Note 10 lineup. Needless to say, whether you like it or not, this is going to be the standard now. OnePlus does have some really good value for money Type-C Bullet earphones and there’s tons of wireless options too – the OnePlus Bullets Wireless 2, Galaxy Buds, AirPods, Jabra Elite 65Ts are all good options for different users.

The Snapdragon 855 on the OnePlus 7 Pro is a top performer for everything you could throw at it

There’s not much to say here except that it’s a really powerful phone with the software to back it up too. This is the latest & greatest SoC from Qualcomm and OnePlus has put it in its flagship phone, just like they have with previous phones. The software is just great too. OxygenOS on the OnePlus 7 Pro is really swift & smooth to use and I have zero complaints! It’s close to stock android with a few treats & tweaks. OnePlus is also good with updates, they even released the Android 10 Open Beta update in the first week Google officially released the final software!

In terms of gaming performance, this phone does not disappoint one bit. I tested the OnePlus 7 Pro on PUBG Mobile and Asphalt 9, at the maximum possible graphical settings and it’s performed incredibly well. The phone supports HDR Graphics with Extreme FPS Settings on PUBG Mobile and in my testing it’s never given me any frame drops, so the cooling system is good on this phone. Maybe you’d run into some minor hiccups if you play outside or while charging the phone, but that’s perfectly normal for any phone (except gaming phones!)

The OnePlus 7 Pro has an above decent triple camera setup, with a few fallbacks.

The biggest strength is that the camera setup is quite versatile with an ultra-wide lens, standard 48MP camera, and a 3X Telephoto lens. I’ve found that while there’s more versatility with this camera, there’s a variance of quality between all the 3 back cameras that will show up more in challenging scenarios. The iPhone XR or Pixel 3 will take better photos & videos overall even though both phones only have a single lens. There’s just something about OnePlus’s camera that still makes it below flagship quality in colour science, clarity, detail, microphone quality, everything.

But generally, give it good light and all the triple back cameras will shoot great photographs and videos. There’s a night mode called Nightscape which was introduced in the OnePlus 6T and it’s pretty good for the occasional low light shot. OnePlus has released quite a few updates and the camera’s been overhauled, there’s even support for super steady video and ultra-wide video recording on the Android 10 Beta. Also, Google Camera mods improve photos & videos a lot, especially in the detail & colour science department.

Here are some photos I took on the OnePlus 7 Pro on a trek to Karnala Fort, and a cinematic video test by Moment that shows the video recording capabilities of the phone. All the photos are completely unedited and taken with the stock camera app.

For security, the OnePlus 7 Pro comes with an in-display optical fingerprint scanner.

It’s relatively fast and noticeably better than the one on the OnePlus 6T. The fingerprint scanner is swift, seamless, and stands well in durability tests, and just works well.  No longer is the case that in-display fingerprint scanners on phones are inherently bad, this one is really good! I still really, really prefer the seamlessness of Face ID on the latest iPhones but well it is personal preference. It’s definitely true that many people would prefer a notch-less screen with fingerprint scanning tech over the iPhone’s notch and Face ID.

I had been using the iPhone X before this, and while I would take the OnePlus 7 Pro’s display over any other phone, I still consider it an arbitrary feature to not have a notch – I would personally take the iPhone XS’s seamless Face ID security with a notch, over the notch-less OnePlus 7 Pro’s screen with in-display fingerprint scanner tech. Still, I feel like I’m nitpicking – there’s really not much wrong about this phone and the fingerprint scanner is really good, and I do know many people would gladly take the notch-less display with an in-display fingerprint sensor & pop-up cameras.

With great battery comes great charging speed!

The OnePlus 7 Pro has a 4000mAh Battery and it lasts a full day for me. It’s easily a battery champ even with 1440p Resolution & 90Hz Refresh Rate options enabled, the software does switch to 60Hz with some content so it intelligently uses the best of the display. The screen on time will depend on what you do on the phone, but with dark mode enabled I’m easily getting 6-7 hours of SOT.

The charging speed is amazing too – this phone supports Warp Charge at 30W and charges the phone to 50% in 20 minutes. If you’re ever running late, having lunch, or taking a shower, the OnePlus 7 Pro will charge up the battery instantly. There is one caveat here – the phone supports only 15W of charging through the USB-C Power Delivery standard. It’s completely okay and 15W is still decent charging speed, so mostly I only carry around my MacBook Pro’s 89W USB-C Charger which I also use for my headphones. USB-C everything!