A crowd favourite from the get-go, OnePlus has been consistently offering flagship-adjacent versions of its super starrers each year. The latest in this line-up is the OnePlus 12R, following close on the heels of the recently launched OnePlus 12 . With its budget-friendly price tag, I check out the brand new device to see what it has in store.

Design

The OnePlus 12R has the familiar OnePlus design, with the alert slider on the left and the volume controls on the right. The colour that I reviewed was a very pleasant Cool Blue, although thers’s an Iron Grey option as well. The glass panel at the rear picks up smudges easily, which might be a niggle for some users.

Display

The OnePlus 12R sports a 6.78-inch 1.5K (1264 x 2780 pixels) AMOLED screen. This screen is quite bright, with a peak brightness of 4500 nits, more than what any of us need for clear outdoor visibility.

The experience of watching Salaar on Netflix was quite engaging. The display supports Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support which brings in higher brightness, contrast and saturation levels making the device ideal for multimedia content consumption.

The dual speakers on the OnePlus 12R are a joy to enjoy some music on. Shankar Mahadevan’s Breathless and Jaime Paige’s Pokemon song were quite enjoyable on the speakers without any distortion at full volume.

Camera

The camera on the OnePlus 12R features a 50 MP Sony IMX890 sensor, an 8 MP ultra-wide-angle camera and a 2 MP macro camera. The rear cameras are good, but not great.

Images shot in daylight retain details quite well and HDR was well balanced. The images shot around town had a good amount of details and decent colour tones. However, as it turned to night the image quality suffered, with the quality of night-time shots being average at best, with grains and loss of details.

The OnePlus 12R’s 16 MP front camera was able to deliver sharp pictures on the daily and I was quite satisfied with the selfies I clicked.

Performance
The OnePlus 12R Smartphone

The OnePlus 12R Smartphone | Photo Credit: BIJOY GHOSH

The OnePlus 12R that I reviewed runs on Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC and 16GB of LPDDR5x RAM. This along with 256 GB storage is a great combination for a smartphone at this price bracket.

The device scored 12,47,168 on AnTuTu placing it between the Xiaomi 12 Pro and the realme GT Neo 5. The phone was able to handle games like Call of Duty: Mobile at medium to ultra setting with 90+ fps at ease, which is always a bonus! The smartphone was cool as a fiddle through daily use, thanks to its Dual Cryo-velocity Vapour Chamber which has improved heat dissipation efficiency from its predecessors.

The device comes with OxygenOS 14 which runs buttery smooth and comes with little to no bloatware other than OnePlus’ own apps.

Battery

The OnePlus 12R was easily able to chug through over seven and half hours of screen-on time — with an hour or so of video calls, two-three hours of gaming and some mixed usage on MS Outlook, MS Teams and the camera.

It has a 5,500 mAh battery, a 100 mAh step up from the 12 and has support for 100W SUPERVOOC charging. This let me charge the phone from 0 to 100 per cent in under 30 minutes, but it doesn’t have wireless charging like the OnePlus 12.

OnePlus 12R
Price: ₹45,999 (16GB+ 256GB)
Pros: Great value-for-money specs, bright display, good build and looks.
Cons: Average camera quality
Verdict

The OnePlus 12R delivers on most fronts, going step-by-step with the 12 on almost every front with a value-for-money tag in tow with a great display, battery, performance and looks to go with it.

But with not much in terms of upgrades from the 11R, and doesn’t deliver the best in terms of its photography capabilities.

The OnePlus12R might find it hard to stand out in a competitive market with options like the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE and iQOO 12, which excel in both performance and specifications.

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