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Eleven generations and many years on, OnePlus has become one of the most well-known brands in smartphones these days. With its phones often being big hits among the fans and OnePlus enthusiasts. And there’s generally a good reason why. The devices it puts out tend to have great specs, they’re stylish, and they usually come in at a (mostly) affordable price point. That is to say, they’re usually at least a couple hundred less than mainstream flagships with bigger names and price tags to match. Then you have OnePlus’s ‘R’ line. A semi-stripped-down version of its flagship phones. These often drop a feature or three so the company can drop the price a bit more.
Making them even more affordable than usual. That brings us to the OnePlus 12R. The company’s latest device. This is my first OnePlus phone that I’ve personally reviewed as I normally review gaming devices like the ROG Phone series, and those coming from RedMagic and other brands. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I settled in for using this as my main device for the next few weeks. However, after that time has passed I am quite pleasantly surprised with what OnePlus has put together here. That being said, let’s dig into the phone a bit more and see how it stacks up with other similar devices.
Later on in the review, I’ll be comparing this to devices of similar specs and features. Including the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate because it uses the same chipset, the ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition, the RedMagic 9 Pro, and of course, the OnePlus 12 which we reviewed a few weeks ago. So let’s take a closer look at this phone and see if it’s worth your hard-earned money.
OnePlus 12R Review: Hardware and build quality
OnePlus to me has always had a great combination of hardware and design. And that’s always been accompanied by a top-notch build quality. Once upon a time, you might only see this kind of build quality in flagships that cost many hundreds more. But OnePlus from the get-go has generally offered a really premium-feeling phone. Even when its flagship devices were a fledgling offering in the market. I think that’s what’s most impressive. OnePlus can offer such a great-looking device that feels well-made and only costs as much as this phone does.
Let’s not forget, the OnePlus 12R has a base cost of $499, which comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. Then you have the model I’m reviewing which comes with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. This model goes for $599. Between the two, all the rest of the specs are the same. So no matter which phone you go with, you aren’t losing out on anything other than how much RAM the phone has and how much storage you have for apps, games, video, photos, and anything else.
When pulling this device out of the box my first impressions were that the phone is incredibly thin and incredibly light. It was a huge change from carrying around the ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition. The ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition was still thin (especially compared to last year’s model) but it was noticeably heavier and just didn’t feel as light in the hand. There was more heft to it. I don’t consider that a bad thing. I just find it interesting how different the two phones feel when they’re roughly the same size. Aside from the weight and thickness, the details that stand out more than anything else are the camera bump and the color/finish of the phone.
I’m not super excited about the camera bump. It’s halfway between pleasing and mildly annoying for me. While I can appreciate the design details, I am not fond of the way the camera bump feels when you hold the phone in landscape mode. Particularly when gaming. The camera bump looks nice thanks to the circular shape and the notches that go all the way around the perimeter. It’s also not exceedingly tall like it is on some phones. The ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition for instance has a pretty tall camera bump. Taller still is the camera bump on the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro.
However, this is kind of a double-edged sword for me. The camera bump design is nice. But it has a very strict hard edge that just doesn’t feel pleasing if your hands or fingers run across it. Let alone rest against it for an hour or more non-stop. This is more or less unavoidable because your fingers just happen to sit right where it is when you hold the phone horizontally. However, I suspect this is more due to the notches around the edge than anything. Perhaps I’m being nitpicky here with this. But OnePlus is very openly positioning the 12R with some powerful gaming performance. And it just feels like this particular detail wasn’t thought of when it came to thinking about the design.
That being said, this is not a gaming-first phone. And even though I’m not a huge fan of the camera bump, the phone build quality overall is pretty premium. So putting my personal gripe aside, OnePlus nailed the build quality with the 12R. There’s no question about it.
Design
In terms of other small design details, things are pretty standard with one change. The power and volume rocker are on the right side like normal. But the alert slider has been moved to the left. A decision that OnePlus says was so it could reposition the antennas to improve the performance of the device when held in landscape mode. Which is typically how people hold the phone when playing games. In fact OnePlus made this design change specifically to improve gaming performance.
On the bottom, you’ll find the USB-C charging port, the SIM card tray, and one of the speakers in the dual stereo speaker system. On the top, you have the IR blaster, the microphone hole, and the other speaker. It also features a 6.78-inch AMOLED display with curved edges, with slightly curved sides of the frame while the top and bottom parts of the frame are flat. It’s a comfortable design to hold in the hand and very pleasing to the eye when you look at it. I do wish the finish on the phone was matte though instead of glossy. As the phone just becomes a fingerprint magnet and it’s harder to photograph.
The glossiness also somehow makes it feel more in need of a wipedown than is probably necessary. This is another minor gripe but matte finishes on phones always look better in my opinion. And I wish OnePlus had gone with one here. Despite this, the Cool Blue color is fantastic and one of my favorites.
OnePlus 12R Review: Display
OnePlus seemed to really go all out with the display on this device. That shouldn’t be surprising. Similar to ASUS with its ROG Phone 8 and ROG Phone 8 Pro, the display on the OnePlus 12R is no different than the OnePlus 12. Most notably, I want to highlight the brightness. It has a peak brightness of 4,500 nits. This is incredibly bright and absolutely wild to me how OnePlus was able to put this in a phone. Let alone decide it was something necessary.
Is 4,500 nits of peak brightness overkill? I’m not so sure that it is honestly. Just for comparison, the ROG Phone 8 Pro has a peak brightness of 2,500 nits. I almost never had the display at peak brightness. And even then it looked and felt more than bright enough for almost any situation. The OnePlus 12R goes well above and beyond that. Now I haven’t been able to test the display in any obscenely bright situations like outdoors on a sunny day. It’s mostly overcast and gray skies all the time here in Oregon this time of year. But this is the same display that’s on the OnePlus 12. And in that review, we took the phone to San Diego where it was pretty darn bright outside during the daytime.
The results are, in short, that you can see the display and what’s on it without issue even in super bright environments. Aside from the brightness, the visual clarity of the OnePlus 12R display is nothing short of amazing. It has a resolution of 2,780 x 1,264 and it has a 120Hz refresh rate. OnePlus also upgraded the color levels on the display so anything with lots of colors looks really good. For me, this mostly translated to games like Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail looking more vivid than ever thanks to the boost in color levels. But it should also help with better-looking visuals in movies and photos too.
One thing worth noting is that this display has a dynamic refresh rate. What that means is that it adjusts to your usage. For example, OnePlus says that the display reacts to how fast your finger scrolls up and down the display and the refresh rate will change accordingly. The phone can tell when you’re slow-scrolling or fast-scrolling and adjust based on the needs of the activity. This is to help the reduction in battery drain and make the overall battery life better. Now as someone who plays mobile games a lot and quite enjoys them, I care more about the refresh rate during gaming than other activities.
I can happily say that the refresh rate during gaming is perfectly fine. I didn’t notice any issues when gaming. That being said, it’s still nice to have the option to completely control what refresh rate you want for the display at all times. This might turn some people off if they’re looking for that feature specifically. But I didn’t feel it was 100% necessary. And everything felt and looked smooth regardless of the activity.
The OnePlus 12R also employs a curved display just like the OnePlus 12. This helps the content you’re viewing on the display sort of blend in all the way to the edge. It’s nice, but I don’t feel the visual improvement is drastic enough to warrant going with a curved display over a flat display. Flat displays, like the ones on the Galaxy S24 series and the ROG Phone 8 series, for example, are more my preference. It just feels like there’s less of a chance of accidental touches and I think the flat displays work better with the gesture navigation.
Curved displays can also be more prone to scuffs or scratches if you aren’t careful. However, the display does look nice and the content you view on it will look nice too.
OnePlus 12R Review: Performance
When it comes to performance, the OnePlus 12R really does a good job. There are multiple factors to take into account. Like the top-notch specs (even if they are from last year’s flagships), the smart use of performance efficiency, and the large vapor chamber helping to keep the phone cool. In all my time using the OnePlus 12R during this review period, I never questioned the phone’s capability to perform at a high level. This is what’s so impressive to me. For a phone that costs $500 to $600, the performance is stellar.
This is thanks in part to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 mobile platform. This is the flagship mobile platform from 2023 and found in phones like the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate.
Keeping it cool
In addition to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, the OnePlus 12R comes with a pretty large vapor chamber to help dissipate the heat. Just from my time during normal use, which included quite a few long gaming sessions, the phone never gets too warm to hold. It gets warm, don’t get me wrong. But never too warm to where I had to put the phone down or stop playing games.
For a phone this thin, you’d expect it to get a lot warmer under heavy loads like high-intensity gaming sessions in games with demanding graphics. But that hasn’t been the case for me. I still think the ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition cooling system is better. But this shouldn’t be surprising. It was designed with gaming as a central focus and cooling is always a high priority when it comes to gaming. Then again, this should really just make OnePlus’s achievement with the cooling more impressive.
The ‘Cryo Velocity cooling system” as OnePlus calls it is actually made up of two vapor chambers. One small and one large. Both work together to deliver stellar performance. But each has its own slightly unique job too. It all starts with the smaller vapor chamber. This absorbs heat directly from the source and then evenly distributes it across the entirety of the small chamber. The large vapor chamber then absorbs the heat from the small chamber. The heat then rapidly dissipates as it cools down into liquid. The end result is a phone that stays cooler longer to deliver optimal performance.
So game away. Scroll away. Record more video. Whatever activity you do a lot of that taxes the phone components heavily, it doesn’t matter. The OnePlus 12R will stay cooler longer than most. By comparison, the vapor chamber in the OnePlus 12R is 76% larger than the one in the OnePlus 11R. A big step up that makes a big difference.
Benchmarks
Benchmarks aren’t everything and they shouldn’t be viewed as the end-all-be-all of how well a phone will perform. But they do still serve a purpose and we’ve employed a few tests to show how that performance can be visualized. Like with other phones we’ve recently reviewed, we’ve run the OnePlus 12R through benchmark tests from Geekbench and 3D Mark, in addition to our own test we call the CapCut test to show what you can expect from the phone performance-wise on a daily basis. Keep in mind that experiences can vary based on how you use the phone.
But that’s also why we’ve tried to use the benchmarks in conjunction with normal use and heavy use (such as gaming) to give a more accurate or true-to-life experience. With that said, here’s what you’re looking at. With Geekbench 6, the OnePlus 12R scored admirably for a device with last year’s chip. Coming in with a single-core score of 1,554 and a multi-core score of 4,483. That being said, the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate in comparison scored 2,051 and 5,764 respectively, and it runs on the same chipset. For the GPU test, the OnePlus 12R scored 8,481. This is once again below the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate but still great. Especially since performance feels perfectly fine when in use.
Now worth noting is that the single-core and multi-core scores for the CPU are both higher on the OnePlus 12R than they are on the OnePlus 12. While the OnePlus 12 GPU score is considerably higher at 13,766. But this isn’t surprising given it comes with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform.
As for the 3D Mark test, we once again used the Wildlife Extreme Stress Test here. The OnePlus 12R’s best loop was 3,463 while its worst loop was 2,458, with a stability of 67.5%.
Finally, there’s the CapCut test. We used the same conditions we do for other phones on this which is to export a 1-minute video from CapCut and see how long it takes the device to do this with the video being 720p and 30 frames per second. The OnePlus 12R was able to finish this task in 10.1 seconds. This is compared to 5.2 seconds on the RedMagic 9 Pro, 6.6 seconds on the ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition, 9.31 seconds on the OnePlus 12, and 12.9 seconds on the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate.
OnePlus 12R Review: Battery life and charging
Battery life is without a doubt a strong point of OnePlus devices these past few years at the very least. That hasn’t really changed with the OnePlus 12R or the Oneplus 12. Both phones are capable of lasting longer than you might expect of any phone with the specs and hardware they possess. And I was mostly pleased with how well the battery performed on the OnePlus 12R. I say mostly because it had a significant drop compared to the OnePlus 12.
This is surprising considering the OnePlus 12 has a 5,400mAh battery while the ‘R’ model has a 5,500 mAh battery. Yet the R model didn’t last as long during our battery life rundown test. The ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition even has the same exact size battery capacity of 5,500 mAh and it lasted considerably longer too.
Now to test the battery life we use the same test for every device. We load up a 24-hour video and we let it play on the phone from 100% until it gets to 1%. We do this with the phone display at full brightness as well. Once the phone hits 1% we mark the time and that’s our testing for how long the battery life will last. Now there are some other things to consider here. Video streaming isn’t the only thing people are going to do, so don’t expect this timing for everything. Your battery life results with this device will obviously change depending on what you do with the phone.
Gaming for instance can drain the battery significantly faster than watching video or streaming music. Especially if it’s a game like Genshin Impact or Honkai Star Rail. However, more people are likely to use their phones to watch videos than play games. So we felt this was a good baseline to use. All told, the OnePlus 12R lasted 12 hours (lol), 14 minutes, and 17 seconds before it hit 1%. This isn’t bad at all since this is continuous use. So if you’re using it more normally, where the phone screen is going to be off for a considerable amount of time during your day, you could easily take this phone well beyond a day before needing a charge.
The phone charges lightning-fast, but it wasn’t as fast as I was expecting
Herein lies the other beautiful part about OnePlus phones. They tend to charge up very fast. This is partly due to the charger. With the OnePlus 12R, OnePlus packed in a 100W charger. So it charges up super quickly. That being said, the OnePlus 12R didn’t charge as fast as I was expecting for supporting 100W charging. We did use the 100W charger that comes in the box too. And yet, it seemed to make only a minor difference. Here’s what I mean.
The OnePlus 12R charged from 1% to 100% in 38 minutes and 23 seconds. That’s just over 6 minutes slower than the OnePlus 12, and only marginally better than the ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition which charged up from 1% to 100% in 40 minutes and 22 seconds. The ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition also has the same size battery at 5,500mAh and charges at a max of 65W.
However, there are some other things to consider for both the OnePlus 12R’s battery life and charging speeds compared to the ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition. The OnePlus 12R has a higher-resolution display with a higher peak brightness. So of course it’s going to drain faster than the ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition and it’s not too surprising that it doesn’t charge that much faster. Still, the higher wattage on the charger, compared with the OnePlus 12’s charging speed of just a couple minutes over half an hour led me to believe the OnePlus 12R would be about the same. All-in-all, charging speeds were pretty good with this device.
Let’s say you forget to charge the phone overnight and you wake up to the battery at 1%. In under 40 minutes, you can have a full battery. That means the phone should be fully charged before you finish your morning routine, which would generally include getting out of bed, a shower, getting dressed, and eating breakfast before you walk out the door. Not too shabby.
OnePlus 12R Review: Software
This is my first time using a OnePlus device as a daily driver so I don’t have much of a frame of reference when it comes to the comparison of past OnePlus device software experiences. But I have to say, it’s quite nice on the OnePlus 12R. There are a lot of little touches that just really make the experience very enjoyable. And it’s clear that OnePlus put a lot of effort into making this a user-friendly device as much as it could. Like the OnePlus 12, the OnePlus 12R is running on Android 14 with OxygenOS 14.
So far, there are a few things that this phone offers that I really have grown to appreciate. My favorite little touch is the Edge Lighting. This isn’t something I have experienced on any other phone I’ve ever had. It’s a simple thing, but it makes all the difference.
The Edge Lighting is a feature that can be found in the “wallpapers & style” section of settings. What it does is light up both the left and right edges of the display for just a brief second or two whenever a notification comes in. This, to me, is such a nice addition to ease of use for phone alerts. It helps that it looks cool too. You can change the Edge Lighting colors as well, with options for Blue, Red, and a light Gold color. The colors aren’t customizable. Which is a shame. So you’re stuck with just these three.
Nevertheless, it’s still great. I wish the ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition had this feature. It’s just slick. Not to mention it more easily draws the eye to the phone screen when you get a message or an email. If you’re like me and you have your phone sitting next to you most days, then your peripheral vision should more easily pick up that an alert is coming in for something. The screen then pops on shortly after showing you what the notification is and you can decide whether or not you need to check it right then or leave it for later.
In addition to the Edge Lighting, the OnePlus 12R also has a really neat feature called the Shelf. This is essentially a drag-down panel for widgets with various information for things like weather, time, calories burned, and music streaming services like Spotify. You can add widgets for the IR blaster and notes too.
Another cool feature, if you like gaming, is the Live Lock feature. You can set your game as the app to be “live-locked” so that when you switch to another app for any other reason, the game stays awake as if it were always in the foreground. It’s not entirely necessary. But quite nice if you take a quick break from your game and then go back to it 10 minutes later. In some cases, with other phones, the game would simply shut down after this time and it would relaunch after you went back to it.
The OnePlus 12R also has its own game menu overlay. Just drag down from the top corner of the phone and it pops up. This will let you swap between different performance modes. Such as Pro Gamer Mode which prioritizes frame rate and diverts most resources to the game. You won’t need to use this for every game. But I found it useful for more demanding games like Genshin Impact. This panel also has quick share buttons for socials if you like to share screenshots or game clips.
OnePlus also does quick settings a little differently than most other OEMs. Everything is still there. But it doesn’t make all of the icons small or all of them big. It’s prioritizing WiFi and Bluetooth as big buttons while the other stuff is all smaller circular buttons. This is another minor detail. But it was worth mentioning because it’s not something I’ve encountered before and it’s a nice touch. All-in-all, the software experience is excellent. I didn’t think I was going to care for the UI or any of the little touches OnePlus put in. But to my pleasant surprise, it’s quite good.
OnePlus 12R Review: Camera
As my first experience with a OnePlus phone camera, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Would I like the camera? Or would the pictures come out looking less than desirable compared to other recent phones I’ve used? I was surprised at how well most images turned out. Though I have to admit, it was a little underwhelming for certain types of photos. Mostly anything where you try to use the phone’s zoom imaging. In this one particular area, the OnePlus 12R doesn’t perform as well as I was hoping.
Then again I had to remind myself that this was a $600 phone and for that price, removing the images where I would zoom in beyond 3x zoom, the pictures came out great. Now it’s important to note here that this isn’t using the same camera as the OnePlus 12. The OnePlus 12 uses a Sony LYT-808 image sensor. Whereas the OnePlus 12R uses a Sony IMX890 sensor. In short, the OnePlus 12 has the better camera. But you still get pretty good images with the R model. I think almost more important than anything else is that the camera on the OnePlus 12R launches pretty rapidly.
And this results in you being able to snap photos that you want with less fear that you might miss that perfect shot. Not only that, but it zooms in and processes images faster as well. So if you’re trying to capture something far away or grab multiple pictures, it’ll do all this fast enough that you should be able to get the images you were hoping for. In my experience, as I said, zoomed-in images aren’t the best if you zoom in too far. But other types of images, like those in portrait mode, as well as your standard images with the main “photo” mode came out great. They’re not oversaturated and have a surprising amount of light even on an overcast day with plenty of clouds.
You get good detail with closeups and colors seem to come out looking better than you’d expect for something at this price range. I think overall the camera is pretty darn good. And better than a lot of phones would be around the same price, and even better than some that would cost hundreds more. I still think I prefer the quality of images on the ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition and the Pixel 8. But both of those phones cost well over what you’ll pay here. And if you’re just looking for a really great phone that has great picture quality, you can’t go wrong here.
Should you buy the OnePlus 12R?
There are a few questions you need to ask yourself. What are you looking for in a phone, what can you do without, and what are you looking to spend? I think the OnePlus 12R strikes a very good balance of delivering top-notch performance in multiple areas while shedding the weight of features that don’t dilute the overall experience so that the price can come down. This is hard to do. Yet, OnePlus has nailed it. The OnePlus 12R features a great camera, excellent gaming performance, and a cooling system that helps keep the phone running smoothly all day.
That’s not an easy achievement. I feel confident in saying that the OnePlus 12R is the absolute best phone you can buy in this price range. If around $500-$600 is your budget, you will not find a better phone. That’s not because there aren’t other options out there that are good at this price. It’s because the OnePlus 12R simply outpaces the competition at every turn.
You should buy the OnePlus 12R if:
- You want a great camera
- You want something affordable
- Top-notch performance for mobile gaming is an important factor for you
- You want a phone that charges lightning-fast
You shouldn’t buy the OnePlus 12R if:
- You want the best mobile camera on the market
- You don’t need a new phone