OnePlus 10T Review 1 Year Later - Never Settle (Except For This Phone)

Hey yall, so a while back OnePlus sent over this OnePlus 10T 5G for me to check out on the channel, and now that I’ve played around with it for several months, and the price has dropped significantly… let’s take a look at it.

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I have no issues with not buying a current gen phone. In fact, many times I’ll gift my older devices to friends or family if the phone in question is still receiving security updates. Since the OnePlus 10T has dropped in price, and now offers 5 years of security updates, I think it’s a solid choice, but you’ll have to settle on a lot of design choices.

Currently, you can find a new 10T on Amazon for less than $500, I’ve seen it as low as $320, and that’s with 16 GB RAM, 256 GB storage. It came out about a year ago in two colors, and I like this brushed glass material design, though it does have a plastic frame. I noticed immediately that this phone didn’t include the OnePlus alert slider physical switch on the side of the phone, and I also noticed it’s really lightweight compared to my other phones, likely because of that plastic chassis.

There is no IP rating, a bit unfortunate given I take my phones out into the mountains a lot. I do like that there’s a screen protector preinstalled, to protect that 6.7” flat fluid AMOLED display. It’s pretty nice for entertainment and gaming at 120hz, but the resolution is 1080 x 2412, or 1080p. The aspect ratio is 20:9 so we’ve got some blank space beside normal youtube videos when rotated.

Continuing with some media - the speakers are average, nothing stands out to me there. They’re stereo, but if you really need some bass, use a good pair of earbuds.

This phone does include a charging adapter in the box and it’s 160W. The cool thing about this phone though is that it can take advantage of charging speeds of 125W here in the US (voltage restrictions exist, hence the wattage difference). Which means you could get to 100% battery from 0 in less than 20 minutes. I did test this from 0% battery and it is true. So I think that’s a huge reason why someone may be interested in this phone. That charging speed is a big deal.

10:30am 100% battery - after full day streaming 1440p video full brightness… I finally got it down to 7% battery at 10pm. Screen on time was about 10 hours for me.

There is no wireless charging in this model, though. That’s a trade off, especially if you use wireless charging often or you’ve invested in wireless chargers already.

I generally like OxygenOS, built on Android. It’s intuitive, it’s easy to understand and it’s fast. The CPU is a snapdragon 8+ gen1. Multitasking was a breeze so in terms of usability - I had a positive experience.

Both face unlock and fingerprint unlock were very quick and responsive. Weird, but I had some shimmery lotion on my hands from bath and body works but it still worked with my fingerprint, even though there was glitter on my hands. You can create much stronger pins in OxygenOS (like 6 numbers instead of 4) so I appreciate the custom security options you can add.

My speedtests were exactly what I was expecting out of this phone. It is 5G and supports WiFi 6 so getting around 250 to 300 download, 200 upload is generally how fast my phones have been in this area and this one matches those findings.

There are multiple cameras on the rear including a 50MP f 1.8 wide, an 8MP f 2.2 120 degrees ultrawide, and a 2 MP f 2.4 macro lens.

XXX show photos and discuss xxx [ note: hikawafirefly photo album ]

I took this phone with me to game night to test the cameras in a low light environment. The macro was impressive, even picking up on little droplets of water on this beer can and the details in my nail polish. The ultrawide was pretty grainy in low light, with the main lens doing a much better job at keeping details while not overcompensating. Movement was blurry and colors were off on the ultrawide as well. Zooming to 10x created pretty potato photos and y’all know how I feel about potatoes. They don’t belong in smartphones.

The best lens on here is obviously that 50mp main lens. It does a solid job of keeping colors natural, keeping details clear without oversharpening, with a natural bokeh or aperture for a professional looking blur.

The lens do a much better job overall in high brightness settings, like outside on a sunny day.

Video maxes out at 4k 60. The image stabilization is great, and here’s an example of the audio. [ show videos ]

Your selfie camera is a 16 MP f 2.4 lens, with video maxing out at 1080p 30.

XXX more demo photos and video xxx

I took some selfies at our MTG night and generally they look pretty great, though my skin tone is warmer than normal - so I come off kinda pinkish in these photos. In comparison, here are some selfies in high brightness outdoors.

Video in low light is pretty grainy. Here’s a sound test: [ show video ] Also check out how the background lighting kind of pulses when I move this card to reflect the overhead lights.

OnePlus phones include a pro mode as well, so if you do want to dabble with those settings, you do have that option and that can give you some really nice photography. [ ex pro mode photos ]

This OnePlus phone removed the telephoto lens and the partnership with Hasselblad, though Hasselblad is in the newer OnePlus 11 as well as the 10 Pro.

If you’re already a OnePlus fan, and you want to save some money and not go all out on a flagship, then yes, this is a solid choice. The biggest reason being that incredibly advanced charging speed, which we tbh don’t find in a lot of phones promoted here in the US. But it’s missing a lot of specs now in 2023 that we can find in it’s competition for the same price point. For example, the Google Pixel 7a is also less than $500 and it does have an IP67 rating for water and weather resistance. It also has wireless charging. And I’d argue that the cameras are better on the 7a, too. So this is one of those phones where you really have to weigh what matters most to you before buying it. Do you need that fast charging but don’t really care about the cameras? There ya go. Do you prefer having wireless charging? Choose a competitor. So I really can’t say “you need to buy this phone” because there are quite a few things that you’d have to “settle with”.

I will also be checking out the OnePlus 10 Pro and hopefully the OnePlus 11 shortly after that to get you up to date on the newest from OnePlus.

If you have a hot take, comment below. If there are other sub $500 phones you’d like me to review, leave a note! Thank you again for subscribing, bye yall!