OnePlus 7T Pro review: excellent hardware and software combine on one of the phones of the year

The OnePlus 7T Pro is the latest and greatest flagship from OnePlus, packed with top-tier specs and a stylish design that builds on the OnePlus 7 Pro – making it a serious rival to the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S10 and the Pixel 4 at the top-end of the Android market.

We've spent a few days in the company of the OnePlus 7T Pro, testing out the camera, battery life, software, and everything else that comes together to make a smartphone. Here's why we think it's one of the best smartphones that money can buy in 2020.

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The OnePlus release schedule has been a little hard to follow this year – the first "7" flagships appeared back in May, the standard OnePlus 7 and the more powerful Pro. The OnePlus 7T arrived in September, shortly followed by the OnePlus 7T Pro upgrade.

After all of those various handset launches, this is now the most powerful and most expensive OnePlus phone of the year. Check the widgets on this page for the latest online deals on the OnePlus 7T Pro, but at launch, you're looking at a retail price of around £700.

OnePlus 7T Pro review: design and screen

OnePlus has always made stylish-looking handsets, since way back in 2014 when it first got started with the OnePlus One. That design heritage shines through in the OnePlus 7T Pro, from the 6.67-inch, 1,440 x 3,120 pixel, 19.5:9 aspect ratio, AMOLED screen, to the pop-up motorised selfie camera.

That pop-up camera – which appears and disappears automatically as you switch in and out of selfie mode – means no need for a notch on the front display. With its minimal bezels and slightly curved edges, it's a great phone to look at, and is likely to turn heads when you pull it out.

Around the back we like the positioning of the triple-lens rear camera, and the slight gradient of the haze blue colour (your only colour option with the OnePlus 7T Pro) looks fantastic, too. It may have been playing catch up for a few years but there's no doubt that OnePlus is now helping lead the way in smartphone design.

The OnePlus 7T Pro feels smooth and comfortable in the hand, though the size of the screen means you really need two hands to operate it. In terms of the display, it's crisp and bright to look at, with excellent sharpness and contrast, and a 90Hz refresh rate for super-smooth scrolling and gaming.

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OnePlus 7T Pro review: camera and battery

If there has been a key weakness in OnePlus handsets of years gone by, it's been in the camera, but the phone maker has caught up here, too: the OnePlus 7T Pro takes excellent photos in almost every lighting situation. You don't need to worry about the triple-lens 48MP + 8MP + 16MP rear camera letting you down at all.

Low light can be a problem, as it can for every phone camera, but the Nightscape mode really helps here – provided you can keep the phone steady for a second or two. It pulls out a lot more colour and detail, even if it's not quite on the same level as the night modes on the iPhones and Pixels of this world.

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The OnePlus 7T Pro camera can occasionally come up with a dud or react slowly to the push of the shutter button, but overall we came away very impressed with the images it can capture. The 3x optical zoom and 0.5x ultra-wide angle lens gives you a lot of flexibility, too. Check out a few samples above – but bear in mind they were taken on a grey, drab day in the north of England, so that's reflected in the shots.

As for the battery, again the OnePlus 7T Pro scores highly. Our one-hour-of-Netflix test (at full brightness and 50 percent volume) dropped the battery from 100 percent to 90 percent, so you should get a good 10 hours at least of video streaming. In medium day-to-day use, we usually found ourselves with a good 20-25 percent or so still in the tank (without any special battery management tricks deployed).

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OnePlus 7T Pro review: other specs and features

The OnePlus 7T Pro boasts some of the best smartphone specs you're going to come across this year: a Snapdragon 855 Plus processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage (there's no memory card slot for expanding that unfortunately). Some more storage configurations would be nice, but we can live without them.

It all adds up to a phone that blazes through any task that you put in front of it – and which should carry on in the same manner for several years to come. We tested the OnePlus 7T Pro out with all the usual apps, plus some demanding games, and there was never even a hint of lag.

We're big fans of OxygenOS, the software that OnePlus develops itself, and which here is based on Android 10. It's clean and tidy, bloat-free, and has a design approach that even Google could take some tips from. OnePlus phones have been quick to get Android updates in the past too, so that's something else you don't have to worry about.

The usual OnePlus omissions are omitted once again: no wireless charging and no waterproofing. You're going to have to wait another year (or maybe more) for a OnePlus phone that you can plonk on a wireless charging mat, or dunk in a tank of water without causing any damage.

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OnePlus 7T Pro review: price and verdict

OnePlus doesn't dramatically undercut the prices of the major flagships in quite the way that it used to, but the OnePlus 7T Pro is still going to come in cheaper than a lot of other phones at the premium end of the market in 2019. You don't have to make many compromises either – basically just live without wireless charging and waterproofing.

You can make the case that the cameras on the back of the Samsung, Google, and Apple flagships are better than the one on the back of the OnePlus 7T Pro, but there's really not too much in it any more – you definitely shouldn't discount the OnePlus 7T Pro because you're worried about the camera. That selfie camera pop-up might not be to everyone's taste, but we're fine with it.

From the excellent, vivid screen, to the quality of the OxygenOS software, to the super-fast charging that gets you from zero to more than two-thirds full in half an hour, to the impressive specs packed inside this phone... it's a fantastic all-round package.

At around the same price as the Pixel 4, we'd be tempted to recommend this over Google's flagship – maybe not in terms of camera or the on-board software, but in terms of the design and the specs. It's another impressive offering from OnePlus, and if you find the price too steep, there's always the OnePlus 7T.

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