165Hz display and big battery for $700

I know what you’re thinking, didn’t OnePlus release a new phone last month? It does. A little more than five weeks after the OP15 was announced, the company is back with the OnePlus 15R, a more affordable version of its new flagship that starts at $700 (or $200 less than its sibling). At the top, this will be a short review because most of what I said about the OnePlus 15 also applies to the OP15R. It’s a great phone that asks you to make one important compromise.

Design and display

Like the OnePlus 15, the 15R looks like the OnePlus 13s and 13T, the smaller, 6.32-inch phones the company released in India and China this past spring. I said the design of the OP15 was boring and out of the iPhone 16 Pro. The 15R did nothing to change that perception. With one less camera, the OP15R doesn’t look too different from the iPhone 12 I’ve been holding onto since 2020.

That said, I much prefer the breezy color of the 15R (the phone is also available in charcoal black) to the sandstorm shade of my OP15. We’re big fans of small phones here at Engadget, and OnePlus went with a particularly fun color scheme for its new phone. With the redesign, OnePlus has also improved the phone’s water resistance, bringing it in line with the OP15. The new handset has IP69K certification against moisture and dust, which means it can withstand hot water shot at it under pressure. Like the OP15, the 15R trades the old OnePlus Alert Slider for a new Plus Key. It works like the iPhone’s Action button, allowing you to add a shortcut to your favorite feature. For example, you can configure it to open the camera application or act as a do not disturb switch, among several other options.

Another departure from the OP15 is that the 15R has a larger 6.83-inch display, making it slightly taller than its sibling. OnePlus is marketing this as one reason consumers might choose the 15R over the OP15, but phone calls aside, there isn’t much difference between the two. Both are great, and you’ll either like that or not.

In addition to being large, the 15R screen can refresh at a speed of 165Hz in games. The two displays are also comparable in terms of resolution and brightness; both can push 1,800 nits of brightness. One difference I noticed is that the OnePlus 15 has a warmer panel, even if both phones are set to the same color space. I’ve contacted OnePlus to find out what might be causing the difference, but at this point it may be due to a quality control issue or the company’s software oversight.

Finally, OnePlus has upgraded the 15R to add an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor under the screen. This is placed nicely in the bottom third of the display, and is fast and accurate.

Battery operation

The OnePlus 15R is the first phone in North America to arrive with Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset. Not to be confused with the Snapdragon Gen 5 Elite in the OP15, this new chipset is similar to Qualcomm’s flagship system-on-a-chip but has a weaker CPU and GPU. This is evident in benchmarks like Geekbench 6 where the OP15 outperforms the OP15R. It’s not even close, either, with the OP15 delivering outstanding scores of 3,773 and 11,293, while the 15R posted modest results of 2,857 and 9,512.

In that sense, you lose a fair amount of performance, but real-world usage tells a different story. Except for a handful of games like Call of Duty: Mobile and PUBG supporting the OP15 and 15R’s 165Hz displays, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 provides more than enough muscle for most applications. Even many games (like the ones I like to play, including Diablo Immortal again League of Legends: Wild Rift), the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 is very similar.

OnePlus also didn’t skimp on the other internals of the 15R. You still get 12GB of LPDDR5X Ultra RAM and 256GB of UFS 4.1 storage. That’s the same configuration as the base OP15 model. This translates into a phone that won’t miss a beat when switching between apps and loading files like photos and videos.

The 15R has a bigger battery, coming in at 7,400mAh, up from 7,300mAh in the OP15. Basically, these two phones offer the same amount of battery life. Putting them both through Engadget’s video test, they both ran for 38 hours before their batteries died (which makes sense if the OP15R has a bigger screen). Like the OP15, the 15R comes with a OnePlus 55W SUPERVOOC charger in the box. The adapter can get the 15R from dead to 100 percent in less than an hour. If you hate charging your phone, the 15R makes that process as painless as possible, with a long-lasting battery that won’t drain for hours.

Cameras

At this point you’re probably wondering what OnePlus cut from the OP15 to make the 15R more affordable. The answer – literally – is the whole camera. The new phone lacks a telephoto camera, something you can find on its predecessor, the OnePlus 13R. And as far as I know, the remaining two cameras use the same 50-megapixel and 8MP sensors that OnePlus shipped with last year’s model. The company also hasn’t improved the glass on any camera. That leaves the selfie camera as the only place to see some change in the form of a sharper 32MP sensor and the addition of autofocus.

Unfortunately, none of the 15R’s cameras stand out. Overall, they suffer from the same set of issues that plague the OnePlus 15’s cameras. They fare well on a sunny day, but as soon as the light becomes a challenge, the 15R struggles with shadow detail, resulting in muddy photos. The more I used the OP15 and 15R, the more I came to the conclusion that OnePlus needs to go back to the drawing board with its new Detail Max Engine. It feels like it’s holding back what should, at least on paper, be solid hardware.

The software

Not much to say here other than the 15R ships with OxygenOS 16, like the OP15. OnePlus also promised to support the 15R for the same period as the OP15: four years with software updates and six years with security patches. That’s a shorter window than Google and Samsung, which both promise seven years on all their latest phones. I hope it’s something OnePlus decides to change starting with the OnePlus 16. The reason I bring that up is that the company’s version of Android is one of my favorites. OxygenOS is smooth, with animations that highlight the speed of the processor and the 15R display. The fact that the phone comes with the latest version of OxygenOS means you get access to all the company’s new AI features, including its Mind Space hub where you can save screenshots and model notes on the device to write and summarize.

Finish it

In short, the OnePlus 15R is a phone for people who don’t care about photos and videos. That’s the same conclusion I came to with OP15. If you’re a OnePlus fan, the 15R excels in all the areas you’d expect the company’s devices to put on a good show: performance, battery life and display responsiveness. Since I wasn’t too impressed with the OP15 camera, I would actually recommend the 15R over that model. For $200 off the starting price of the OP15, you’re getting a device with nearly the same capabilities as its more expensive sibling.

Compared to other phones in its price range, such as the Pixel 10 and the Galaxy S25 FE, the 15R isn’t well-rounded, and it can’t compete with those devices in terms of camera quality, but you get better performance, battery life and a display that can’t be matched.