A 165Hz display and big battery for $700

I know what you’re thinking, didn’t OnePlus release a new phone last month? This is what happened. A little over five weeks after the OP15 announcement, the company is back with the OnePlus 15R, a more affordable version of its new flagship that starts at $700 (which is $200 less than its sibling). Right off the bat, this will be a shorter review because most of what I said about the OnePlus 15 also applies to the OP15R. It’s a great phone that requires you to make a pretty big compromise.

OnePlus / Engadget

The OnePlus 15R has many of the same strengths as the more expensive OP15, but saves $200 by compromising on cameras.

Benefits

• Fast processor
• Large, fast-charging battery
• Bright and vibrant OLED with a 165Hz refresh rate
• Available in a pretty mint color

Disadvantages

• One fewer camera than last year’s OP13R
• The remaining cameras aren’t great
• Only four years of software support

$700 at OnePlus

Design and display

Like the OnePlus 15, the 15R resembles the OnePlus 13s and 13T, a pair of smaller 6.32-inch phones that the company launched in India and China last spring. I said the OP15’s design was boring and derivative of the iPhone 16 Pro. 15R has done nothing to change this opinion. With one less camera, the OP15R isn’t much different from the iPhone 12 I’ve been holding on to since 2020.

That said, I like the breeze mint color of the 15R (the phone also comes in charcoal black) more than the sandstorm shade of my OP15. We’re big fans of minty phones here at Engadget, and OnePlus went for a particularly nice color shade with its new phone. With the redesign, OnePlus has also improved the waterproofing of the phone, bringing it in line with the OP15. The new handset is IP69K certified against moisture and dust, meaning it can withstand heated water sprayed under pressure. Like the OP15, the 15R swaps OnePlus’ old Alert slider for a new Plus key. It works like the iPhone’s Action button, allowing you to add a shortcut to a preferred feature. For example, you can set it to open the Camera app or act as a Do Not Disturb toggle, among a few other options.

One difference from the OP15 is that the 15R has a larger 6.83-inch screen, making it slightly larger than its sibling. OnePlus is marketing this as one of the reasons why buyers might choose the 15R over the OP15, but holding the phones side by side, there’s not much difference between the two. They’re both big, and you’ll either like it or you won’t.

In addition to being large, the 15R’s screen can refresh quickly at 165Hz in games. The two screens 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 when both phones are set to the same color space. I contacted OnePlus to find out what could be causing this disparity, but for now it may be due to a quality control issue or oversight of the company’s software.

One more thing, OnePlus has upgraded the 15R to add an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor under the display. This is placed in a nice spot towards the bottom third of the screen, and it’s fast and accurate.

Performance and battery

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

From this perspective you lose a lot of performance, but real-world usage tells a different story. Apart from the handful of games such as Call of Duty: Mobile and PUBG Supporting the 165Hz displays of the OP15 and 15R, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 offers more than enough power for the majority of applications. Even for most games (like the ones I like to play, including Diablo Immortal And League of Legends: Wild Rift), the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 is a great match.

OnePlus hasn’t skimped on the 15R’s other internals either. You still get 12GB of LPDDR5X Ultra RAM and 256GB of UFS 4.1 storage. This is the same configuration as the base model of the OP15. This results in a phone that doesn’t miss a beat when switching between apps and loading files like images and videos.

The 15R has a slightly larger battery, 7,400 mAh, compared to 7,300 mAh on the OP15. In practice, the two phones offer the same autonomy. Putting them through Engadget’s CG test, they both ran for 38 hours before their batteries died (which makes sense given that the OP15R has a larger screen). Like the OP15, the 15R comes with the OnePlus 55W SUPERVOOC charger in the box. The adapter can take the 15R from dead to 100% in less than an hour. If you hate charging your phone, the 15R makes that process as painless as possible, with a battery that lasts a long time and won’t be out of the socket 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 a whole camera. The new phone does not have a telephoto lens, which could be found on its predecessor, the OnePlus 13R. And as far as I can tell, the remaining two cameras use the same 50-megapixel, 8-MP sensors that OnePlus shipped on last year’s model. The company also hasn’t improved the glass on either camera. This leaves the selfie camera as the only area to see changes 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 gets a little difficult, the 15R struggles with shadow detail, resulting in muddy images. The more I use both the OP15 and 15R, the more I come to the conclusion that OnePlus needs to go back to the drawing board with its new Detail Max Engine. It feels like this is holding back what should, at least on paper, be solid material.

Software

There’s not much to say here other than the 15R ships with OxygenOS 16, just like the OP15. OnePlus also promised to support the 15R for the same length of time as the OP15: four years with software updates and six years with security patches. That’s a shorter window than Google and Samsung, both of which promise seven years on all their latest phones. I hope this is something OnePlus decides to change starting with the OnePlus 16. The reason I’m bringing this up is because the company’s version of Android is one that I really like. OxygenOS is sleek, with animations that showcase the speed of the 15R’s processor and screen. The fact that the phone comes with the latest version of OxygenOS means you also have access to all of the company’s latest AI features, including its Mind Space hub where you can save screenshots and notes for an on-device model to transcribe and summarize.

Conclude

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

Compared to other phones in its price range, such as the Pixel 10 and Galaxy S25 FE, the 15R isn’t as fully featured and can’t compete with those devices in terms of camera quality, but you get much better performance, better battery life, and a screen they can’t match.