OnePlus 11 5G: Not the flagship killer so many claim that it is

The OnePlus 11 5G was officially released right at the start of 2023 in January and made its way to Malaysia and Singapore a month later in February. So while this review is a few months late, it does give me more time to get a better idea of how OnePlus’ latest flagship stacks up compared to the competition.

As someone who personally uses an OPPO Find X3 Pro, I looked at the OnePlus 11 5G from the point of view of someone who is looking to upgrade from their two- to three-year-old flagship. Also, while I know many other tech reviewers have been saying that this is OnePlus’ “return to form”, I personally cannot agree or disagree with that statement as I have not reviewed any of the brand’s previous flagships and cannot draw a comparison to either the OnePlus 10 Pro or 10T.

So with that out of the way, is the OnePlus 11 5G good enough for your to spend your money on if you want to upgrade? Here is my take on OnePlus’ 2023 flagship.

Design

When it comes to the design of the OnePlus 11 5G, it is a glass sandwich with Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus on the front and Gorilla Glass 5 on the back that curves into a thin aluminium frame. Combined with its relatively light weight of just 205g, it is very comfortable to hold.

There is really very little I can say about the front of the device as it is pretty much all-screen due to the bezels being very thin with the exception of the 16-megapixel selfie shooter on the top left of the device. As for buttons, the clicky volume rockers are located on the left, while on the right you have the power button and alert slider above it. On the bottom, you will find the USB-C port and dual-SIM tray. Again, nothing out of the ordinary here.

However, the back is where my first few issues with the OnePlus 11 5G reared its head and these are very subjective concerns. Firstly, while I do like the Eternal Green colour the review unit came in, I was a little bit disappointed that it has a glossy finish instead of the frosted/matte finish that the Emerald Forest (green) variant of the OnePlus 10 Pro had. Another thing I find silly is that the Titan Black variant with that sandstone-like finish is limited to the 8GB RAM and 128GB storage version of the OnePlus 11 5G.

The more significant issue I had was with the position of the camera array. It looks really classy with its stainless steel ring and shimmering plate surrounding the cameras, but it sits on the right side of the phone and has quite a pronounced bump, so not only does it rock around when you use it when placed on a surface, half the time I was worried the glass covering the cameras would get scratched. Even when using the phone with the official Aramid Fiber Bumper case, I was still very troubled.

Last but not least, the OnePlus 11 5G does have a dust and water resistance rating of IP64, which means it can withstand light splashes. This is of course not as good as other devices with an IP68 rating but at least you do have some form of ingress protection.

Hardware

On the hardware front, the OnePlus 11 5G has pretty much all the latest tech you would expect in a 2023 flagship. It is powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC and has up to 16GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage. This review unit was the 12GB RAM-256GB storage variant, which I would say is good enough for most users.

Full disclosure, I am not a power user when it comes to smartphones as I mainly work from home and rely on them for reading articles, listening to music, catching up on social media and watching videos. The only game I play on and off is Marvel Snap. All I can say is, if you are a light to medium user, the OnePlus 11 5G will handle all your tasks without a hitch. Even when I occasionally multi-tasked while editing photos for Instagram and listening to music, the phone just breezed through everything.

If you are someone who tends to stream a lot of shows or videos using your smartphone, the OnePlus 11 5G’s 6.7-inch Fluid AMOLED display supports Dolby Vision and HDR 10+, which helps it to produce stunning images with accurate colours and good dynamic range. On top of that, it also comes with a 120Hz dynamic refresh rate which not only makes the using the phone feel smooth and snappy but also makes action scenes feel fluid. Speaking of refresh rate, the display uses LTPO 3 technology which automatically dials the refresh rate up to 120Hz or down to 1Hz depending on what you are doing to help save that little bit of battery.

Now that I have mentioned the battery, the OnePlus 11 5G has a dual-2,500mAh battery setup, which gives it a total of 5,000mAh. As my personal smartphone is now two-years-old and has “outdated” hardware, the difference in battery efficiency was very obvious. Even on days when I rarely used my smartphone, I would still have to charge it at the end of the day, with the OnePlus 11 5G however, I could easily go a day and a half without having to charge it. With that said, even on busier days when I used it for photography, GPS navigation and streaming music via Bluetooth to my in-car entertainment system, I would still have about 50% of juice left at the end of the day.

One of the best things about the OnePlus 11 5G has to be the support for 100W SuperVOOC charging and the fact that it comes with the 100W SuperVOOC charger in the box. With this charger, it only takes about 30 minutes for the battery to go from 10% to 100%, which is pretty handy especially if you just need to quickly charge it up while you hop in the shower or make yourself a cup of coffee. But if you are someone who has wireless charges strategically placed around your house or office, then the OnePlus 11 5G’s lack of wireless charging will knock its score down a peg or two.

In my humble opinion, the overall performance of the OnePlus 11 5G is up to par with the rest of the competition as throughout my time with it, it never slowed down, rarely heated up and always had battery to spare.

Software

If you have been a loyal OnePlus fan or user, the software will probably be where it irks you the most as OxygenOS is now pretty much another name for OPPO’s ColorOS. As someone who uses an OPPO Find X3 Pro, I could not tell the difference between ColorOS and OxygenOS save for some red accents here and there and a different layout elsewhere. But other than that, if you are not a fan of ColorOS, you will not be a fan of the current version of OxygenOS.

The good news though is that it still retains that very stock Android feel and unlike ColorOS, it does not feature pre-installed bloatware, which is always nice as you will not have to go through the process of uninstalling them and you still have about 220GB of storage to use.

Another plus point on the software front is that OnePlus promises that users will get about four years of major Android updates and five years of security updates. So with proper care, your OnePlus 11 5G should get updates up to Android 16 or 17.

Camera

Finally, let us talk about the OnePlus 11 5G’s triple camera setup, which does not have a macro, monochrome or microscopic lens. Instead, you get a 50MP Sony IMX890 primary sensor with Optical Image Stabilisation, a 48MP Sony IMX581 Ultrawide sensor and a 32MP Sony IMX709 telephoto sensor with 2x optical zoom. To make it even more ‘enticing’, the colour profile of the cameras has also been tuned by Hasselblad so that the photos captured have more natural colours to them.

The 50MP primary camera performs really well in daylight or well-lit conditions as it produces bright and detailed images with accurate and close to true-to-life colours. It also handled dynamic range very nicely without overexposing backlit subjects. Low-light shots however are a hit-and-miss. Sometimes, it produces nice images with good dynamic range, details, sharpness and low noise but at other times the images are oversharpened to the point details look smudged and there is very obvious lens flare. Even in slightly dim or overcast conditions, you will notice the OnePlus 11 5G struggles to actually take photos with that same accuracy to colours and details.

The 48MP Ultrawide camera shoots at 0.6x and also doubles as the macro shooter. Again, similar to the main camera it does well in bright and well-lit environments with very minor colour shifting. This goes for ultrawide and macro shots so you will have nice images if you tend to shoot in bright conditions. In low light, however, the results are pretty much the same as the main camera where it is a mixed bag.

As for the 32MP telephoto camera, when shooting at 2x optical magnification and even 5x zoom will result in decent photos but anything more than that is just pointless, so just stick to 2x and 5x if you really need to get a closer shot.

Final thoughts

All in all, for its asking price that starts at just SGD1,049/MYR3,299, the OnePlus 11 5G is a pretty dang attractive deal especially if you are looking to upgrade from a two- to three-year-old phone and want something with specs and features that rival more expensive devices with a few compromises here and there. It is not exactly the ‘flagship killer’ everyone claims it is but I guess after losing their mojo, OnePlus is somewhat back on track to getting that sweet spot.