OnePlus 13 Review: Flagship Killer Phone Takes On CES For The Win
OnePlus 13 Reception and Sound Quality
The OnePlus 13 features a pair of quality stereo speakers that sound loud and clear. But, unlike its predecessor – and most of the competition (Apple and Samsung) – Dolby Atmos is missing here. As you’d expect, there’s no headphone jack, but the OnePlus 13 works fine with both wired analog and digital USB Type-C accessories. It also supports LHDC, LDAC, and aptX HD codecs for wireless audio over Bluetooth.
OnePlus 13 Performance
Under the hood, the OnePlus 13 boasts Qualcomm’s latest flagship SoC, the Snapdragon 8 Elite. This state-of-the-art new chip is manufactured using TSMC’s 3nm process, and features Qualcomm’s new Oryon CPU cores for improved performance and efficiency. It’s paired with either 12 or 16GB of LPDDR5x RAM, and either 256 or 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage. Of course, there’s no microSD support.Day-to-day, the OnePlus 13 simply feels telepathically quick. Everything is super responsive, no matter what you’re doing. It’s almost as if this handset is able to anticipate your very next move and stay ahead of you. From our standard collection of communication, productivity, and social media apps, to our favorite games and entertainment apps, the OnePlus 13 juggled everything we tossed at it without batting an eye.
As you can see below, this awesome subjective experience was backed up by our benchmarks. Objectively, the OnePlus 13 is one of the fastest devices we’ve recently tested – especially in terms of UI and graphics performance. And when it comes to sustained workloads, it managed a stability score of 92.1% after twenty iterations of 3DMark’s Wild Life stress test. That’s better than ASUS' ROG Phone 9 Pro.
OnePlus 13 Geekbench Results
GeekBench is a cross-platform benchmark that simulates real-world processing workloads in image processing and particle physics calculation scenarios. We tested all of the smartphones featured here with GeekBench's single and multi-core workloads.
GeekBench is a purely synthetic benchmark and can be heavily targeted for optimization. Regardless, the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor delivers a notable improvement in single and multi-threaded performance over previous generation Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-equipped Android flagships.
OnePlus 13 PCMark For Android Results
UL's PCMark for Android is an excellent suite of tests if you want to benchmark a wide range of tasks on a handset -- things like image and video editing, as well as lighter-duty, everyday workloads such as email and web browsing. When you see the test running live, it's clear the scripted application tests are carefully selected and tuned to make use of the mobile platform in a very controlled way.
Here the OnePlus 13 shows similar performance to previous generation models, slotting just below Samsung's Galaxy S24 Ultra.
OnePlus 13 AnTuTu 8 Benchmarks
AnTuTu’s latest benchmark returns a number of metrics ranked with somewhat nebulous scores, rather than frame rates or time to complete. Here we're running the latest version of AnTuTu across multiple Android devices. AnTuTu returns four top level performance results which are all included here: CPU, RAM, 3D, UX (or User Experience), along with a total score.
According to AnTuTu, the OnePlus 13 offers an notable increase in performance vs. previous generation Android handsets, slotting below ASUS' ROG Phone 9 Pro in X-Mode in terms of its overall score.
OnePlus 13 Graphics And Gaming Benchmarks Results
Now, let's take a look at how the OnePlus 13 stacks up in GFXBench, which has been one of the standard mobile graphics/gaming performance benchmarks for years. To ensure that display refresh (v-sync) and resolution aren't limiting factors, we're comparing off-screen test results here. GFXBench tests OpenGL ES graphics workloads and we're specifically testing OpenGL ES 2.0 and 3.0, as well as Vulkan in the latest iterations.
Now we're seeing the kind of performance improvement we expected from Snapdragon 8 Elite-equipped devices like the OnePlus 13. This phone clearly beats Snapdragon 8 Gen3-powered devices like Samsung's Galaxy S24 Ultra in these graphically rich, gaming-oriented benchmarks.
OnePlus 13 3DMark Sling Shot Benchmark Tests
UL's 3DMark Sling Shot is a newer benchmark module that's been added to the 3DMark mobile suite. Unlike previous gen 3DMark mobile tests, Sling Shot is a much more advanced OpenGL ES 3.1 and Metal API-based benchmark that employs more advanced rendering techniques, like volumetric lighting, particle illumination, multiple render targets, instanced rendering, uniform buffers and transform feedback.
3DMark Sling Shot Extreme Benchmark
We're running this test in off-screen mode once again to remove
display resolution differences from the equation. This lets us compare
cross-platform results more reliably.
Here we see an improvement to the overall score over Snapdragon 8 Gen-3-equipped flagships. The OnePlus 13 performed extremely well in this test, slotting right below ASUS' ROG Phone 9 Pro in X-Mode.
Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold 3DMark Wild Life Benchmark Tests
3DMark Wild Life is the latest cross-platform test from UL. Its
primary purpose is to measure GPU performance across platforms, and two
distinct tests are available. The standard Wild Life test is designed to
give feedback on how a game performs over a short period of time. With
mobile games, people typically play in brief spurts when they find some
free time; be it on the bus, on the subway, or a quick battle royale
session over lunch break. The 3DMark Wild Life Stress Test, on the other
hand, shows how a device performs over a longer stretch of time, and
takes note of performance degradation that might crop up due to
increased heat levels and throttling.
3DMark Wild Life is a significantly more taxing graphics benchmark
that employs cutting-edge mobile game engine technologies to deliver
impressive visuals -- as you can see in the screen shot above.
Here the Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered OnePlus 13 delivers an improvement in performance versus the fastest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-equipped devices, and almost matches ASUS' ROG Phone 9 Pro, a gaming phone that's also powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
Fortunately, the OnePlus 13 does not exhibit the kind of excessive
throttling we experienced with last year's OnePlus 12 in the
Wild Life Stress test, managing an excellent stability score of 92.1%
OnePlus 13 Additional Features And Battery Life
The rest of the specs include sub-6GHz 5G, CAT 20 LTE, eSIM support, dual-band WiFi 7 (802.11be), Bluetooth 5.4 (LE), NFC, and dual-band A-GPS/ GLONASS / BeiDou / Galileo / QZSS / NavIC positioning. The OnePlus 13 also features the usual array of sensors, plus a speedy ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner alongside reliable face unlock. A linear vibration motor rounds things up, and provides excellent haptics.
With a massive 6000mAh battery on board (split into two 3000mAh silicon-carbon cells for fast charging), the OnePlus 13 easily lasts a day of heavy use on a full charge – and almost two days of light use. This was confirmed in our PCMark Work 3.0 battery test, where the OnePlus 13 managed a score of 15 hours and 54 minutes. In other words, the OnePlus 13 delivers impressive battery life no matter how hard you push it.
Like the OnePlus 12 last year, the OnePlus 13 supports SuperVOOC 100W fast wired charging (80W in regions with 120V power, like the US), alongside USB-PD. It also features AirVOOC 50W fast wireless charging (Qi-compatible). And while the competition no longer provides a charger in the box, the OnePlus 13 ships with a 100W SuperVOOC brick. There are even optional magnetic cases and 50W AirVOOC magnetic charger.
Next up: software, AI, and review verdict...
