| Pros | Cons |
| Silky smooth 90Hz screen | Average battery |
| Brilliant performance | No water resistance rating |
| Good cameras | No wireless charging |
The OnePlus 7T has almost everything you'd expect from a flagship and then some, all at a remarkably low price. There are a few omissions, but on the whole this is a class-leading handset.
OnePlus has long been known for selling top-tier phones for a fraction of what you’d usually expect to pay, and while its latest true flagship (the OnePlus 7T Pro) pushes prices a bit higher, the OnePlus 7T is every bit as good value as earlier handsets in the range.
Not only is it good value, it’s also packed full of high-end tech, even more so than past non-Pro handsets from the brand, and it actually comes close to matching the OnePlus 7 Pro and 7T Pro in a lot of ways.
However, the OnePlus 7T isn’t quite perfect, even at the price you’re paying, so read on to find out where it does well, where it doesn’t, and how good it is overall.
The OnePlus 7T has a 6.55-inch 1080 x 2400 Fluid AMOLED screen. So it’s big, and its use of AMOLED ensures superior visuals to most LCD displays. The only slight chink in its armour is the resolution, which while reasonable isn’t a match for most top-end phones.
It comes in at 402 pixels per inch, while the Samsung Galaxy S10 for example has a 1440 x 3040 screen with 550 pixels per inch. The OnePlus 7T Pro also has it beat in terms of resolution.
That said, this is a difference you’re unlikely to notice unless you place them side by side, and even then you’ll need to look quite closely.
And the OnePlus 7T’s screen has plenty more going for it, including HDR10+ support and a 90Hz refresh rate, the latter of which does give it an advantage over most flagships, as the majority of handsets have just a 60Hz refresh rate, but the higher rate here can make scrolling and other interactions feel smoother.
The OnePlus 7T might not have the truly all-screen look of the OnePlus 7T Pro, but it still looks good, with a mostly screen-filled front, broken up only by a tiny teardrop notch, while around the back there’s frosted glass.
It looks and feels good and high-end, if a little ordinary, and with a circular camera enclosure that’s perhaps larger than it needs to be.
What the OnePlus 7T doesn’t have is any kind of water resistance rating. This is a cost-cutting measure that has also applied to the pricier Pro models, but it’s still a disappointment. That said, OnePlus does claim its phones have some amount of water resistance, so they’re likely to survive a spill or a splash – just dry them off quick.
There’s almost too much power inside the OnePlus 7T, as it has both 8GB of RAM and a cutting-edge Snapdragon 855 Plus chipset, which is faster than the chipsets used in the vast majority of high-end phones, such as the Huawei P30 Pro.
As such nothing should slow this phone down. Even high-end games and extensive multi-tasking are handled with ease. It’s not quite the most powerful phone on the planet, but at the time of writing it comes close.
While this much power may be overkill for many users, it does help ensure the phone is future-proofed, so it’s more likely to continue performing well a couple of years down the line.
You get three rear cameras on the OnePlus 7T. There’s a 48MP f/1.6 main lens with optical image stabilisation, a 12MP f/2.2 telephoto lens with 2x optical zoom, and a 16MP f/2.2 ultra-wide lens.
That’s a versatile setup, especially given what the OnePlus 7T costs, and while it doesn’t quite rival the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus or Huawei Mate 30 Pro for either number or quality of lenses, it’s not a million miles away, with all three lenses able to do their jobs capably.
The phone also supports 4K video recording and there’s an average but adequate 16MP f/2.0 selfie cam on the front. This lacks the 7T Pro’s pop-up party trick, but as a result it’s faster to launch and more viable for facial recognition.
There are two features that are worth highlighting in particular in the OnePlus 7T. One is its in-screen fingerprint scanner, a feature we’re starting to see ever more often but still mostly just on high-end phones. It’s fairly fast here and being in-screen means it doesn’t take up any visible space.
The OnePlus 7T also runs Android 10 and it’s a near-stock version, which is always a good thing, as it means there’s little bloat. OnePlus has altered the interface in some ways, using its OxygenOS, but most of the changes are either for the better or easily ignored.
There are for example some gesture controls you can use when the screen is off to launch apps and features, plus there’s Zen Mode, which locks off most of the functionality of your phone for a period of time to help you get less distracted by it.
The OnePlus 7T has a 3,800mAh battery, which is a respectable but not massive size. It doesn’t perform any better or worse than you might expect, getting you roughly a day of life with moderate use.
The charging is worth mentioning though, as this thing can be juiced up very quickly and with minimal heat generation, though there’s no wireless charging.
The OnePlus 7T comes with 128GB or 256GB of storage, so there’s plenty of space even though there’s no microSD card slot, and it has NFC and Bluetooth 5.0.
The OnePlus 7T is a brilliant phone and one which could just about get away with costing hundreds of pounds more than it does. Given the actual price though it’s near perfect and has most other similarly priced phones comfortably beaten.
While there are a few niggles – the lack of a water resistance rating, no microSD card slot or wireless charging, and ‘just’ a Full HD+ screen – they’re all easy to live with, especially when everything else about the OnePlus 7T is so good.
