OnePlus 9 Pro: Excellent Performance, Display, and Camera

The OnePlus 9 Pro smartphone delivers a streamlined flagship experience to T-Mobile and Verizon subscribers, finally catching up to its competitors. The phone itself is light in the hand, and the user experience is weightless as well.

- SASCHA SEGAN AND STEVEN WINKELMAN

The cameras take knockout photos in pretty much all conditions, and the integrated fast charging is the best we’ve seen. The Galaxy S21 Ultra scores a bit better in our battery and wireless radio testing, it works with Samsung’s excellent S Pen stylus, and its camera offers killer optical zoom, so it just edges out the 9 Pro to be our Editors’ Choice among flagship smartphones. Still, the OnePlus 9 Pro is outstanding. If you want a top-notch, loaded phone that makes your heart sing, you’re now spoiled for choice.

THE ONEPLUS PROMISE IS FINALLY REALIZED

OnePlus was once a company that made just one great phone at a time. Now, it has a full line of phones at T-Mobile (and providers such as Google Fi, Metro, and Mint Mobile that use T-Mobile’s networks): the OnePlus 9 Pro ($969.99), the OnePlus 9 ($729.99 ), the OnePlus Nord N10 ($299.9), and the OnePlus Nord N100 ($179.99). They all share the OnePlus philosophy—speedy, elegant software and a streamlined physical design.

Cameras have always been the one area in which OnePlus tended to fall behind Samsung and Apple, so OnePlus made a deal with Hasselblad for color tuning and bought a new sensor from Sony. As a result, the 9 Pro’s camera is mostly on par with the latest from Samsung, slightly short only on optical zoom.

The OnePlus 9 offers similar overall performance to the 9 Pro but steps down a bit on screen, camera, and radio quality, and it doesn’t integrate super-fast wireless charging. If you don’t mind those downgrades, you can save $240 and get an even smaller and lighter phone. See our review of the OnePlus 9 for all the details.