Oneplus 6

Once again, OnePlus has delivered the best smartphone for getting top-tier features at a sensible price.

- Nathan Spendelow

‘THE SPEED YOU NEED’. The focus group that combined those four words to create the OnePlus 6’s vague, unfocused tagline haven’t done the Chinese firm’s eighth smartphone justice. Suggesting that the OnePlus 6 only offers the processing power that’s absolutely necessary, and no more, well, is definitely underselling it.

In reality, this is OnePlus’s beefiest smartphone by a wide margin. As the first OnePlus phone to be powered by Qualcomm’s latest (and fastest) octa-core Snapdragon 845 processor, the OnePlus 6 reprises a familiar role: that of the flagship-killer, a smartphone capable of competing with the best of the best without the enormous price to match.

As such, the OnePlus 6 starts at £469 for the 6GB RAM/64GB storage model, going up to £519 for 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage – the model we reviewed – and £569 for 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Even at the upper level, this still makes the OnePlus 6 the cheapest Snapdragon 845-equipped phone in the shops: Sony’s Xperia XZ2 costs £599 SIM-free, while the Huawei P20 Pro (Shopper 366) makes an even bigger dent in your finances at £799.

QUITE A STRETCH

Of course, it wasn’t that long ago you could opt for the even cheaper OnePlus 5T (Shopper 361). What, then, is new with the OnePlus 6, besides the processor, and is it worth upgrading to from a six-month-old phone?

The first thing you might notice, especially if you place both devices next to each other, is that the screen has grown from 6in on the 5T to 6.3in on the 6, which has necessitated a slight increase in the phone’s overall size. This might not sound like a drastic difference, but when you factor in the increased thickness and weight, you’re looking at a smartphone that isn’t quite as pocketable as last year’s model.