OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite review: Cameras
Normally, I’d be the first to say that a main camera dropping megapixels isn’t the end of the world, but the 50MP lens here has the same f/1.8 aperture as its predecessor and the sensor is a little smaller (1/1.95in, compared to 1/1.67in), so it does feel like a downgrade.
Even so, captured images are reasonable enough in good lighting, with decent detail and natural colour grading. The contrast feels a little soft in places so complex scenes can lack depth, but otherwise, the camera gets the job done.
The lower pixel count means that the Nord CE 3 Lite’s ostensibly “lossless” 3x digital zoom is a thing of the past. The Nord CE 4 Lite points users to a 2x digital zoom instead, but I didn’t find this worth the price of admission; this flock of fowl taking off from the river’s edge is a smudgy mess, with little distinction between the birds themselves and the riverbank. In short, you’ll need to already be quite close to the thing you want to zoom in on, making this mode feel rather redundant.
Shooting after dark didn’t impress either, with barely any artificial brightening to speak of and a lack of detail across the board. The only good thing I can say here is that the light of the moon isn’t blooming cartoonishly.
Focus on the portrait mode can be a little hit and miss – sometimes it was crisp enough to bring my earring into focus, while other times it left me with blurry ears – but things look good when it locks on correctly, with a smooth background blur and natural skin tones.
Video is very rudimentary; the phone shoots 1080p at 30fps, with electronic stabilisation keeping the worst of the sway out of your footage. Quality is reasonable enough but both the Google Pixel 7a and the Samsung Galaxy A35 5G shoot 4K video at 30fps and 1080p at 60fps, so are superior to the Nord CE 4 Lite in this regard.
