OnePlus 6 Review UK

OnePlus 6 Review: Overview & Price

In this OnePlus 6 review, we go over everything you need to know about the phone and we even showcase the best OnePlus 6 contract deals here in the UK.

The OnePlus 6 phone is a great all-rounder and is perfect for everyday use, and because it is not as highly sought after as Apple or Samsung it has a very fair price tag of around £600 in the UK.

O2 has exclusive rights to sell this phone in the UK meaning networks such as EE, Vodaphone and 3 do not sell this phone on contract.

The OnePlus 6 specs speak for themselves, the phone offers high power performance for a lower cost than what you would get with the likes of Apple.

In a world where we are seeing £800, £900 and even £1000 smartphones, the OnePlus 6 really is superb value for money and gives the customer the best balance when it comes to the price tag and overall quality of the phone.

Check out the best OnePlus 6 deals here…

OnePlus 6 Review: Design & Display

The OnePlus 6 design is cool and looks good, the all-glass design which is different to the previous OnePlus 3 uses Gorilla Glass 5 which is extremely strong so you can expect not to smash the phone so easily.

OnePlus also provide a transparent silicon cover in the box for a little extra grip and protection when using the handset.

OnePlus 6 an alert slider which has switched sides, it is easily confused with the power button on the first couple of uses.

It feels like a very solid phone, it has a headphone jack, dual sim card tray and it even has a subtle S shape. Although OnePlus have sacrificed some features of the phone to keep the cost to a minimum.

The phone has no expandable storage and with it being dual sim there is no microSD expansion, they have really dipped out on the speaker which we think is easily the worst part of the hardware as it only has one single downward-facing speaker.

With the speaker being on the bottom it is very easy to block the speaker accident with your hand when watching a video so this can take some getting used to.

So the 1080p Optic AMOLED display which is 6.3″ corner to corner, this time with a small notch at the top.

The resolution is 2280 x 1080 and very beneficial for performance and battery life as the phone is not being pushed to its limits.

The tagline for the phone is ‘The speed you need‘ and it certainly does delivery with having the Snapdragon 845 chipset.

Everything is super smooth when running the phone and I did not notice any lag even when gaming or watching high-resolution videos, although the display may not be as sharp as the Google Pixel 2’s or the Samsung Note 9’s it is still very good.

The screen can get really bright and has multiple display modes for different colour profiles which allow different types of saturation.

See Related:

*OnePlus 6T Review*
*OnePlus 7 Pro Review*
*Google Pixel 3 Review*
*Huawei P20 Lite Review*

Although the phone has a notch at the top of the screen, it has a display setting which allows you to hide the notch at any time if you don’t want to see it.

The notch doesn’t cut off youtube videos unlike the iPhones and can only be really seen if you allow certain apps to have the full-screen mode.

They claim the phone is water resistance although the phone doesn’t carry an IP rating to guarantee that it will survive when submerged in water, so be careful with this thing when at the beach.

Although OnePlus says its provided with real-world protection for more likely scenarios of a rain shower or dropping your phone into the toilet but quickly pulling it back out again.

Overall the OnePlus 6 design is slick, easy to use and feels great in your hand. The design aspect is one of the best parts of this phone.

OnePlus 6 Review: Performance

When it comes to the OnePlus 6 specs, we were not disappointed. The OnePlus 6 offers some incredibly high specification that handles everything you throw at the phone with ease.

OnePlus has made the fingerprint reader on the back a little smaller than the full circle, the surface area of the reader is small.

The phone doesn’t have wireless charging although it does have a glass back which we think is strange considering the main reason for a glass back is to allow wireless charging.

However, the phone has a 3300mAh battery which allows for easily 6 plus hours of screen on time, even though the phone has a 1080p AMOLED display, Snapdragon 845 with 8GB of RAM, the phone will easily last you all day with average use.

The phone does, however, have dash-charging which is extremely fast anyway so although it is not wireless it still goes 0-100 real quick!

The OnePlus has a pretty cool gaming mode which when turned on doesn’t let any notifications interrupt your gameplay.

We used to have this problem a lot of the time when playing Temple Run, but on this phone, this is not an issue at all.

Facial recognition on the OnePlus 6 phone is super fast and the phone offers both a 128GB or 256GB variant and 6 or 8GB of RAM which is certainly enough horsepower to keep everything running smoothly.

The phone is close to stock Android and has Oxygen OS, it is very clean and has few extra things such as the shelf, which puts a lot of useful information at your fingertips.

There are new gestures but they aren’t very responsive and smooth, unlike Apple iPhones.

OnePlus 6 Review: Camera

The camera setup on this phone is pretty good and is certainly good value for money considering the price tag of the phone.

It has a 16MP primary camera with optical stabilisation and an f/1.7 aperture, this has been increased by 19% enabling the phone to pull more light into the shot and perform better.

It has slow noise and gives a lot of detail, the colours are good as is the dynamic range.

The second camera is a 20MP lens which is used primarily for portrait mode, its pretty good but overall it doesn’t take photos like the high-end flagships but again it’s certainly a great setup for the price.

This being said none of the photos we took with the phone really stopped us in our tracks and there is a clear difference between the OnePlus 6’s shots and say the Huawei P20 Pro.

This is mainly because unlike a lot of the higher-end phones there is no AI technology in the OnePlus 6 and it will not automatically adjust the settings of the phone to the scene that you take the shot of, giving a more natural image overall.

OnePlus 6 Review: Battery Life

OnePlus have done a great job with the battery too as the phone is packing a 3300mAh battery which you can expect to last you a full day easily even when using the phone intensely.

The battery is also 10% more efficient than its predecessor and the phone also has a pretty cool power saving mode to really squeeze the most out of that last 10%.

One thing we really loved about this phone is that it supports Dash Charge, this comes standard straight out the box and charges the phone to 60% charge in just 30 minutes.

Which is incredible and really gives you that extra peace of mind as you can just place it on charge for half an hour before you go out and you’re good to go.

OnePlus 6 Review: Summary

So overall the OnePlus 6 phone is a great all-rounder phone, it is knocking at the door of those £800 flagships, it has great storage, super-fast charging and good camera setup.

This is a great all-rounder phone for a very fair price, this phone would suit the needs of someone looking for a good camera, lots of storage and someone who likes to game a lot on their mobile device.

With 128GB or 256GB storage you can store as much photos, videos and download as much apps as you like.

The OnePlus 6 specs are extremely impressive, plenty of power for gaming and handling everyday tasks with ease.

OnePlus 6 (Dual SIM) 128 GB Android 8.1 Oreo/Oxygen UK Version SIM-Free Smartphone - Midnight Black 

Although the speaker isn’t great and it doesn’t have an IP rating the phone itself is themed around value for money, and as you have probably gathered by now this thing certainly gives you tons of value.

It’s not hard to recommend this phone as its a great price and comes with some great customisable options, great for gaming and has a beautiful display.

The OnePlus 6 design is simply stunning, looks and feels great in your hand and we got lots of people asking what phone we were using when bringing it into work for the week.

If you’re looking for a smartphone which has the best of both then the OnePlus 6 could be the phone for you.

You can check out the best OnePlus 6 deals here in the UK at the top of this post.

OnePlus 6 Review: Full Specification

Launch: 2018, May

Body:

• Dimension: 155.7 x 75.4 x 7.8mm (6.13 x 2.97 x 0.31 inches)
• Weight: 177g (6.24 oz)
• Build: Front/rear glass, aluminium frame
• Sim: Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)
  – Splash resistant

Display:

• Type: Optic AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colours
• Size: 6.28 inches, 98.4 cm² (-83.8% screen-to-body ratio)
• Resolution: 1080 x 2280 pixels, 19:9 ratio (-402 PPI density)
• Multitouch: Yes
• Protection: Corning Gorilla Glass 5
  – DCI-P3
  – Oxygen OS 5.1.11

Platform:

• OS: Android 8.1 (Oreo)
• Chipset: Qualcomm SDM845 Snapdragon 845
• CPU: Octa-core (4×2.8 GHz Kryo 385 Gold & 4×1.7 GHz Kryo 385 Silver)
• GPU: Adreno 630

Memory:

• Card slot: No
• Internal: 128/256 GB, 8GB RAM or 64GB, 6GB RAM

Camera:

• Primary: 16MP, f/1.7, 25mm, 1/2.6″, OIS, PDAF
  20MP (16 MP effective), f/1.7″, 25mm, 1/2.8″, PDAF
• Features: Dual-LED flash, HDR, panorama
• Video: 2160p@30/60fps, 1080p@30/60/240fps, 720p@480fps, Auto HDR
• Secondary: 16MP, f/2.0, 25mm, 1/3
• Features: Auto-HDR
• Video: 1080p (gyro-EIS)

Sound:

• Alert Types: Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones
• Loudspeaker: Yes
• 3.5mm Jack: Yes
  – Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
  – Dirac HD sound

Comms:

• WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, WiFi Direct, DLNA, hotspot
• Bluetooth: 5.0, A2DP, LE, aptX HD
• GPS: Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO
• NFC: Yes
• Radio: No
• USB: 2.0, Type-C 1.0 reversible connector

Features:

• Sensors: Fingerprint (rear-mounted), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass
• Messaging: SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, IM, Push Email
• Browser: HTML5
• More:
  – Fast battery charging 5V 4A 20W (Dash Charge)
  – DivX/Xvid/MP4/H.265 player
  – MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV/FLAC player
  – Document viewer
  – Photo/video editor

Battery:

• Non-removable Li-Pro 3300 mAh battery

Misc:

• Colours: Midnight Black, Mirror Black, Silk White, Amber Red
• Price: As seen in the above post

Tests:

• Performance: Basemark OS ||: 5160 / Basemark OS 2.0 ||: 4440 / Basemark X: 44229
• Display: Contrast ratio: Infinite (nominal), 4.321 (sunlight)
• Camera: Photo / Video
• Loudspeaker: Voice 70dB / Noise 74dB / Ring 70dB
• Audio Quality: Noise -93.0dB / Crosstalk – 93.0dB
• Battery life: Endurance rating 76h