Umm, is the $499 OnePlus 7T a better choice than the OnePlus 8 series - Android

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: OnePlus increasing its prices right up to the $1,000 barrier is not exactly popular. We all knew this endgame was coming long ago and yet, like the proverbial frog that doesn’t realize it’s being boiled, we’re still somehow surprised that it’s happened. So what are we gonna do about it? With the starting price for the OnePlus 8 Pro at $899 and the OnePlus 8 at $699, is the just-reduced OnePlus 7T at $499 the best option in OnePlus’ lineup?

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What does an extra $200 get you?

With an even $200 price difference between each device now, let’s take a look at what you’ll have to give up to get a OnePlus for half price (the 12/256GB OnePlus 8 Pro is $999). Because the non-McLaren edition OnePlus 7T Pro was never released in the US we’ll be focusing on the 7T here, but if you live in a market that did get the OnePlus 7T Pro then you have even more options.

$499 OnePlus 7T

• 90Hz Full HD+ OLED display
• Snapdragon 855 Plus, 8+128GB
• 3,800mAh, Warp Charge 30T
• 48MP Sony IMX586, f/1.6
• 16MP wide-angle, f/2.2
• 12MP 2x optical tele, f/2.2

OK, this is a tasty baseline. 90Hz OLED, Snapdragon 855 Plus and 8+128GB with a solid triple camera setup and Warp Charge 30T wired charging. So far so good.

Let’s add $200 to this and see what improvements we get.

$699 OnePlus 8

• 90Hz Full HD+ OLED display
• Snapdragon 865, 8+128GB (12+256GB option for $799)
• 4,300mAh, Warp Charge 30T
• 48MP Sony IMX586, f/1.75
• 16MP wide-angle, f/2.2
• 2MP macro, f/2.4

Alrighty, $200 more gets us the 5G-capable Snapdragon 865 mobile platform, so far so good. What else? Same display, OK. Bigger battery, that’s good. No wireless charging or IP rating yet, OK. Same main camera sensor as last year but with narrower aperture? Hmm. Same wide-angle camera and, what’s that? The 2x optical telephoto lens has been swapped out for a 2MP macro lens? Umm, heh.

Maybe adding an extra $200 on top again will sort things out?

$899 OnePlus 8 Pro

• 120Hz QHD+ OLED display
• Snapdragon 865, 8+128GB (12+256GB option for $999)
• 4,510mAh, Warp Charge 30T, 30W wireless
• 48MP Sony IMX689, f/1.78
• 48MP wide-angle, f/2.2
• 8MP 3x hybrid tele, f/2.44
• 5MP color filter, f/2.4
• IP68 rating

Now we’re talking, 120Hz and IP68 for the win. What else? Same 5G chipset and memory configuration as the OnePlus 8 but with RAM of the faster LPDDR5X variety. 5% bigger battery with 30W wireless charging, very nice. The telephoto camera is back but this time at 3x hybrid (“lossless,” according to OnePlus). The wide-angle camera’s sensor gets a hefty megapickle bump so you can bin down to the same size with more light data, this is good. And the macro lens has been dumped in favor of a color filter camera. A color filter camera. Uh huh. What does that do again?

What does an extra $400 get you?

Let’s ignore the OnePlus 8 for a minute and look at the $400 worth of differences between the OnePlus 7T from six months ago and the brand spankin’ new OnePlus 8 Pro.

• This year’s flagship chipset
• A larger, higher refresh rate display
• A bigger battery
• Fast wireless charging
• Newer main camera sensor
• Higher-resolution wide-angle sensor
• Lower-resolution hybrid telephoto camera
• A dedicated color filter camera(!)
• IP68 rating
• Faster RAM

This is actually a pretty solid list of upgrades, but is it worth $400? (There are a couple of other extras, of course, but these are the main ones. You can compare everything spec-for-spec in the table below.)

We want to hear from you: Are these OnePlus 8 Pro upgrades worth an extra $400 or $500 over the OnePlus 7T to you? Or is the $699 OnePlus 8 where your money is best invested? Hit the survey at the top of the post to cast your vote and hit the comments to defend your choice. This is likely to get messy.