The OnePlus 6 Review: Among The Best Of 2018

Video Recording

Video recording on the OnePlus 6 is done on 720P, 1080P 30 or 60fps, and 4K 30 or 60fps. The camera has OIS in all modes, but on top of that uses EIS in 720P and the other 30fps modes. Unfortunately there’s no software switch for the EIS so you’re getting what OnePlus is giving you- which comes at a cost of reduced field-of-view.

EIS stabilisation works extremely well and results in a very stable and detailed video. Unfortunately because you can’t turn it off you can’t independently compare the EIS in the same capture mode to see how the detail retention works.

One thing to note was that the 1080p60 footage was extremely disappointing as it was very blurry. Looking at the encoding the 1080p30 is done on AVC on High Profile 4.0 at 20Mbps while the 1080p60 footage is encoded at High 4.2 at 40Mbps, so there must be something wrong in terms of the ISP part of the video pipeline that results in the much reduced image quality. It’s also notable that I found it to focus slower in 60fps mode than in the 30fps modes.

The 4K footage doesn’t suffer from the same degradation when going to the higher frame-rate. Here in both modes there’s great amount of detail retention.  The 4K30 footage is encoded in a High@5.1 profile at 42Mbps, while the 4K60 footage is encoded at High@5.2 at a dazzling 120Mbps which is actually the limit of the Snapdragon 845’s video encoder. Here the sample video of 1m29s length came in at a hefty 1.24GB. While I applaud OnePlus for the high quality encode settings, the fact that the device lacks HEVC encoding options means that you’ll have to really be careful in terms of storage management when using 4K60 footage.

Audio recording in the video was very good.

Speaker Evaluation

I’ve first introduced speaker evaluation back in our Xiaomi Mi MIX 2S review a couple of weeks ago and we’re going to apply the same methodology to the OnePlus 6.

We’re using a calibrated flat response measurement microphone for the measurements and are using REW as the supporting software suite.

For speaker loudness measurements, we’re using a pink noise source, with the measurement microphone at head level 40cm away from the phone. We measure once the perceived volume when the phone is held in portrait one-handed mode, and once while holding the phone in landscape mode with both hands, cupping the sides.

One-handed and in portrait mode, the phone gets reasonably loud at up to 77.6dB(A). Holding the phone two-handed and cupping it however results in redirecting a lot of the sound towards the listener again, attaining a very loud 86.3db(A). In an optimally designed phone, we actually don’t want this much of a difference as it means a lot of the audio is firing away from the phone. The OnePlus 6 is one of the less optimal phones in terms of its speaker design as the sound pressure is very directional and bottom-firing out of its main and only speaker. This means you’ll have to pay more attention on how you hold the phone as it can make a large difference to volume and audio quality, and also it’s very easy to muffle the sound when the speaker holes are covered up.

We use a logarithmic measurement sweep within REW to measure the frequency response of the phone’s speaker. To get a more accurate comparison between phones, the volume is calibrated via pink noise to 75dB(A) and the measurement is done in landscape two-handed mode. The graph is represented with a psychoacoustic smoothing filter for better representation.

Unfortunately the OnePlus 6’s frequency response represents what we can also clearly hear when playing back media: It lacks depth as well as clarity. In the low frequency and lower mid-ranges ranges the OP6 fared among the worst, and this results in a very hollow-ish sound.

The OP6 is actually the loudest in the mid-ranges in its sound profile.

While a lot of mobile phones have an evident peak in the treble frequencies, the OP6 actually remains quite flat, which will affect sounds such as ringtones and represent them quieter than other phones.

Finally, the OP6 also doesn’t fare well in the high frequencies and has a very steep drop-off after 12KHz. Here it’ll depend on the user’s age and his sound profile, but most will still be able to hear these frequencies and interpret them as the “brilliance” in music.

Overall, the OP6’s speaker is average at best and can’t really compete with some other flagship phones.