OnePlus Nord 4 vs OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite: how do these Android phones compare?

The OnePlus Nord 4 offers a more premium, more durable design than the CE 4 Lite, as well as a more powerful chipset and a better display. However, it costs a lot more.

The OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite carries itself well in the price, software and battery departments, but the more expensive Nord 4 beats it almost everywhere else.

OnePlus has a habit of releasing several similarly-titled phones each year, so you'd be forgiven for losing track of which models sit in which price category.

Released in July 2024, the OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite is vying for a spot on our best cheap phones guide, while the more expensive OnePlus Nord 4 can be considered one of the best Android phones for a mid-range budget.

We’ve put both devices through their paces – check out our OnePlus Nord 4 review and OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite review for our full verdicts – but in this guide, we've stacked the two phones up against one another in a spec-by-spec face-off.

OnePlus Nord 4 vs OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite: specs

Here's how the key specs of the OnePlus Nord 4 vs OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite compare:

OnePlus Nord 4 vs OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite: price and availablility

Of the two phones, the OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite is cheaper; in most regions, it’s OnePlus' cheapest offering right now. However, it’s also worth flagging that, at the time of writing, those ‘regions’ don’t include Australia or the US.

The Nord CE 4 Lite costs £299 (roughly $380, AU$580). There’s only one version (8GB / 256GB), so you don’t need to worry about storage or RAM options.

The starting price of the Nord 4 is higher, at £429 (roughly $550, AU$820), and that’s just for its base option with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage. For £529 (roughly $680, AU$1,000) you can bump that up to 16GB and 512GB respectively.

So, there’s no two ways about it: the CE 4 Lite is definitely the cheaper phone, with the Nord 4 the more premium option.

OnePlus Nord 4 vs OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite: design

Both of these OnePlus phones use a similar chocolate-bar-style Android design with flat edges, and the two main points of differentiation between the two are the camera bump orientation (vertical on the CE 4 Lite, horizontal on the Nord 4) and the color options. The Nord 4 also has a two-tone rear panel, while the CE 4 Lite has a single color over its whole rear panel.

Those colors are silver, black, and green for the OnePlus Nord 4, and silver or blue for its cousin.

The OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite is the bigger phone, but by such a miniscule margin that it’s barely noticeable. It measures 162.9 x 75.6 x 8.1mm to the Nord 4’s 162.6 x 75 x 8mm, and the CE is actually 8.5 lighter, weighing in at 191g.

That lighter weight is likely due in part to its material: the CE 4 Lite has a plastic frame and body, which is well protected against bumps but doesn’t feel as premium in the hand. With its metal body and frame, the Nord 4 feels a lot more ‘special’.

The Nord 4 is better protected against dust and water, though, with its IP65 rating ensuring that it’s more resistant to fine particles and liquids compared to the CE 4 Lite’s IP54 rating.

Both phones have their volume rocker and power button on the right edge, and the USB-C port on the bottom edge. On the CE 4 Lite, that port is joined by a 3.5mm headphone jack, which is lacking on the Nord 4. However, that phone has an alert slider right at the top of the left edge, which the Lite misses out on.

OnePlus Nord 4 vs OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite: display

The OnePlus Nord 4 wins the display race outright, with a bigger and higher-resolution display. It packs a 6.74-inch display with a 2.5K resolution (1240 x 2772 pixels), which betters the Nord CE 4 Lite's 6.67-inch display with FHD+ resolution (1080 x 2400 pixels).

Both phones have AMOLED displays but the Nord 4 has what OnePlus is calling Fluid AMOLED, and to my eyes it looked more vibrant and colorful.

The two phones have a few things in common, though: they both offer 120Hz refresh rates, similar maximum brightness levels, and punch-hole cut-outs to house their respective front-facing cameras. In addition, they both use Aqua Touch, a display feature that ensures that their respective displays respond to your touch even when your fingers are wet.

OnePlus Nord 4 vs OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite: software

When it comes to software, both phones are packed out of the box; there are no meaningful differences between the two on a functional level. Both the OnePlus Nord 4 and Nord CE 4 Lite come with Android 14 pre-installed, and the company’s OxygenOS 14.1 layered over the top.

The Nord 4 does, however, have one small benefit over its cousin; you’ll get at least four years of software updates, while OnePlus has only pledged two years of updates for the Nord CE 4 Lite.

OxygenOS has a distinctive look with its own font and color scheme, and I’m a fan of how its icons are all easy to understand at a glance.

That said, I did notice that both of these Nord phones come with a strong dose of bloatware, or pre-installed apps, that I spent a while deleting when first turning them on.

OnePlus Nord 4 vs OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite: cameras

You’re probably not looking at either of these OnePlus Nord phones if you’re a huge smartphone photography buff, but for what it’s worth, the Nord 4 pips ahead of the CE 4 Lite by a slight margin.

Both mobiles offer the same 50MP main camera, but while the CE 4 Lite only has a 2MP depth sensor backing it up, the Nord 4 gets an 8MP ultra-wide snapper too, which lets you capture shots with a wider field of view.

On the front, both mobiles get the same 16MP camera, and both options delivered similar results in my tests.

One advantage of the Nord 4 is that it has a more intelligent processor, and I found that its AI scene optimization tech was a bit smarter at identifying and automatically tweaking certain scenes.

Beyond that, though, you’re getting the usual fare when it comes to camera features: panorama, slow motion video, time-lapse, Portrait mode, and so on.

OnePlus Nord 4 vs OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite: performance

You’re getting a lot more processing power with the OnePlus Nord 4, but the Nord CE 4 Lite has an extra edge when it comes to audio.

Looking at the performance power, the OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite has the Snapdragon 695 chipset while the Nord 4 has the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3. Qualcomm’s 7-series chips are generally better than its 6-series ones, and the performance of these two phones backs up that sentiment. Benchmark tests suggest the Nord 4 is about 33% more powerful than the CE 4 Lite.

When playing games on the Nord 4 and Nord CE 4 Lite, you can notice this difference, with the CE 4 Lite occasionally stuttering, lagging, or being a little behind in online titles.

That assessment makes sense when looking at the two phones' respective RAM credentials. The CE 4 Lite gets 8GB, while the Nord 4 gets 12GB or 16GB. Similarly, on the storage front, the Lite’s 128GB is less than the Nord 4’s 256GB or 512GB.

It’s in the audio department that the Nord CE 4 Lite has one advantage over its cousin, though: it gets a 3.5mm headphone jack. Wired audio fans can use this phone, and not the Nord 4, to connect to headphones or a speaker.

Your other audio options are the phones’ stereo speakers – neither set is anything to write home about – their respective USB-C ports if you have an adaptor, or streaming via Bluetooth.

OnePlus Nord 4 vs OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite: battery life

People who follow the mid-range and budget phone segments will know what to expect here: the two Nords both pack huge batteries that easily see them through over a day of use.

The Nord CE 4 Lite has a 5,110mAh power pack while the Nord 4 gets even more juice thanks to its 5,500mAh battery. Bearing in mind the latter’s bigger screen and more powerful internals, that increased size is necessary, so both phones last roughly the same amount of time.

Charging is faster on the Nord 4, though: its 100W wired powering gets the phone from empty to full in just under half an hour, which is quick. Charging on the Nord CE 4 Lite is only slightly slower, with its 80W wired powering taking about 20 more minutes to get you to full juice (remember, its battery is smaller!).

Neither phone has wireless charging, but the Lite offers reverse wired charging, so you can use it like a power bank to charge up other devices.

OnePlus Nord 4 vs OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite: verdict

In almost every section of this article, you’ve read that the OnePlus Nord 4 either matches or beats the Nord CE 4 Lite, and that’s really the tale of this comparison.

The Nord 4 is a more powerful phone offering better photo potential, a more attractive display, and significantly more storage space.

The one thing going for the CE 4 Lite is its price, which undercuts that of the Nord 4 by a fair margin. The CE 4 Lite does carry itself just as well as the Nord 4 in the software and battery departments, but elsewhere, the Nord 4 is simply the better phone.

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