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00:00Cheese! Boom, there we go.
00:02Hey guys, I'm Tom of TechJab,
00:04and this is the new OnePlus 10T.
00:06And this, well, this is my review video.
00:09And actually, this has been one of the toughest reviews
00:11I've made for a while.
00:13Over the last couple of weeks,
00:14I've gone back and forth between being a bit frustrated,
00:17but then also being surprisingly impressed.
00:21It really has been a bit of a roller coaster,
00:23and I want to explain why.
00:24And actually, part of that does include this,
00:27the OnePlus 10 Pro.
00:29Without this, this becomes much easier to recommend
00:32and much more straightforward.
00:33But with it, I'm not sure.
00:36Okay, let's back up.
00:37This is the 10T,
00:38and it's OnePlus' latest performance-focused flagship phone.
00:42And it's like the 10 Pro that came out earlier this year,
00:45but they've added the more powerful
00:46Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chip.
00:49We also get much beefier cooling,
00:50a 16 gig of RAM option, up from 12,
00:53much faster 150-watt charging,
00:55the screen gets a little bit brighter,
00:57and we get Bluetooth 5.3.
00:58And to top it all off, not only is this the same price.
01:01You have to laugh.
01:02Okay, so I've had this phone,
01:04which I'm recording on the 10T, for about two weeks now.
01:06And this whole time, I was under the impression,
01:08I was told by OnePlus,
01:10it was going to cost £799, 800 quid,
01:13which is the same as the 10 Pro,
01:14which I had a bit of an issue with,
01:16as you'll see from the rest of the video,
01:18because given the downgrades and the compromises
01:20in a lot of ways, it was too expensive.
01:22It didn't make sense.
01:23Now, two hours before the embargo,
01:26before this video was due to go live,
01:27I was told in an email that actually it's £629,
01:31£170 cheaper than I was told
01:35throughout this entire review process,
01:37which is great for you,
01:38if you're thinking about buying one.
01:39Terrible for me,
01:40who's just spent a whole bunch of time making this video.
01:42And it does change things, actually.
01:44So I also add a little bit on at the end of the conclusion.
01:47But I think the rest of the video still stands,
01:48and just bear that in mind.
01:50This is now £629 for the 8 plus 128 gig version,
01:54and 100 more for 16 plus 256.
01:58So a good deal cheaper than the 10 Pro,
02:00which it needs to be.
02:01So you're thinking to yourself,
02:02well, smashing, what a nice little upgrade.
02:04Why wouldn't I pick up one of these new 10T bad boys?
02:07Well, hold your horses,
02:09because unlike the T-Series,
02:11not that T-Series, of the past,
02:13which were always just sort of mid-year refreshes,
02:15pretty much across the board improvements,
02:17even if they were sometimes a bit minor,
02:18this time the T-Series is all about performance,
02:21and there are trade-offs.
02:23And the big one, at least on paper, is the camera.
02:26Because while on the outside,
02:27the 10T gets a similar looking triple camera setup,
02:30the main lens has been downgraded
02:32from an IMX789 sensor to a 766,
02:35which is the same as you get on the Nord 2T.
02:38They've replaced the telephoto lens
02:40with a two megapixel macro for some reason.
02:43They've halved the resolution of the selfie camera,
02:45plus they've also removed the Hasselblad branding,
02:47although I'm not losing a whole lot of sleep about that.
02:49Essentially, they've traded better performance
02:52for a worse camera.
02:54They've also dropped the resolution
02:55from Quad HD down to Full HD.
02:57There's a slightly smaller battery,
02:59although it turns out, actually,
03:00it doesn't make much difference.
03:01But more importantly,
03:02there's no more wireless charging, that's out the door.
03:04They've also dropped the LTPO panel.
03:07And also, while we've had a bit of a minor redesign,
03:09including some new colors,
03:10and also this now smoother camera bump
03:13that just melts into the glass body,
03:15which is nothing like the Oppo Find X5 Pro,
03:17what they have also done
03:18is make the phone a little bit thicker.
03:20They've moved the hole punch from the corner to the center,
03:22which I'm not a huge fan of,
03:24and they've also removed the alert slider.
03:26Is this even a OnePlus phone anymore?
03:28So you could argue this is more of a side grade
03:31than an upgrade,
03:32which we might have expected with the T-Series.
03:34And in an ideal world,
03:35we'd have been looking at a 10T Pro.
03:37All the features of the 10 Pro,
03:39and then a few little extras to make it the T.
03:41But no, and so with the 10T,
03:43since performance is king,
03:45really this is being targeted at gamers, which is fine.
03:48A lot of people play games,
03:49and a lot of people want the best performance
03:50when they play the demanding games.
03:52But what doesn't make sense to me
03:54is why you buy this
03:55and not something like the ROG Phone 6
03:57or the Red Magic 7S,
03:59and they get all the proper gaming extras,
04:01the stuff you want,
04:02like shoulder triggers
04:03and active cooling fan options,
04:05accessories, and proper full-fat game centers.
04:08Yes, this has a nice 720 hertz touch sampling rate,
04:11but so does the 10 Pro.
04:12And we also have a hyper boost, game boost,
04:14whatever OnePlus call it.
04:15Again, the 10 Pro also has it.
04:17So it's just weird
04:18that this is the performance gaming phone
04:21from OnePlus,
04:22but we don't get any of those extras.
04:23Yes, we have a more powerful processor
04:24and we'll come to performance in a second.
04:26And the cooling has definitely been stepped up,
04:28but that doesn't make it the gaming phone,
04:30at least in my opinion.
04:32And since this is all about performance,
04:34let's talk about performance.
04:35And of course the headline
04:36is that new Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chip,
04:39which is both faster and more efficient
04:41than the 8 Gen 1,
04:42and also gives us support for HDR gaming.
04:44We get variable rate shading
04:46for future games that might support it.
04:48And that's along with the bump up
04:49from 12 to 16 gigs of RAM on the higher spec model.
04:52So now you can have up to 35 apps paused at once.
04:56Although I'm not sure I even have 35 apps installed.
04:58But I reckon more importantly,
05:00we also get a much beefier vapor chamber cooling system.
05:03So the bottom line is,
05:04this is the fastest OnePlus phone ever,
05:08but not by much.
05:09In my tests,
05:10the 10T is about 5% faster in single core
05:14and just 1% faster in multi-core.
05:16Although in the OpenCL test,
05:18it is 7% quicker.
05:19But then switching over to 3DMark
05:21and the 10T is about 4.5% faster.
05:24But more importantly,
05:26in the 20 minute wildlife extreme stress test,
05:29the 10T is actually 15% faster.
05:32And that's all down to stability.
05:34So not only is the 10T a little bit faster,
05:36but this chip's efficiency
05:37paired with the improved vapor chamber cooling
05:39makes quite a big difference to throttling.
05:41However, using a nifty app called GameBench,
05:44and I'll leave a link below if you wanna check it out,
05:46the real world improvements were less significant.
05:49I recorded the median FPS
05:51over a half hour or so gaming session.
05:53And in Genshin Impact,
05:54with max out settings of course,
05:56the 10T averaged 55 FPS to the 10 Pro's 51.
06:01But then in Apex Mobile,
06:02there was nothing in it.
06:03They both averaged 59.
06:05Although on the plus side,
06:06the 10T did stay cooler.
06:08After 30 minutes of gaming,
06:10the 10 Pro peaked at 40.5 degrees Celsius on the back
06:13versus 38.7 on the 10T.
06:15So it is a couple of degrees cooler.
06:18So in my experience,
06:19the 10T is maybe 5% faster than the 10 Pro,
06:23although it comes down to what you play.
06:25In some games,
06:25it's a small improvement.
06:27In others,
06:27it doesn't really make much difference.
06:29Now moving on,
06:30because the 10T also has a smaller battery,
06:334,800 versus 5,000 milliamp hours.
06:36And we've also lost the LTPO panel.
06:38So the refresh rate can't dynamically go as low
06:41to save battery.
06:42But the good news is that the 8 Plus Gen 1 chip
06:45is more efficient.
06:46It offsets those compromises.
06:47So battery life is near enough the same between them.
06:50And actually,
06:51my test,
06:52the 10T had 2% left when the 10 Pro died.
06:55So a surprising minor win for the T,
06:57but the loss of wireless and reverse wireless charging
06:59is a real shame.
07:00For me,
07:01I'd rather have those features
07:02than shaving off a few minutes on a wire charge
07:05with a new 150 watt SuperVOOC charger.
07:08So again,
07:08it's just another compromise.
07:10But one thing that really surprised me is this camera,
07:14because on paper,
07:15it should be a lot worse.
07:17Tell me what you think in the comments,
07:18but focusing on the main camera to start with,
07:21and in theory,
07:21the 10 Pro should be a lot better.
07:23It is 48 megapixels rather than 50,
07:25but it has a much bigger and much better sensor.
07:28But from the photos I've taken side by side,
07:31you can see the 10T actually reduces
07:32some of the overexposed highlights,
07:34often leaving us with more detail
07:36and a more evenly exposed photo.
07:41And sometimes where there's strong colors in a scene,
07:43the 10T seems to be able to handle it better,
07:45whereas the 10 Pro actually can become a bit oversaturated.
07:52Plus in these selfies,
07:53despite the 10T having half the megapixels,
07:56but the colors appear to be a bit more natural,
07:59the exposure is a bit more even.
08:00Again,
08:01I'm leaning towards preferring the 10T.
08:04However,
08:05switching to the telephoto lens and it all falls down
08:07because the 10T doesn't have one.
08:09This is a real shame.
08:10And you can see just how much of a difference
08:12the 10 Pro's 3.3 times optical zoom can make.
08:34As I mentioned at the start,
08:35this has been one of the trickiest reviews
08:37I've made for a while.
08:39So does this last minute price drop for myself
08:42and presumably anyone else reviewing this
08:43make a difference to whether I'd recommend the 10T?
08:46Well, yeah,
08:47a bloody big difference actually.
08:48It's like 170 quid less than we were told.
08:51So apologies for that.
08:53Obviously I'm adding this into the video.
08:55I don't want to mislead anyone.
08:56I think for this price, the new price,
08:59it's actually pretty good value
09:01considering you're getting a Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1
09:03and some pretty high-end specs.
09:05And it really is comparable to the 10 Pro.
09:07I was giving it a hard time
09:08because I thought it would be the same price.
09:10But as frustrating as it is for me,
09:12it is actually good news for everyone.
09:13We're getting a much more affordable,
09:15much better value OnePlus phone.
09:17The 10T is now a pretty solid proposition.
09:21But what do you think?
09:22Between the two, which would you go for?
09:24Let me know in the comments below.
09:25And if you did find this video useful,
09:27a thumbs up and a little subscribe
09:28would be very much appreciated.
09:29And I'll see you next time right here on the Tech Chap.
09:34Great.