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Art et designTranscription
00:00Well, well, well, what do we have here? A new OnePlus flagship. And I feel like we kind
00:25of know the story of the OnePlus phone now at this point, right? It's a new one. It's
00:30a little better, a little faster, a little more complete than last year. It's also a
00:35little bit more expensive. And people really want to know if the camera's actually any
00:39good. Same story. Also, real quick before I get into it, this video is sponsored by Skillshare,
00:44which I just completed and dropped my first class in, which is pretty cool. I'll get into
00:49more of that at the end of this video. So this year, more than ever, as you may have
00:52seen from the slow tease of all the specs and features on social media, it looks like
00:57maybe OnePlus has finally put it all together. You know, they've always got the high-end
01:00specs, but there's a refreshed design and there's a lot of big talk with that new camera
01:05system and a collab with Hasselblad. The 9 Pro starts at $969. So creeping up, creeping
01:13ever closer to that thousand dollar flagship price. Matter of fact, this upgraded version
01:17I'm testing is $1069. So it's expensive, but it's also technically undercutting some
01:24of the competition at the same time. So this feels like a turning point for OnePlus. They're
01:29trying to claw their way into the actual mainstream with this 9 Pro. And they're also dropping
01:34a standard OnePlus 9. I have a separate review video of that phone coming up very soon. So
01:38keep an eye out for that. I'll drop a link to it in the description below when it's live.
01:43So yeah, this is it. This is the 9 Pro that we were waiting for. By the time you're watching
01:48this, I've been using this, testing it, taking pictures with it, tweeting from it every
01:52day for about three weeks now. So I feel like I can paint a picture of what it's like to
01:57own it. And also I'm going to spend a healthy amount of energy on this camera situation
02:02because it's a pretty important factor here. This new design though, honestly, I think
02:06it says a lot, both about how OnePlus sees this phone, but also about how we can look
02:10at this phone, which is competitive, just a little bit more generic than usual. First
02:17of all, it's definitely a good looking phone. No doubt about that to me. It's got the thin
02:21bezels at the front with a small hole punch. The slightly curved display over the edges
02:26is manageable. It's not too bad. You've got thin metal rails all the way around, but I
02:31also feel like it's harder to describe anything distinctive about this phone than it has been
02:36previous years. Maybe it is the camera bump again. This one is pretty recognizable with
02:41two huge circles. It's two layers deep, but it also isn't too crazy, especially if you
02:46drop it in a case. The buttons and the alert slider, they're all still pretty nice and
02:50clicky and in good spots. They went back to a glossy finish for this specific colorway,
02:55which I mean, it's cool that it is a gradient from top to bottom, kind of like the morning
03:00mist. It looks fine when it's clean, but now this is just another glossy, shiny, fingerprinting
03:07mirror phone like so many others now. I'd like to see the other colorways, which are
03:11apparently matte. Maybe that would change my mind, but yeah. Why did you not send me
03:16a matte one? That's what I want to know. You know what this reminds me of? This phone,
03:19it looks a lot like Galaxy S8. Remember that phone? That was one of the simplest, cleanest,
03:25safest designs in any phone. It's actually a good thing. I think that was a pretty well-liked
03:29phone. It also had a headphone jack, but that's kind of what this looks like to me.
03:34But yeah, the overall shape here, especially the metal rails with the antenna bands all
03:38over them, even the newly centered OnePlus logo in the middle of the glossy back, it's
03:43all very 2017 vibes. I don't know. Maybe we can just ban mirror-backed phones after a while.
03:47Actually, I'm pretty sure channel sponsor dbrand is perfectly happy to keep selling us better
03:51versions of the backs of our phones, like this robot camo. So that's an upgrade in my book.
03:56I'll link this one below. So whatever, despite the pretty casual hardware, you do still get IP68
04:02water and dust resistance, which is nice. And you do still get the OnePlus touch, which is that
04:08fast and smooth focus. So per usual, that starts up front with a fast and smooth display. And this
04:14is one of them. This is a 1440p, 120 hertz LTPO panel. And this is a nice screen for sure. Gets
04:20plenty bright up to 1300 nits. It's HDR 10 plus certified. And yes, it can do 1440p and 120 hertz
04:26at the same time. But it's worth noting, you have to use either standard 60 hertz or smart 120 hertz,
04:35which is going to automatically modulate the refresh rate between one hertz and 120 hertz
04:41to save battery, depending on what's happening on the screen. They're calling it fluid display 2.0.
04:46Normally, these have been pretty great at saving battery. And I typically never noticed the moments
04:51that they dropped to lower refresh rates. And this one combined with OnePlus's Oxygen OS is no
04:55exception. It's been pretty good to me, but I did occasionally see stutters and animations. So I did
05:02look for an option to force 120 hertz in the developer settings, and I couldn't find one.
05:06Nevertheless, it's sweet having this screen and a 360 hertz touch sample rate, the high resolution,
05:12the great colors, the brightness, all that is sweet. But again, I have the same complaint that I
05:17had with the Oppo Find X3 Pro, which is why is the fingerprint reader this low? Like this is two
05:23phones from the same group now. I have a feeling they're probably both lower on the screen for the
05:27same reason, because both Oppo and OnePlus kind of work together. But why? Like what is the reason?
05:33I think this is a worse fingerprint reader placement. I got used to it, but it's worse.
05:39It's harder to reach. Just want to put that out there. All right, so let's just get all the specs
05:42on the page here real quick. So Snapdragon 888 chip, 8 or 12 gigs of fast RAM, 128 or 256 gigs of
05:50non-expandable storage. A little light there. There's a 4500 mAh battery, which can fast charge
05:56up to 65 watt on a wired charger, or 50 watt wireless charging. And then there's the quad
06:04cameras on the back, which we'll get to in a second. And then overall, just a pretty high-end
06:08performance profile, pretty competitive, and the performance matches. Every phone I've tested
06:12with this chip performs great. And aside from the very occasional frame drops that I noticed,
06:18which I imagine could be ironed out with a software update, this is definitely no exception.
06:21Really snappy, smooth phone, and Oxygen OS is still one of the cleanest, most well-done
06:27implementations of Android. Google integration is strong with the feed and the default dialer
06:32and messages and photos. Plenty of other added features are cleanly tucked away in the settings,
06:36like the always-on ambient display, and being able to turn a long press of the power button
06:42into an assistant trigger. But also like, why not let us remap that to anything we want? We'd love to
06:47use it for other stuff. And you know what? I gotta give a shout out to the haptics. I feel like
06:51anytime a phone has particularly nice haptics, I want to be sure to call that out. This phone has
06:57a nice, high-quality vibration motor again. Gives you good, clean, tight vibrations. It's the good
07:03stuff. And actually, the software really leans into this. So if you drag the volume slider or the
07:08brightness slider with your finger, you actually feel a bunch of little clicks as you scroll.
07:13Kind of like when you scroll with the digital crown on the Apple Watch. So it's a nice touch.
07:17Battery life on this phone is pretty good. It's pretty good. So like I mentioned, this is a 4500
07:23milliamp hour battery, which is a decent-sized cell. And I was getting five hours of screen-on
07:28time. Typically, I did kill it a few times in a day. It's not one of those endless marathon
07:33batteries, but it was good. My usage is with 5G on and a lot of high brightness, scrolling, email,
07:39social media, watching videos, some navigation, that sort of thing. Not a lot of gaming. And
07:45that's pretty good. I'd give that something like an A minus. But of course, if that isn't good enough
07:48for you, there's a couple things you can do. First, you can switch down to 1080p, save a little bit
07:54of battery that way. Second is you can switch to 60 Hertz mode, which of course it works, but nobody
08:00really wants to do that on a phone like this. And of course there are other emergency battery
08:05saving modes. But third, the real solution from them is the fast charging, really fast charging.
08:11So 50 watt wireless charging and 65 watt wired charging with the brick that's included in the
08:19box. So the way they pull this off is pretty smart, but also pretty simple. It's a dual cell
08:25battery design. So there's two cells in here that charge in parallel and add up to 4,500 million
08:31hours total. So with that charger in the box, it's juicing up zero to a hundred in literally
08:36half an hour, which is incredible. But then there's a wireless charger that is super impressive.
08:41It's an optional accessory, which I normally don't spend much time on in reviews, but
08:45this one's pretty cool. I mean, you obviously don't see many 50 watt wireless charging phones
08:49out there, but this one, again, is taking advantage of the dual cell design. There's
08:53actually two coils inside this charger and each one charges one of the batteries at 25 watts. So
08:59they combine for 50 watts of peak wireless charging power, which can go zero to a hundred
09:05in 43 minutes. That's faster than most other phones wired charging. Now you have to use this
09:10exact charger to get that speed. Other wireless chargers won't charge up this phone that fast.
09:15And this particular charger will, I guess, max out at 15 watts when charging other things. But
09:21this is probably the number one best accessory to get for the 9 Pro. So they even gave it a
09:25removable cable this year. So it's going to retail for 70 bucks if you want to grab that too,
09:30on top of just the phone. And I feel like that's actually a pretty good deal for that kind of
09:33speed. So we'll see what all this fast charging does to your long-term battery health, but that's
09:38the trade-off OnePlus has notoriously made, which is the phone will last about a day usually,
09:43but you'll be able to quick charge kind of anywhere conveniently. There's like a OnePlus
09:47charger for the car. I'll drive to work, plug in for a few minutes. That's enough power for the
09:51day. Or I'll charge on my desk for a few minutes. That's good enough for a while. But you know what
09:55set up they've been talking about more than anything else in this phone, over everything,
09:58more than the specs, more than the design, more than the fast charging, it's the cameras.
10:05So let's talk about that. So on the back, there's two huge rings and two small ones, a mic, a laser
10:11and a flash and Hasselblad logo. So there's a brand new sensor for the main camera, 48 megapixels
10:17at F1.8 with OIS. And there's another huge one and that's the ultra-wide. And that's another new
10:2250 megapixel sensor with macro capabilities. Then a 3.3X 8 megapixel telephoto and a 2 megapixel
10:30monochrome sensor. I'm just gonna ignore that 2 megapixel monochrome sensor. So OnePlus has
10:36talked a big game about this new camera system. Like if you'd only followed what OnePlus has said,
10:42you would see that this looks like a game change. This is gonna be the revolutionary new biggest
10:47feature in photography is this collab with Hasselblad. It's gonna change the game forever.
10:53It's not, but it is a pretty good smartphone camera. Honestly, I think the new sensors are
11:00more interesting than the Hasselblad partnership itself. These are huge sensors and the idea of an
11:05ultra-wide camera that's every bit as good as the primary camera is awesome to me. The ultra-wide
11:10in this phone is literally three times the size of the ultra-wide in the iPhone 12 Pro Max. That is
11:17really interesting. But okay, let's just address, what is this Hasselblad OnePlus collab exactly?
11:23Is it just them slapping a name on it? Because look, I love myself a Hasselblad camera. I love mine.
11:28I love the photos it takes, but I'd argue that historically their name on other things hasn't
11:34really meant very much. The last time they did a Hasselblad smartphone collab was a moto mod that
11:40was one of the worst mobile cameras I've ever used. And I suspect OnePlus didn't have a lot
11:45of input there, but on a scale of one to 10 of brand collabs, one being just the B&O speakers in
11:53a car, like they just slapped the name on it. 10 being Yeezy and Adidas literally collaborating on
12:01a design and a project line. Where is this OnePlus Hasselblad collab? Well, if you read into it,
12:06OnePlus talks about how they're spending $150 million on this partnership over three years.
12:14And they're going to be working with Hasselblad ambassadors who will advise them on tuning the
12:19camera and the photos to look better. Basically what it all boils down to right now is color
12:25tuning. So what does that mean for your photos? So photos from the OnePlus 9 Pro and these new
12:30big sensors are pretty good, especially when you give them a lot of light and the images are very
12:35sharp, but there's just, there's a lot of details in every shot. And sometimes I think it's a bit
12:39over-processed and over-sharpened where it doesn't quite need to be. There's a lot of that big sensor
12:44fringing still on close-up subjects. It's a common look at this point, but it's worth noting, but
12:48overall from image capture to processing through the whole pipeline, this is pretty good quality.
12:53Now with the Hasselblad collab, they're talking a lot more about more natural colors. And I do
12:59sometimes see that. To be honest, most photos still look pretty predictable like a smartphone
13:03photo, a nice contrasty, almost pixel-like processing is here, but with slightly muted
13:09colors sometimes. Like in this shot with the grass, you can see it's a little muted and even
13:14more with warm colors. So like this shot with the orange wall, the wall in real life is slightly
13:19more orange than that. And same with this orange on a turf field I worked out at. And then this
13:24shot of some fruits in a grocery store with the oranges and yellows and greens. I think this is
13:29where you see it the most of all the photos I've taken. And it's fine. It gives you a little more
13:33room to play with in editing without looking too flat. The real strength of this system though,
13:37is definitely, definitely the ultra-wide. I took lots of back-to-back shots with the main camera
13:43and the ultra-wide to check the consistency between the two. And I kept noticing two things.
13:47One, the ultra-wide is really good and is clearly one of the best in any phone.
13:52But two, it's actually typically has better white balance than the main camera.
13:58When the main camera misses, it misses kind of blue. And so some photos will have a cool blue
14:03cast to them. Not a huge deal, but the ultra-wide didn't really miss like that. And the sensor being
14:08so huge means it can give you better photos and videos in low light, thanks to all the extra light
14:13sensitivity. And it does great distortion correction. The ultra-wide does have weaker
14:17dynamic range though. So you can see HDR kind of try to save it sometimes. And it looks a bit
14:22unnatural, over-processed. Other than that, A plus ultra-wide. And then the telephoto camera,
14:29it's not that great. And honestly, it's the least consistent. It's also 3.3X, which is not a huge
14:35deal. I mean, we've seen 5X and 10X in some flagships over the past few years, but this is
14:40all right. In the viewfinder of the telephoto though, you can actually see the shadows bump up
14:45and the colors shift way more than the ultra-wide. So it feels like the two main cameras are more in
14:51sync with each other and processing and colors. And then the afterthought is a telephoto. Honestly,
14:56that's fine with me. I don't take a whole ton of zoom photos, but that's probably the next thing
14:59they should tune. Also speaking of that viewfinder, I did find I noticed something particularly
15:04annoying when shooting fast moving subjects, which is kind of funny because Hasselblads are
15:09typically pretty slow cameras, but the shot you think you get is not actually the shot you get.
15:15Basically, when you shoot a photo, you get this immediate preview, then it shifts once it quickly
15:21processes the actual shot, which feels like it's about a quarter second after you actually press
15:26the shutter button. It's very consistently delayed by this same amount every time, which
15:31means I had to calibrate my shooting style to it, but it's very annoying because even the
15:35preview you get in the corner shows the image you think you got when you tap the shutter, but
15:41then it snaps to process the actual photo you got, which is a split second after you tap the
15:46shutter. So it's kind of weird. If you have kids or pets, or if you're like me and you like snap a
15:53photo and immediately put the phone down because it's a secret phone you can't show people yet,
15:58I'll like shoot a photo. I think I got it and I put it away and then I'll check later and it's a
16:02totally blurry photo of like the sidewalk. I think they can fix that with software, but that's
16:08that's a weird quirk. So if my question at the beginning of testing this camera system was,
16:12is it really that great and does this Hasselblad thing really mean anything right now? My answer is
16:20it is a pretty good camera. It's not going to stand out from the rest. It's competitive, kind of
16:25the same way the 8 Pros was in line with other flagships, and the Hasselblad thing kind of boils
16:32down to color right now. Now there is room to grow that in the future with Hasselblad. They've
16:37said this is a three-year partnership that they're embarking on, and they did mention in the press
16:42release that they would be developing custom hardware between Hasselblad and OnePlus. We'll
16:47see what that turns into. And I'd be very curious how much this bleeds over into video too, just
16:51because Hasselblad cameras great for photos, but they really don't do videos. Like if you're on the
16:56newest firmware in some Hasselblad cameras, they will shoot video if you really make them, but
17:01they're not video cameras. So OnePlus's smartphone videos feel very much unchanged to me, even if it
17:06is 8K now. They're decent. So on that scale I mentioned earlier of one to 10, one being B&O
17:13speakers in whatever car company paid to use them, versus 10 being a true collab in my vision,
17:20Yeezy, Jordan. This with the orange shutter button sort of matching Hasselblad cameras and the
17:28thunk of the leaf shutter sound, and all the extra stuff they put into the pro mode to look
17:33like a Hasselblad camera, and the beginnings of the color tuning. I'm gonna give this like a six.
17:40Still like about a six, with room to grow. Okay, a few bonus things that didn't fit into the rest of
17:44the video. This phone does have reverse wireless charging, but it's such a glossy and slippery
17:49phone that whenever you try to charge something, it can easily just slide off the back of the phone.
17:53It's a little rough, but it works if you need it. Speaker quality is good and plenty loud,
17:58and call quality is fine. And then the tilt shift mode that some people were freaking out about in
18:04the camera is literally doing exactly what that old Instagram fake bokeh does, which just blurs
18:11out everything not in the column, which works sometimes, I guess. So that's it. OnePlus 9 Pro.
18:18This phone is competitive because of the Snapdragon 888 chip, and there are phones from
18:24800 to 1200 bucks that all have this chip. This one separates itself because of the fast and
18:31smooth focus still. That software, the animations and screen, the charging. And I do appreciate that
18:39the Hasselblad partnership does appear to mean something, and it can grow and evolve and change
18:44over time. My fingers are crossed that someday this will be a world-class camera in a OnePlus
18:50smartphone flagship, and then they'll probably use that to justify an even higher price. But
18:55without getting into the weeds on that, I think this is a pretty good phone. But speaking of
18:59cameras on phones, that's really all you need to start your own YouTube channel here in 2021.
19:04I would know because I just made an entire Skillshare class about it. So Skillshare is an
19:09online learning community for creatives where you can find thousands of classes for creative and
19:14curious people on all kinds of topics, illustration, design, photography, and now making MKBHD videos.
19:22It's funny because I identify as self-taught. Like I didn't go to school for the thing that I'm doing
19:28now, but it was really fun to lay out all the fundamentals and actually think through and
19:34present how I look at making videos, making a review, navigating the tech world, all that stuff
19:40for the channel. I've gone through other Skillshare classes, like there's one specifically on iPhone
19:45filmmaking with Caleb and Niles from Moment, and it's really good. You get to learn from other
19:50people who are self-taught on how they've created their fundamentals and how they go about what they
19:55do. But yeah, for mine, it's my fundamentals about the top to bottom process of how one of
20:01these videos gets made. But also I have no doubt I'm gonna be making some more specific ones in
20:06the future. By the way, Skillshare is curated specifically for learning, meaning there are no
20:10ads and they're always launching new premium online classes so you can stay focused and stay in
20:15the stream of your creativity. And it's less than 10 bucks a month with an annual membership. So hey,
20:19now that I've made this one my first, here's the deal. So Skillshare was kind enough to sponsor
20:24this video and offer the first thousand of you that click the link below a free trial of a premium
20:30membership so you can stay in the flow for your creativity. See you over there. That's been it.
20:36Thanks for watching. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.