5 reasons you should buy the OnePlus 5

The OnePlus 5 is out and you probably already know if you’re going to buy one or not, but if you’re still on the fence, let us share a few reasons you might want to side with the ‘yays’ over the ‘nays’ on this one. These are the top five reasons to buy the OnePlus 5.

Dual camera

It’s not so much the fact that the OnePlus 5 has a dual camera – plenty of phones have those – but it is the OnePlus 5 camera’s ease of use that makes it truly remarkable. The OnePlus 5 offers the most iPhone-like camera experience on Android in terms of ease of use and functionality, even if the quality isn’t quite as great as we had all hoped.

The OnePlus 5 has the highest resolution dual camera system on any smartphone – with its 16 MP f/1.7 primary sensor and 20 MP 2x f/2.6 telephoto lens – providing excellent regular shots with the added bonus of being able to capture those all-important zoom shots (even though there’s some debate as to the status of its 2x lossless zoom). The OnePlus 5’s zoom lens can also digitally zoom up to 8x but as you can read in our full OnePlus 5 review, the zoom lens is definitely not as good as the 16 MP version.

Price

Yes, we know, the price hike is a bitter pill to swallow, but the OnePlus 5 is still far cheaper than any other major flagship with comparable specs. If history is any indication, the price is only going to continue to increase in years to come, so you may as well get on board while things are still reasonably affordable.

Related: Is the OnePlus 5 still a good deal?

OxygenOS

OxygenOS is a very stock-like Android skin, making it fast and feature-rich, while offering plenty of customization options for the discerning power user. OnePlus’ community roots also make OnePlus phones a favorite of the developer community, meaning you’ll have plenty of ROM support in the near future if you want to mix things up a little later down the track.

But even sticking with the out-of-the-box OxygenOS experience you’ll still get a lot of the features you might expect from a mainstream flagship like a blue light filter, a Pixel-like app drawer, expanded screenshots and plenty of other favorites like adding on-screen navigation buttons, customizable off-screen gestures, double tap to wake and a dark theme. The OnePlus 5 also introduces a grayscale reading mode for the more literary inclined.

Dash Charge

Dash Charge is right up there with the fastest and best quick charging options available on any flagship at any price. A rebranded VOOC fast charging from its sibling company OPPO, Dash Charge offers OnePlus 5 owners the ability to charge more than half of its 3,300 mAh battery in less than half an hour. An hour and 20 minutes is enough for a full charge and the OnePlus 5’s battery life actually improves over the OnePlus 3T despite the slight decrease in battery capacity.

Incredible performance

While we must note OnePlus was clever enough to only send reviewers the higher-end version of the OnePlus 5 with 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage, there’s no denying the OnePlus 5 follows in the beastly footsteps of its predecessors when it comes to performance. So much so that artificially inflating benchmark scores to make the phone look good isn’t really necessary. This phone absolutely flies and you’ll be hard-pressed to get it bogged down no matter how many apps you have in the cache.

Up next: Specs comparison: OnePlus 5 vs the competition

Do you plan to buy one? What’s your favorite feature and what would you change? Let us know down in the comments below.