OnePlus 12 vs. OnePlus 12R

So, you’ve been eyeing OnePlus’ current device roster and are trying to decide between the “full-fat” flagship OnePlus 12 and its slightly “step-down” OnePlus 12R sibling? There is hardly any doubt as to which one is the better overall phone. The OnePlus 12 is the clear winner when it comes to overall power and performance, camera setup, and additional features and connectivity options.

On the flip side, the OnePlus 12R gets you a lot of the way there and offers a very similar overall experience at a noticeably lower price point. You will be giving up on certain niceties, most notably, a telephoto camera on the back. Still, the OnePlus 12R is no slouch in any particular department and delivers plenty on every front.

Table of Contents:

For starters, you can compare the complete specs sheets or directly continue with our editor’s assessment in the following text.

Size comparison

Let’s start with a quick physical comparison. While the two phones aren’t substantially different in terms of overall footprint, the OnePlus 12 is the bigger of the pair. It figures, given that it has a slightly larger 6.82-inch display versus 6.78-inch on the OnePlus 12R. The OnePlus 12 is also both a bit thicker and a bit heavier, which is kind of surprising, considering that the OnePlus 12R has a slightly larger 5,500 mAh battery (compared to 5,400 mAh in the regular OnePlus 12).

Both phones are very well made with practically no flex to the chassis or hollowness. You get an excellent bill of materials with either phone, including an aluminum frame and Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the front. The OnePlus 12 does, technically, have a slight advantage in this department since it also has Corning Gorilla Glass on the back side, while the OnePlus 12R has some undisclosed glass back panel.

There is also a slight difference in ingress protection. The OnePlus 12 is IP65 rated, while the OnePlus 12R is IP64. That means that both phones are “dust tight”, but the OnePlus 12 should withstand “water jets,” while the OnePlus 12R is only rated for “splashes of water”.

Let’s talk a bit about color options. The OnePlus 12 comes in Flowy Emerald, Silky Black and Silver and arguably has the more “plain” color selection. The OnePlus 12R, on the other hand, can be had in Iron Gray, Cool Blue or Electric Violet.

Design-wise, the two phones are very similar. Both have a rather aggressively curved display on the front and a curved back with a relatively thin middle frame. That aluminum frame does a great job of maintaining structural rigidity. It houses a volume rocker and power button on the right-hand side and on the left – the signature OnePlus alert slider.

Other interesting titbits include an IR blaster on the top of both phones. Both models also have a stereo speaker setup, with the earpiece acting as the second channel.

On the bottom, we have the SIM slot, which lacks expandable storage on either device, as well as the main speaker and the Type-C port. Both phones support USB Host/OTG, but the OnePlus 12 has a faster 5Gbps USB 3.2 data connection, while the OnePlus 12R is stuck with slower USB 2.0 at around 480 Mbps max.

Display comparison

As already mentioned, the OnePlus 12 has a slightly larger display with a 6.82-inch diagonal, compared to 6.78 inches on the OnePlus 12R. It also has a higher screen resolution but in real life, the difference in sharpness is imperceivable in person.

Both displays have 10-bit color and support for both Dolby Vision and HDR10+. They also advertise the same maximum brightness figures with about 600 nits of typical brightness and the ability to reach a whopping 4,500 nits on a small portion of the display for a short period. Our standardized testing proved that the two displays perform close to the advertised values.

Both panels also have a 120Hz refresh rate and use LTPO tech for dynamic refresh rate adjustment. That means that when nothing is happening on screen and the ambient lighting is high enough, you can expect to see a refresh rate as low as 1Hz on either phone. Both also have very similar high refresh rate gaming capabilities and manage to run most supported games at over 60 fps.

Battery life

The OnePlus 12R has a slight advantage over the OnePlus 12 in the battery department. It packs a marginally larger 5,500 mAh battery, compared to 5,400 mAh in the OnePlus 12. Furthermore, the OnePlus 12R did a bit better in our standardized testing, particularly when it comes to calls and video streaming.

Overall, however, it is a small victory and not a major reason to consider the OnePlus 12R over the OnePlus 12 since the two will practically have about the same battery life in practice.

Charging speed

There is hardly any difference in the charging speed between the international version of the OnePlus 12 and the OnePlus 12R, both of which support proprietary 100W fast charging. If you live in the US, it should be noted that the regional OnePlus 12 can only do 80W charging and will thus charge a bit slower.

In our testing, we clocked both phones, going from empty to full, in around 25 minutes, which is even faster than the advertised 26 minutes.

However, you get more charging flexibility and options with the OnePlus 12, including 50W wireless charging and 10W reverse wireless charging. The OnePlus 12R has neither.

Speaker test

Both the OnePlus 12 and OnePlus 12R have a stereo speaker setup. There is a primary speaker that outputs through a couple of openings on the bottom and another one that fires forward through an earpiece slit and up through another small hole. In vertical orientation, the top one is assigned the left channel, while in landscape, the phone will respect the orientation and switch channels to match. The audio output is pretty well-balanced overall.

The OnePlus 12R has a slight edge in terms of loudness, while the OnePlus 12 has a bit better frequency response, especially in the mids.

Performance

The OnePlus 12 is a proper flagship device rocking Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. It also comes with 12GB of RAM in its base 256GB config and up to a whopping 24GB of RAM in an exotic top-tier variant. Storage is based on fast UFS 4.0 chips.

The OnePlus 12R is also rocking a flagship chipset, though not the latest one. It is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. It is paired with 8 GB of RAM in the base config alongside 128GB of UFS 3.1 storage. You can get the OnePlus 12R with up to 16GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage but it’s still going to be UFS 3.1.

Both phones boot an identical Oxygen OS 14 which is based on Android 14. OnePlus is promising 3 major Android updates and 4 years of security updates for the 12R and 4 major Android updates and 5 years of security updates for OnePlus 12.

Benchmark performance

The OnePlus 12 is clearly the more powerful device out of the two. A fact that is reflected nicely by respective benchmark performance.

That being said, the practical difference between the two phones is not that significant. It’s not like the OnePlus 12R is strapped for power. Even heavier game titles should run just fine on the OnePlus 12R.

Camera comparison

The camera is one area in which the OnePlus 12 has a clear lead over its OnePlus 12R sibling. While both phones have a triple rear camera setup, the OnePlus 12 is rocking a periscope 3x zoom camera, whereas the OnePlus 12R has a 2MP macro cam in its place.

While both phones have 50MP main cameras, the one on the OnePlus 12 is definitely more capable. It uses a Sony LYT-808 sensor with a 1/1.4″ optical format as opposed to Sony IMX 890, with a 1/1.56″ optical format on the 12R.

The 48MP ultrawide here has auto focus, which the 8MP ultrawide on the 12R lacks.

The telephoto camera uses the excellent 64MP OmniVision OV64B 1/2.0″ sensor. The periscope lens’ focal length is equivalent to 70mm, and the aperture is f/2.6. We think this camera’s close-focusing capability is more intriguing than the ultrawide’s.

The 32MP selfie camera on the OnePlus 12 can capture 4K video whereas the 16MP camera on the 12R only goes as high as 1080p.

Image quality

Daylight 1x comparison: OnePlus 12R • OnePlus 12

Despite their hardware differences, the main cameras on the OnePlus 12 and OnePlus 12R capture quite similar photos. Perhaps, if we had to really nitpick, the OnePlus 12 has a bit better rendition of really fine details and slightly more saturated colors.

The same is mostly true for 2x zoom shots in good lighting conditions as well.

Daylight 2x comparison: OnePlus 12R • OnePlus 12

The ultrawide of the OnePlus 12 has a bit more of a clear edge over the ultrawide of the OnePlus 12R. It tends to produce sharper and more detailed images, though, on the flip side, its images are also rather aggressively sharpened at times, so it’s not a particularly clear win.

Daylight 0.6x comparison: OnePlus 12R • OnePlus 12

Low-light quality across the two main cameras of the OnePlus 12 and OnePlus 12R is also a bit of a wash. We can’t say that we like either one of the phones more than the other. Both offer excellent low-light photography with plenty of detail, well-developed shadows, masterfully contained light sources, and a nice color rendition.

Low-light 1x comparison: OnePlus 12R • OnePlus 12

Video quality

Both the OnePlus 12 and OnePlus 12R can capture 4K videos with their respective main cameras. The resulting clips are quite different. The OnePlus 12 captures slightly softer and blurrier videos but definitely less processed. The OnePlus 12R has some aggressive sharpening going on. On the flip side, it does seem to capture more fine detail. Neither camera offers perfect colors or dynamic range.

OnePlus 12: 0.6x • 1x

OnePlus 12R: 0.6x • 1x

As far as ultrawide video goes, the OnePlus 12 has a clear advantage since it can capture 4K video with its ultrawide. All the while, the OnePlus 12R is capped at 1080p. The difference in detail and overall quality greatly favors the OnePlus 12.

Verdict

The OnePlus 12 is the superior device out of the pair; there are no two ways about it. However, the OnePlus 12R is surprisingly similar in most respects. Both phones have very similar design and build except for the fact that the 12 has a slightly higher IP rating than the 12R. Feature-wise, you get most of the same things as well, minus some obvious omissions on the OnePlus 12R, such as the lack of wireless charging. Of course, the OnePlus 12 is slightly faster across the board – in CPU, GPU and storage.

But it’s probably the excellent periscope telephoto camera that may sway you towards the OnePlus 12 with its higher price tag. It’s also got autofocus on the ultrawide and 4K recording capabilities across all cameras front and back.

If you are buying your OnePlus in Europe, the price difference between the two in 256GB trim is a handsome €250, so the OnePlus 12R offers some serious savings. However, in the US, the price gap is only around $100 so the savings there may not be worth it compared to the extra features you would get by going for the more expenisive OnePlus 12.