In many ways, the $299 Nuu B30 Pro 5G exceeds our expectations for a budget-friendly Android smartphone. It looks stylish, delivers incredibly smooth gaming performance, and works well on wireless networks. However, it falls short in other respects. It runs an older version of Android, has a dim display, and has a middling camera quality. At the same price, the OnePlus Nord N30 5G has a brighter screen, longer battery life, better photos, and supports fast charging, so it remains our Editors’ Choice winner in this price range.
Looks better than budget
The Nuu B30 Pro looks similar to the Motorola Edge and some Samsung devices thanks to its curved screen. Dragontrail protective glass wraps around the front and fits into your phone’s thin, glossy polycarbonate frame. The Gorilla Glass panel on the back mirrors the curved shape of the front.
(Credit: Iyaz Akhtar)This phone measures 6.37 x 2.92 x 0.35 inches (HWD), which is smaller than the Nord N30 (6.52 x 2.99 x 0.33 inches), but it weighs the same at 6.88 ounces. Compared to the $199.99 Samsung Galaxy A15 (6.30 x 3.02 x 0.33 inches, 7.09 ounces), the Nuu B30 Pro is taller and thicker, but lighter. The relatively narrow width makes it easy to hold, but the curved shape makes it feel thinner than its dimensions suggest.
Minimal bezels around the display give the B30 Pro a relatively modern look. The top bezel hides the earphone speaker. A small notch for the selfie camera can be seen at the top of the display, while the fingerprint sensor is hidden under the glass near the bottom. The latter is easy to access, but must be pressed hard to ensure it works.
Volume rocker and power button on the right edge. Both are thin and feel a little sharp on my thumb, but otherwise work well. The bottom has a SIM tray, USB-C port, and speaker grill. There’s also no microSD card slot or headphone jack here, features found on the Nord N30 and Galaxy A15.
(Credit: Iyaz Akhtar)Three large camera lenses form a triangle on the back. This arrangement is similar to his Apple iPhone 15 Pro, but without the raised square housing. We like that the finish combined with the back glass creates an iridescent glow, but both the front and back glass panels are fingerprint magnets. I also noticed that dust tends to accumulate around the camera lens. If you want your B30 to look good, keep a cleaning cloth handy.
This phone doesn’t have an IP rating, which isn’t surprising for a budget phone. The Nord N30 and Galaxy A15 also lack official dust and water protection, while the $149.99 Moto G Play has an IP52 rating to protect against light splashes.
Nuu only sells the B30 Pro in light green for now, but says more colors may be available in the future.
Large but dim display
The phone’s 6.7-inch AMOLED display has a resolution of 2,400 x 1,080 pixels, a refresh rate of 60 or 120Hz (selected automatically depending on the app), and a peak brightness of 550 nits. The screen was hard to see during the day, so you may need to look for shade when outdoors.
For comparison, the Nord N30 has a slightly larger 6.78-inch display with the same resolution, while the Galaxy A15’s 6.5-inch screen has a resolution of 2,340 x 1,080 pixels. More importantly, both have high peak brightness levels. The Nord N30 reaches 680 nits and the A15 reaches 800 nits. This makes it easier to use outdoors.
Surprisingly crisp performance
Nuu B30 Pro is MediaTek Dimensity 7050 system-on-chip (SoC) and 12 GB of RAM. This is a healthy amount of memory considering the Nord N30 has 8GB of RAM and the Galaxy A15 only has 4GB. And although it doesn’t support expandable storage, the B30 Pro has 256GB of internal storage, which is twice as much as the Nord N30 and Galaxy A15.
For light tasks like composing emails, browsing the web, scrolling through social media, and watching videos, the B30 Pro feels fast. Apps launch quickly and the phone multitasks smoothly. I rarely felt the need to close the app to improve responsiveness.
To further assess the phone’s performance, we turned to benchmarks. In Geekbench 6, a suite that quantifies raw computing power, the B30 Pro scored an impressive 1,084 points in the single-core test and 2,576 points in the multi-core test. For comparison, the Nord N30, equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 chip, reached 888 points and his 2,076 points in the same test. The Galaxy A15, which uses a MediaTek 6835 processor, managed just 704 and 1,855.
(Credit: Geekbench/PCMark/GFXBench)In the PCMark 3.0 test, which evaluates common mobile tasks, the B30 Pro scored 13,904. It easily beats both the Nord N30 (10,245) and Galaxy A15 (8,734).
We also ran the GFXBench Aztec Ruins Game test at a resolution of 2,192 x 1,080 pixels. The B30 managed 16.0 frames per second (fps). This result may not seem like a big deal, but it’s better than the N30 (7.8fps) and A15 (8.6fps) with similar resolutions. For comparison, top-of-the-line gaming phones like the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro ($1,499) recorded 108fps in the same test.
In the actual game, the resource-intensive Genshin played smoothly even on low settings. Enabling medium settings at 60fps gave similar performance with only a mild slowdown. Gameplay stuttered at first when I tried the highest settings, but eventually it ran fine even with multiple opponents on screen. During a gaming session of about 20 minutes, the back of my phone became increasingly hot to the point where I had to stop it. Light games like Mario Kart His Tour worked fine, and the device never heated up to uncomfortable levels.
Battery life is ok
In a battery rundown test with the display at maximum brightness and streaming 1080p video, the B30 Pro lasted 10 hours and 10 minutes. The Nord N30 (11 hours 18 minutes) and Galaxy A15 (14 hours 3 minutes) were better. All three devices have a 5,000mAh battery.
The phone supports 30W wired charging and comes with a 30W fast charger in the box. It took just over an hour and 20 minutes to get the device from 0 to 100% using the included charger. A 15-minute fast charge brought the B30 Pro up to 26% charge, and a 30-minute session brought the device to 50% charge. The Nord N30 supports faster (albeit proprietary) 50W wired charging. Neither offers wireless charging.
Fast wireless, muffled calls
In terms of connectivity, the B30 Pro supports C-band 5G but not mmWave. You can use the phone on T-Mobile and its MVNO partner networks at launch, but you’ll need to use a physical SIM card instead of an eSIM. The phone also supports Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, and NFC.
On T-Mobile’s 5G UC network in New York City, the B30 Pro reached a maximum download speed of 202Mbps and a maximum upload speed of 120Mbps. The Motorola Edge is also compatible with his T-Mobile’s network and supports Wi-Fi 6, so I tested it against the Motorola Edge in the same location. Motorola reached an impressive download speed of 622Mbps, but the upload speed was slower at 68.5Mbps.
(Credit: Iyaz Akhtar)I then connected both phones to my Wi-Fi 6 access point. The B30 Pro achieved a download speed of 506Mbps and an upload speed of 11.9Mbps, while the Moto Edge achieved a download speed of 433Mbps and an upload speed of 19.0Mbps. (The slower upload speeds are a feature of my internet service provider.) When I moved both phones as far as possible from the apartment’s access point, the B30’s download and upload speeds reached 115Mbps and 10.9Mbps. Edge was slow, with download speeds of 86.3Mbps and upload speeds of 5.45Mbps.
Call quality could be improved. On a test call, the B30 did a good job of suppressing his background music that I was playing, allowing my voice to be heard by the caller. However, my voice sounded a little muffled due to the digital noise.
In our tests, the maximum volume of the earphone speaker reached 76.3dB, while the maximum volume of the speakerphone was 67.2dB. The speakerphone is a little quieter than I like, as I feel that volumes above 70dB are easy to hear even with moderate ambient noise.
For music playback, the stereo speakers were surprisingly loud, reaching 94.4dB when playing Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.” However, I feel that the sound is thin overall. Heavy bass sounds like The Knife’s “The Silent Shout” are difficult to hear. To enjoy a wider range of sounds, we recommend using Bluetooth headphones.
overwhelming camera
The three cameras on the back of the B30 Pro include a 108MP main shooter, an 8MP ultrawide sensor, and a 2MP macro lens, in addition to the built-in flash. Affordable smartphones rarely take high-quality photos, and the B30 Pro is no exception. The images you capture are fine for viewing on a small screen or sharing on social media, but flaws become apparent as soon as you zoom in.
By default, the main camera snaps 12.2MP images via pixel binning. Colors seem a bit desaturated, but details in crowded sections appear crisp. But look closer and you’ll notice that the details have a surreal, painterly quality. Up to 2x digital zoom is available, but we recommend cropping after the fact.
The 8MP ultra-wide camera produces similar photos to the main camera in terms of color, but details like around tree branches and brick buildings tend to be lost.
The 2MP macro camera is available in the camera app.[その他]It can be accessed from the menu. Colors are OK, but details aren’t very sharp. I don’t recommend relying on it for anything important.
When it comes to selfies, the front camera takes full 32MP images. Regular selfies look sharp, but portrait mode can be overly aggressive. As I’ve experienced with other devices, the camera can sometimes blur the lenses of your glasses, creating an unnatural bokeh effect. If you want to see yourself up close, 2x digital zoom allows you to see your face in sharp detail.
For video, the B30 Pro records up to 4K at 30fps. Electronic image stabilization (EIS) is not used by default, but can be enabled in the camera settings. Videos show fairly accurate colors and decent contrast, but the phone struggles to stabilize recordings. EIS helps some, but mainly replaces camera shake with digital wobble.
Both the Nord N30 and Galaxy A15 cameras have great color and detail.
Android 13 is already a step behind
We’ve reached the point where all new phones are expected to come with the current version of Android, i.e. build 14. The B30 Pro will run Android 13 at launch. The company says it plans to update the phone to Android 14 by the end of summer 2024, and that it will further support the phone with at least two years of OS and security updates. While Samsung has promised four years of OS updates and five years of security updates for the Galaxy A15, OnePlus plans to ship the Nord N30 (launched with Android 13) only with Android 14.
Nuu’s user interface is called Quickstep, and it’s not that different from Google’s Android UI. The main change is that the default home button in the navigation menu now looks a little different. Otherwise, the Nuu Help app preinstalled in the center of the screen provides help through online chat. Although you can remove Nuu Help from your home screen, you cannot completely uninstall it.
[設定]has an intelligent assistant option. Here you can enable a number of optional features, including Smart Answer (answer calls by holding the phone to your ear) and Side Application Bar (a customizable app dock that you can access with gestures). I’m a big fan of his opt-in customizations that allow you to interact with your phone in novel ways.
Basic cell phone for gamers
The Nuu B30 Pro stands out for its gaming capabilities, and we’re also fans of its modern design. However, the phone’s dim screen, mediocre camera, and outdated software prevented it from gaining much traction. At $299, the OnePlus Nord N30 is a better value thanks to a brighter display, better camera, and faster wired charging. If you’re looking to save money, the $199 Samsung Galaxy A15 offers solid overall performance and long-term software support.
