My favorite midrange phone is now available for the same low price that made me fall in love with it

Tom's Guide

18-06-2025

I'm a big fan of the R Series phones from OnePlus, which takes many of the premium features found in that company's flagship phones and repackages them in a more affordable device. The OnePlus 13R is certainly part of that fine tradition, even if it costs a little bit more than its predecessor.
But thanks to a current smartphone deal, you can get the OnePlus 13R for just $499 at Best Buy — and even wind up with a little bit of cash to spend on other gadgets. Best Buy currently lists the OnePlus 13R at its usual $599 starting price. But dig a little deeper, and you'll see that if you activate the phone with either AT&T or Verizon when buying it from Best Buy, you can save $100. On top of that, Best Buy is offering a $100 e-gift card whether you buy the phone unlocked or not.
The OnePlus 13R delivers impressive battery life, strong performance from a high-end Snapdragon chipset and improved cameras over its predecessor. There's only a 256GB model, which means the phone starts at $599, but if you activate the phone with either AT&T or Verizon when purchasing it from Best Buy, the price drops to $499 — the same cost as the 128GB OnePlus 12R. Best Buy also includes a $100 gift card with your purchase.
The OnePlus 13R delivers everything we love in a good midrange phones, starting with some of the best phone battery life we've seen. The phone fell just shy of 19 hours in our battery test, topping the average device's performance by an astounding 10.5 hours.
When testing the phone for my OnePlus 13R review, I was also impressed by how much better the cameras were compared to the OnePlus 12R. The fact that OnePlus includes a 50MP portrait lens that doubles as a telephoto camera helps out matters considerably, but a new sensor for the main lens also captures more light, resulting in better low-light performance. I also appreciate the fact that unlike other midrange phones that use lesser chips, the OnePlus 13R turns to a fairly recent Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which powered some of the top phones of 2024.
The catch is that OnePlus only offers a 256GB configuration for the OnePlus 13R. While the extra storage is nice, it also means the OnePlus 13R's starting price is $100 more than the 128GB OnePlus 12R available in the U.S. last year. That's where Best Buy's deal comes in, knocking off that $100 when you activate the phone with a carrier and throwing in that extra gift card to sweeten the deal.
Don't want to commit to a carrier with your smartphone purchase? You can buy the OnePlus 13R unlocked at Amazon, which is currently selling the phone for $549 — a $50 discount.