DESCRIPTION:

The OnePlus Watch is a wonderful debut smartwatch from OnePlus, outperforming more expensive competitors in a few key aspects, thanks to its stylish design and lengthy battery life. Its specialised operating system, however, limits how many programmes can be loaded, and at launch, the associated smartphone app is only offered for Android. The OnePlus Watch is a fantastic value for the money despite a few software hiccups that reveal its first-generation origins and is far less expensive than Samsung and Apple rivals.

The OnePlus Watch lives up to the company’s reputation for stylish smartphone designs with a stainless steel shell, stunning AMOLED display, comfortable, sturdy watch band, and a very long battery life. If you don’t want to purchase a Samsung Galaxy Watch or an Apple Watch, there are far superior RTOS (real-time operating system) solutions available. But, it fails in too many other crucial areas.

The OnePlus Watch is now offered in one big size for only $159. The provision of sophisticated health and fitness data is a major focus of today’s smartwatches, but sadly, this is one area where the watch fails horribly. Software upgrades could grow better over time, but after a few months of being available, it is doubtful that they will get much better than they are now.

The best smartwatch experiences are offered by Apple and Samsung for iPhone and Android users, but these devices are also twice as expensive as the OnePlus Watch. There are a number of Amazfit choices that are around the same in price but provide far superior performance, including support for features like the Amazon Alexa speech assistant. Better options are also available from Garmin, Fitbit, Mobvoi, Fossil, and others, but they cost $100 more than the OnePlus Watch.

If your budget is less than $200, consider an Amazfit alternative. If you are a huge OnePlus fan and must have its trademarked watch in your collection, that is the only reason to give a OnePlus Watch some thought. While it was just $159, I am returning it because to the horrible fitness tracking experience and awkward user interface. I got one since I thought it would be a good addition to my extensive watch collection.

ONEPLUS WATCH REVIEW: TWO-MINUTE REVIEW

The long-rumored OnePlus Watch is now a reality, and it’s a refined wearable that, in terms of appearance, battery life, and basic functionality, can compete with the best smartwatches on the market.
Nevertheless, the OnePlus Watch’s unique operating system (OnePlus Watch OS) means that at launch, users will only have access to the first-party applications that have been preloaded. Take note of the word “basic” there.
Although it’s possible that customer feedback could change the company’s mind, it’s likely that the OnePlus Watch won’t ever get more functionality than it had at launch, which is admittedly limited in comparison to a Wear OS-running smartwatch or Apple Watch. OnePlus does not currently have any plans to add an app store or portal.

SPECIFICATIONS

• 1.39-inch AMOLED touchscreen with a resolution of 454 × 454 pixels
• 316L stainless steel for the watch case
• Space: 4 GB
• 5 ATM/IP68 water resistance
• Networking and sensors GPS/GLONASS/Galileo/BeiDou, optical HR and blood oxygen, accelerometer, gyroscope, air pressure sensor, and Bluetooth 5.0 BLE
• Battery life: 3402 mAh, up to 14 days when used as intended, and 25 hours when GPS tracking is on.
• standard band size of 22mm with quick-release pins
• Dimensions: 76 grammes and 46.4 x 46.4 x 10.9mm.

When the OnePlus Watch is linked through Bluetooth to an Android smartphone, it can make and receive phone calls directly from the wrist.

HARDWARE

As someone with large wrists, the OnePlus Watch only comes in one size and one colour, but it fits me wonderfully, has a tolerable thickness, and has nice curves, so it is also extremely comfortable. The supplied silicone strap is made of incredibly soft, thick, and sturdy material, comparable to what Apple employs. The OnePlus Watch’s fit, polish, and beauty astonished me, especially considering its low cost of $159 ($159).

The watch casing is made of stainless steel, which is usually more expensive when compared to other smartwatch manufacturers that utilise aluminium as their standard material. With deep blacks and vibrant colours, the AMOLED touchscreen boasts a high pixel resolution and looks stunning. A few millimetre wide bezel surrounding the visible touchscreen surrounds the display, which takes up the whole watch’s face.

Choose an Amazfit alternative if your spending limit is less than $200. If you are a huge fan of OnePlus and feel the need to have one of its branded watches in your collection, that is the sole reason to give one a thought. I got one because I thought it would be a wonderful addition to my extensive watch collection, but even though it was just $159, I am returning it due to the horrible fitness tracking experience and awkward user interface.

The barometric sensor’s hole is located on the bottom of the watch casing. The speaker is located over in the centre right part of the back, while the microphone is located at the top left. The two charging connections are located below the heart rate and blood oxygen sensor, which are located in the centre of the watch’s back. Another excellent design element is the matte-finish thick plastic used for the rear.

Wandering around the watch’s hardware and design, $159 looks like a great deal for a timepiece with such excellent fit and finish. After using the watch for a few weeks, we realised that a successful watch is much more than simply the hardware.

WATCH SOFTWARE

To display the chosen watch face and switch on the display, raise your wrist or push one of the buttons. The OnePlus Health smartphone software offers 50 watch faces for you to choose from. Some have traditional faces, while others focus heavily on presenting the health information the watch has gathered. You could even take a picture of your current outfit and have a watch face made that matches it. Up to 14 watch faces may be changed by tapping and holding on the watch face, and you can also alter several features of the watch face.

The control centre, which can be accessed by swiping down from the top, displays fast controls such display brightness, phone location, alarm setting, flashlight, and a button to access watch settings. In order to display alerts, slide up from the bottom. You can only respond to alerts with a small number of pre-programmed default replies since the information presented via notifications is relatively restricted and ineffective. It is a very simple notification experience, and these replies cannot be modified.

The several widget displays, including heart rate, sleep, activity status, music, workout, fast applications, stress, and weather, may be accessed by swiping from right to left. The information displayed is rather elementary, and pressing the widget does not provide more information, weekly summaries, or any other useful widgets as we see on other smartwatches. These features give one the impression that someone is still actively trying to create this component of the watch. The weather view is almost worthless for anything other than what you can see out the window because it just displays some sort of forecast with the current temperature, condition, high, and low temperatures. Tap and hold on the display to choose which cards you can view.

To access the app launcher, press the top, OnePlus button. Activities, workout, workout record, heart rate, blood oxygen, sleep, stress, breathing, phone, music, weather, alarm clock, stopwatch, timer, flashlight, barometer, compass, TV connect, camera, settings, and find phone are just a few of the apps that are installed on the watch. These apps cannot be arranged in any particular sequence using tap and hold or smartphone syncing. The most popular applications should be at the top of the list, or at the very least, they should be arranged alphabetically. Similar to a Samsung Galaxy Watch, the app launcher moves along the watch’s curve while the settings panel moves vertically. This is just another sign that the OnePlus Watch is still under development.

SMARTPHONE SOFTWARE

Installing the OnePlus Health app is required to pair your Android phone with the OnePlus Watch. The software has three primary screens: Health, Fitness, and Settings. You can view all of the watch’s health and wellbeing statistics on the Health page. Steps, exercise duration, calories burnt, activity, heart rate, sleep, blood oxygen levels, stress, and exercise logs are all included. The display of the data cannot be altered in terms of its existence, order, or organisation.

The data may be seen on a calendar, by day, by week, by month, and by year by tapping on any of these data fields, which brings up more displays. On these displays, data that is considerably more in-depth is also provided. For instance, the distribution of your stress levels or the fine details of your sleep stage are displayed. The app’s Health data seems to be a handy feature.

You may start a workout from the smartphone app and view details of your most recent session in the Fitness page. The history of your workouts for that activity is then displayed when you tap on one of your most recent exercises. You may touch once more to see this info in much greater depth. One significant drawback for me is that none of this data can be synchronised to other services like Google Fit, Strava, Runkeeper, etc.; it only exists in the OnePlus Health app.

The OnePlus Watch connection and battery status, as well as the watch face store, phone notification sync choices, get up reminder toggle, tips, and device settings, are all visible on the Settings screen. You can adjust your account settings by clicking the gear symbol in the upper right corner, and you can access device settings by tapping the gear icon at the bottom of the screen. Under the device settings, you may update the watch and adjust your music, contacts, goals, weather, and health preferences. Although MP3 audio that you own must be connected to the watch via the OnePlus Health app, music can be kept on the watch’s internal storage. Services with subscriptions are not supported.

DAILY USAGE EXPERIENCES AND CONCLUSION

At first glance, the OnePlus Watch appears to be a promising alternative thanks to its affordable $159 pricing and excellent hardware. Even though the loudness and clarity were not as high as with a Bluetooth headset, it was pleasant to be able to take phone calls directly on the wrist using the mic and speaker.

The restricted and inconsistent software is annoying, and the inability to personalise the watch experience slightly dampens the pleasure. The appalling GPS outdoor workout monitoring experience was the actual deal-killer for me. I tried a couple runs and walks, and I frequently got terrible outcomes. During one run, my Garmin’s reading differed by more than 1.5 miles. There is no justification for the discrepancy after that, but about a half mile of that difference was caused by how long it took the GPS to connect initially. Two quick hikes revealed variations of 0.2 miles on a mile hike and 0.3 miles on a 1.5 mile hike. They were unobstructed sidewalk strolls in the open without any cover from any trees or other objects. The heart rate measurements did not even match the high and low patterns noted by other watches and differed by as much as 30 bpm.

With the poor accuracy of the fitness monitoring, I wouldn’t want to sync the data with any other services, but the fact that all of this information can only be accessed through the OnePlus Health app also played a significant role in my decision to return the watch. All of the other smartwatches I’ve examined allow users to manually export the data the watch collects, and the majority of them sync with well-known services like Strava, MapMyRun, Runkeeper, and others. It is not advisable to lock the data within a single app given the uncertain future of wearable technology.

As RTOS technique for watches typically results in extremely extended battery life, which is the case in this instance when the OnePlus Watch went for more than a week without charging, I’m really a huge supporter of it. Amazfit’s RTOS watches, on the other hand, genuinely deliver incredibly precise health and wellness statistics with top-notch support for synchronising that data to well-known services. I strongly advise you to look at the Amazfit GTR2 or GTS2 if you want to get a smartwatch for less than $200.