Summary
OnePlus Watch 2.. The first OnePlus wristwatch was a letdown. The OnePlus Watch had impressive hardware and a long battery life, but its activity monitoring was at best erratic and its proprietary software was a touch clunky. In contrast to its predecessor, the OnePlus Watch 2 is powered by Wear OS, which gives users access to a plethora of additional applications via the Play Store, as well as Google Wallet and the Assistant. It also breaks the previous record for Wear OS battery life, lasting up to four days between charges even when functions like sleep monitoring and an always-on display are turned on.
OnePlus Watch 2 Review
That’s all very intriguing – Wear OS needs diversity, and all of the big manufacturers’ smartwatches still struggle with longevity. However, the OnePlus Watch 2 suffers from many of the same problems as the first model, including a shaky user interface and uneven activity monitoring. Therefore, I’m not really that thrilled about the watch itself, even while I’m excited about what the OnePlus Watch 2 may represent for Wear OS and smartwatches in general.
Cost and accessibility
OnePlus Watch 2 is priced at $300. Preorders for it open today, and it will be publicly available on March 4. It is available in two colors: Radiant Steel, which is silver with a gorgeous green band, and Black Steel, which has a black casing with a black band, both directly from OnePlus and on Amazon. If you trade in any watch, smart or not, at OnePlus.com, you may get $50 off until the end of March. Alternatively, you may save 30% ($120) on the watch when you purchase it together with a OnePlus 12 or OnePlus 12R. There is no way to combine the two promotions.
Prime members can get $50 off the OnePlus Watch 2 on Amazon from March 11 until the end of the month.
Technical Details:
case: 47mm in diameter
Example Composition: Stainless steel
display: 1.43″ 60Hz AMOLED
Screen resolution: 466 x 466; Processor: Snapdragon W5; RAM: 2GB; Storage: 32GB; Battery: 500mAh
Mobile connectivity: Lack of WiFi availability
Sure, OS 4 Wearers with health sensors
SpO2, heart rate
Dimensions: 46.7 x 12.1 x 47 mm 80 grams in weight (with strap)
IP Classification: IP68
22 mm is the strap size.
Colors: Radiant Steel; Black Steel
price: $300
With a 47mm casing, the OnePlus Watch 2 is around the same size as the bigger Galaxy Watch 6 Classic. Although Samsung’s watch features a 1.3-inch OLED, OnePlus manages to cram a larger screen into a comparable size with a 1.43-inch OLED.
The hardware is excellent. The case’s rounded form and one flat edge with two buttons are reminiscent of OnePlus’s current phones’ distinctive camera bumps. My Radiant review unit has a subtle but intriguing combination of brushed and polished steel on the casing, and all in all, it feels as high-end as a smartwatch in this price bracket should.
Although I enjoy it, I think it’s a bit strange that a wearable in this price range would come with more neutral alternatives instead of a silver case and a green band. However, the watch accepts conventional 22mm bands, meaning that personalization possibilities are almost endless.
The watch’s home button has an extremely peculiar design and spins similarly to a conventional watch crown. However, the watch’s software does nothing with that rotation, in contrast to watches made by Apple and Google. As per OnePlus, this is intentional. I believe OnePlus probably erred in designing the home button in this fashion since many consumers have become used to utilizing spinning crowns to swipe through content on smartwatches.
OnePlus claims that the sapphire crystal used in the glass covering the vivid and smooth 60Hz OLED display makes it more scratch-resistant than watches made of ordinary old glass. Its maximum brightness of 1,000 nits is comparable to that of the Pixel Watch 2, although it is not as brilliant as the 2,000 nits of the Galaxy Watch 6. In most lighting settings, even outside ones, it is still visible.
Even by smartwatch standards, the OnePlus Watch 2’s speaker isn’t that great, but it’s not a huge problem. Additionally, if you grip your hand incorrectly, blocking is fairly simple.
Performance and software With the Watch 2, OnePlus demonstrated cleverness by using a secondary, lower-power BES2700 chipset to power a real-time operating system (RTOS) in addition to Wear OS 4 on a Snapdragon W5 processor. According to OnePlus, background operations like monitoring health sensors and interacting with your phone are handled by the less demanding RTOS, while the more demanding Snapdragon processor manages applications such as Wear OS.
Crucially, the combination of hardware and software seems to have no effect on the user experience while providing exceptional battery life (more on that later). I wouldn’t have guessed anything strange was going on if I didn’t know about the dual-OS stuff; in my experience, the OnePlus Watch 2 has been just as snappy as rival smartwatches using Qualcomm’s W5 series, such as the Pixel Watch 2 and TicWatch Pro 5.
Wear OS 4 is essentially the same here as it is on other watches, although OnePlus’s customized features are less elegant than those found on a Samsung or Google Wear OS watch. For instance, a large number of the watch faces on the OnePlus Watch 2 seem to have been designed during the Android Wear period.
While there are a few that I enjoy, there are far too many that either provide outdated, basic digital layouts or garish skeumorphic gradients that attempt to imitate analog watch faces. Additionally, there’s a strange glitch that randomly seems to alter the color of my watch face on sometimes. It always sorts itself out in the end, but it’s strange that it occurs at all.
The OnePlus Watch 2’s app drawer is strangely awful, of all things. The “Planet” view by default is a two-dimensional array of bubbles that resembles what Apple does with their watches. Although it’s not particularly useful, it looks nice. You may also choose between a conventional list view and a grid-style layout similar to what Samsung watches provide. Both of them are better, but they still have strange, slick scrolling dynamics that are different from the rest of the OS; I often find myself hurling the applications list up and down unintentionally. Simply said, it lacks intuition.
Anecdotally, I believe this best describes the software experience on the OnePlus Watch 2: the alarm app that comes preloaded on the watch does not allow you to set quiet alarms. The watch’s settings allow you to completely turn down the alarm loudness, but alarms will still vibrate, which is what I want. But it took me several days to realize that, so for the whole week, my partner and I woke up to an embarrassingly awful synthetic jazz song.
You may argue that’s user mistake (and I wouldn’t argue with you), but I believe it illustrates a general lack of competence in the areas where OnePlus was involved in the software experience. The Alarm app allows you to customize the time, frequency, and ringtone of your alarms. You can even give your alarms names. However, in order to adjust the loudness of an alarm, you must go four navigation steps to the watch’s sound settings. Everything about Wear OS is good, but I find OnePlus’s customizations and preloaded applications to be a bit strange.
The OHealth app from OnePlus allows you to control your OnePlus Watch 2 from your phone. It performs the standard functions of a watch companion app, such as allowing you to switch between watch faces and Wear OS tiles, adjust notification preferences, and examine the fitness and health data the watch gathers.
Monitoring health
The OnePlus Watch 2 monitors your sleep and activity levels and provides tailored feedback for certain activities. It may evaluate your jogging and provide you with suggestions on how to improve your form in several areas, such as “vertical oscillation” (ranked a more credible Poor) and left-right balance (my is allegedly Excellent).
Additionally, the OHealth app makes an attempt to predict how long it would take for your “energy to recover to optimal status” after exercise. That seems like OnePlus couldn’t have enough data to do that estimate, and I’m always dubious of wearable features like this, particularly from smaller companies.
Like several other smartwatches I’ve tested lately, the OnePlus Watch 2 shows your heart rate range throughout an exercise session, with an arrow pointing to the zone you’re in out of a possible many. This is also possible with the Pixel Watch 2, which is incredibly useful for me while I’m jogging.
On the OnePlus Watch 2, however, the arrow simply snaps to the middle of whichever zone your heart rate is currently in, with no easily parsed indication of how close you are to the upper or lower bounds of that range. In contrast, the indicator on Google’s heart rate graph moves freely to show where you are currently in each zone. The objective of having an interface like this is partly defeated by the lack of legible information.
There are a few custom interfaces available for various workout genres on the OnePlus Watch 2, but the selection is strange: there are interfaces for badminton, tennis, and skiing. It’s reasonable that badminton mode tracks things like how long a game lasted without the shuttlecock hitting the ground, but I doubt many people are so passionate about the sport that they would purchase a watches just for badminton monitoring. It seems like an odd way to use up scarce development resources, particularly considering how unpolished other parts of the program are currently.
Overall, I think OnePlus’s activity monitoring isn’t very accurate, and I’m finding a lot of discrepancies when I compare it to the Oura Ring I’ve been wearing concurrently. A few days later, Oura had me at 5,839 and OHealth at 6,966. One day, Oura recorded 10,015 steps, while OHealth reported 7,981. Anecdotally, I’ve found that step counts from other smartwatches and wearables I’ve tested seem to be closer to Oura’s than they are to the OnePlus Watch 2. It seems that the OnePlus Watch 2 most likely is, unless all of those wearables are counting incorrectly.
Sleep monitoring seems to be more consistent; OHealth displays comparable sleep stage patterns and sleeping and waking periods to data in the Oura app. Additionally, OnePlus assigns you a stress score out of 100 depending on “other physiological parameters” including heart rate variability. OnePlus’s stress monitoring hasn’t provided me with any insightful information. Thus far, it seems to be only estimating physiological arousal, which may be brought on by stress as well as a variety of non-stressful circumstances.
Life of batteries and charging
With the Watch 2, OnePlus claims an almost unbelievable 100 hours of mixed usage on a single charge. However, the watch really delivers because of its powerful 500mAh battery cell combination and innovative dual-OS design. The OnePlus Watch 2 has amazing battery life.
By the time I set up my review device, which I received on Friday afternoon, I had only used half of the battery. With the always-on display on, I used it normally for the remainder of the day and the weekend. I didn’t get a low battery alert until Sunday night, nearly 48 hours later.
It is revolutionary that a Wear OS watch can have this type of battery life. While simpler wearables may run for weeks on a single charge, the Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5, which is comparable in size, is the longest-lasting Wear OS watch I’ve examined. It managed to endure for almost 72 hours between charges in part because it used an additional low-power display layer to handle AOD duties. According to OnePlus, the Watch 2 can last up to 48 hours even under more demanding conditions, such as frequent GPS usage. I think so.
While it’s fantastic to not need to bring a watch charger on long excursions, the OnePlus charger is also a terrific travel companion. The OnePlus Watch 2’s charger is a compact puck with USB-C input, so you can travel with one fewer cord than other watch chargers that are permanently tied to USB cables.
This particular smartwatch charger is just what I’ve been looking for—convenient as I could have imagined. I don’t need to search for a place to put in a USB cable since my home has limited port space—I can just attach the converter to any USB-C charger.
Additionally, it is quick: the watch may be fully charged in less than an hour with the adaptor charging at up to 7.5 watts. Additionally, it can charge the watch to 25% capacity in around ten minutes, so even a few times a week while taking a shower will keep it fully charged. I will definitely be missing this charger when I use a wristwatch again.
All things considered, the battery and charging condition are A+; no concerns. I’m hoping Samsung and Google are taking note.
rivalry
The OnePlus Watch 2 is reasonably priced at $300. Naturally, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 and the Google Pixel Watch 2 are its two main competitors.
Although it retails for $280, the bigger 44mm Galaxy Watch 6 is often offered for less. Although it has a little smaller display than the OnePlus Watch 2, it has much better outside visibility. Additionally, Samsung’s fitness monitoring seems more precise, which improves the overall coherence and sophistication of the program. However, the OnePlus Watch 2 easily lasts three to four days on a single charge, whereas the Watch 6 probably won’t last two days.
At 41 mm as opposed to 47 mm, the $350 Pixel Watch 2 is much smaller than the OnePlus Watch 2. Though OnePlus’s health monitoring is less dependable than Google’s, the Pixel Watch offers a more refined user experience thanks to its native Wear OS and excellent watch faces. However, the OnePlus Watch 2 easily lasts three times as long as the Pixel Watch 2, which only lasts around thirty hours on a charge.
Is it something you should purchase?
What a thrill the OnePlus Watch 2 is. It’s a rival to the growing Wear OS duopoly that Samsung and Google jointly control, and it’s a generally competitive alternative that should push more established competitors to improve. Its battery life is far longer than that of any other Wear OS wristwatch available, including more expensive alternatives like the $799 Apple Watch Ultra 2. It also has an excellent charger. What OnePlus has done here is something that the whole industry should be taking note of.
However, apart from its obvious benefits in terms of battery life and charging, the OnePlus Watch 2 isn’t anything special. Although it runs Wear OS and can access all of the included applications, the overall experience isn’t quite as comprehensive or well-rounded as that of a watch from Samsung or Google. Activity monitoring is a little hit or miss, and many of OnePlus’s preloaded watch faces are ugly. Even simple UI features like the app drawer are difficult to use.
The OnePlus Watch 2 is unquestionably a wearable that is worth your attention if a wearable’s extended battery life is your top goal and accuracy while monitoring physical activity is not a major concern. However, you may want to hold off until the inevitable OnePlus Watch 3 if all you want is a seamless wristwatch experience and a days-long battery life is more of a nice-to-have. For my part, I’m excited about it.
