Reviews
OnePlus Watch review: You get exactly $159 worth of smartwatch and nothing more
The OnePlus Watch is more than a basic fitness tracker, but less than an Apple Watch or Wear OS smartwatch. Welcome to the era of semi-smartwatches.
Lower your expectations for the OnePlus Watch or youâre going to be greatly disappointed.
Thatâs how you should approach OnePlusâ first smartwatch. It neither deals massive damage to the Apple Watch (thereâs no iPhone support) or the shortlist of Wear OS-powered smartwatches that have been on life support since Google quietly left it to wither over the years. The OnePlus Watch also is not as full-featured as Samsungâs Galaxy Watches that run on Tizen OS.
A cursory glance at the OnePlus Watchâs relatively low $159 price should give you a hint that it doesnât compare to the Apple Watch (which starts at $399), Galaxy Watch 3 (which starts at $399), or Wear OS watches (which typically start at $249 or $299 MSRP).
But then you remember that this is OnePlus. The company is known for delivering products that punch above their weight class with competitive features at lower prices. In the new era of OnePlus thatâs moved beyond its âNever Settleâ and âflagship killerâ modus operandi with budget and mid-range devices, the OnePlus Watch delivers exactly what you pay for: just enough features for the price.
Input may receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article. We only include products that have been independently selected by Input's editorial team.
Semi-smart
The OnePlus Watch is a simple pitch: More than a basic fitness tracker and less than an Apple Watch, Samsung, or Wear OS smartwatch. That may not be satisfying to hear that the OnePlus Watch fits on neither ends of the wearable spectrum, but rather it lands in the middle, but it is what it is. The middle ground is now The Battleground for value innovation. Iâm dubbing these mid-ranged wearables âsemi-smartwatches.â
Iâve already talked about the OnePlus Watchâs design and comfort at length so Iâll quickly summarize: The 46mm case may be large if you have small wrists; itâs comfortable even wearing it to sleep for weeks; and the hand-polished stainless steel design is minimalist just the way I like my gadgets. In my hands-on, I noted how the silicone band length might be too long; a OnePlus spokesperson told me âusers may contact customer service should they require a shorter alternative than the 22mm standard strap provided.â Yes!
The 1.39-inch display round AMOLED display is sharp and visibility is great outdoors. OnePlus has an obsession with prioritizing the displays on its phones and Iâm glad it has carried this over to the OnePlus Watch. Most people wouldnât even realize how much work the company put into optimizing the display for fluidity. Just read this excerpt shared by OnePlus product manager Raymond Z. on the companyâs forums:
âWe worked on optimizing the bottom layer of the display architecture, improving the fluency of more than 50 scenes, and changing the display frame rate from the industryâs usual 30 fps to more than 50 fps. In fact, the frame rate of some scenes even doubled. It is no exaggeration to say that this is probably one of the smoothest smartwatches with long battery life available in the market today.â
I can confirm the display on the OnePlus Watch is ultra-smooth. So smooth that there are virtually no animations when navigating between apps and functions. Press either of the two buttons on the watch and the content just instantly switches.
Like most smartwatches, the OnePlus Watch is fundamentally an accessory for your phone. Itâs got built-in GPS and Wi-Fi, but itâs most useful when itâs connected to your phone via Bluetooth. Thatâs fine for most people, but personally limiting for me since Iâve gotten used to having cellular data on my Apple Watch, which is really useful for running.
Now, for the part that youâve been waiting for: the software. When I spoke to OnePlus CEO Pete Lau last year, he teased the possibility of the smartwatch running Wear OS. The OnePlus Watch is launching tomorrow on April 14 and it doesnât run on Googleâs smartwatch OS. Instead, itâs using a version of an RTOS (real-time operating system) â a barebones piece of software that can perform certain tasks and functions but lacks the expandability of a platform like Wear OS, watchOS, or Tizen.
The OnePlus Watch only syncs notifications via Bluetooth despite having Wi-Fi.
RTOS is both a smart and poor decision for certain reasons. Letâs start with the good. The software is lightweight, simple, and easy to navigate. There are two buttons on the OnePlus Watch: the top button with âOnePlusâ printed on it (brings up the included apps and settings) and the bottom button is programmable to launch an app of your choice. Itâs set to the blood oxygen monitoring app by default.
Pairing with an Android phone is done via the OnePlus Health app. It keeps track of all your health data and is used to add music. The health data can also sync with the Google Fit app.
OnePlus has included all of the basic fitness and smartwatch features youâd expect: a dozen workout modes with auto-tracking (the full 110+ modes are coming in an update in mid-May), music (it stores 2GB, or ~500 songs), heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen detection, sleep tracking, stress detection, breathing, weather, clock (alarms, time, stopwatch), flashlight, compass, barometer, a TV remote for controlling a OnePlus TV, and a feature to find your OnePlus phone. At launch, there are 50 watch faces (some of them customizable). And, of course, the OnePlus Watch is IP68 water and dust-resistant and certified for 5ATM.
This is a solid list of smartwatch features, but itâs the features that the OnePlus Watch doesnât have and the questionable polish that are constant reminders that this is a watered-down smartwatch. For starters, the OnePlus Watch only syncs notifications via Bluetooth despite having Wi-Fi. That means it must be connected to a phone and within range of it. Away from your phone? In another room? Youâre not going to get notifications over Wi-Fi, which means youâre going to miss a lot of stuff if you depend on them. Compare this to the Apple Watch or Wear OS watches that sync notifications over Wi-Fi and you can see how the OnePlus Watch shoots itself in the foot.
Then, thereâs the fact that the OnePlus Watch doesnât have an always-on display (AOD) for showing the time. This was a compromise years ago, but not including it on a new smartwatch is very weird now that most smartwatches support an AOD.
Raymond Z. addressed the lack of an AOD in the same forum post. The main reason being an AOD would cripple battery life by as much as 50 percent.
âWeâve heard many users request the always-on display. We are currently looking at things like how it impacts power consumption and are evaluating the possibility to bring this feature in a future OTA. Iâm also interested to know your thoughts about how important AOD is to you, considering that it could increase power consumption by almost 50%. Let us know in the thread below.â
OnePlus has always prided itself on giving users choice over how their OnePlus phones are set up. Why not make the AOD a setting you can turn on or off? Let individual users decide how long or short they need their smartwatch to last from a single charge. A OnePlus spokesperson told me, âWe are planning to have always-on display on the Watch, but it is still being developed and will come in a future update.â
The OnePlus Watch also doesnât have a voice assistant (no Google Assistant since itâs not running Wear OS); thereâs no mobile payment support despite having an NFC chip; and Iâve experienced a number of small bugs that, while not deal-breakers, were annoying. I didnât realize how much I used voice assistants on my smartwatches until I had none on the OnePlus Watch. Whether itâs for calling my mom when Iâm cooking, setting a timer, or sending a message, I got so used to just saying âHey Siriâ or âHey Google.â With no voice assistant on the OnePlus Watch, I couldnât really multitask, especially in the kitchen (where I spend basically all of my free time now). As for the omission of mobile payments⊠OnePlus told me: âMobile payments via OnePlus Watch will not be available as of now in North America and will only be available in China.â
A few times I woke up to check the time and the clock was completely out of sync â itâd be 10:30 a.m. and the watch would show the time as 3-something a.m. Pressing on either button sometimes resynced the time, but sometimes I had to restart. Another bug I noticed: the temperature didnât change when I switched the unit from °C to °F in the OnePlus Health app; on the âPracticalâ watch face, which has a weather complication, itâd convert 15°C to 15°F when it should have been 59°F. Little bugs like this occasionally popped up while I was testing the OnePlus Watch.
Other things like the weak haptics (no smartwatchâs haptics comes close to the Taptic Engine on the Apple Watch), lack of proper text input (there are preset messages for texting), and slow-to-activate auto activity tracking further highlighted the OnePlus Watchâs shortcomings. Even abbreviations like âPlsâ instead of âPleaseâ felt really out of place for a final shipping product.
The most surprising feature of the OnePlus Watch is sleep tracking. Itâs well done for such a basic smartwatch and automatically detects when youâve fallen asleep and when you wake up, unlike the Apple Watchâs sleep tracking, which is just a schedule, to be honest. Iâve been comparing my sleeping data with the Soli-based radar sleep tracking in Googleâs Nest Hub 2 and the tracked sleeping data is almost identical. The Nest Hub 2 detects more than just the duration and quality of your sleep â it listens for snoring, coughs, a detects ambient light â but the sleep tracking on the OnePlus Watch is just enough (awake, light, and deep sleep). This is how sleep tracking should work on every smartwatch: it starts tracking when you fall asleep and stops when you wake up. Looking at the data and using it to improve my sleep is mostly on me. But the tracking should be this easy.
This is how sleep tracking should work on every smartwatch.
One feature I wasnât able to test: controlling a OnePlus TV. OnePlus says you can use the OnePlus Watch as a remote to turn its TVs on and off, adjust the volume, and thereâs also a clever feature that turns the TV off when itâs detected youâve fallen asleep for thirty minutes. But I wasnât able to try this because OnePlus TVs are only sold in India. I asked OnePlus if this was a hint that the OnePlus TV would be sold outside of India. The company told me the TV âwill remain exclusive to India and as of now there are no plans for the OnePlus TV to be sold in other countries.â
Strong battery life
The one spec that stands out on the OnePlus Watch is battery life. OnePlus generously advertises its smartwatch with battery life that can last about 1 week for âmost active usersâ and two weeks with âsustainable use.â This is a bit of a stretch.
While it is true that the OnePlus Watch can last up between 5-7 days on a single charge (I went my first five days without charging), I found thatâs only true when itâs not connected to a phone via Bluetooth all day. The distance from my bedroom to my living room is about 20 feet. Oftentimes, Iâll be on my sofa working or watching TV or in my kitchen devising the next Michelin-worthy dish. At this range, the OnePlus Watch is not syncing and buzzing my wrist with notifications. And since thereâs no cellular model, you also wonât get notifications if you go outside without a paired phone.
Work out daily or often? In my tests, this could drain the battery by one-third or one-half depending on how frequently I activated the sensors. Surprisingly, sleep tracking doesnât impact the battery life much â it drains very little while youâre snoozing. In other words, if youâre using the OnePlus Watch daily for notifications, fitness tracking, and sleep tracking, youâre likely going to see around 3-4 days of battery life, which is still really great for a smartwatch. That extends with your specific use cases (maybe you skip a workout day or youâre not connected to your phone for many hours or you donât get as many notifications). With a larger battery (402 mAh vs. 330 mAh in the 45mm Galaxy Watch 3 and 303 mAh in the 44mm Apple Watch), the OnePlus Watch achieves longer battery life mostly by sheer capacity size.
On the plus side, the OnePlus Watch charges up super fast. Five minutes gets you a day of battery life and 20 minutes gets you âa weekâ (again, I think thatâs generous and you should expect multi-day wherever you see âweekâ for battery).
I donât own any of the Fitbit Versa smartwatches, but I have tested them before and theyâre the only smartwatches that I know of that have battery life thatâs as long as the OnePlus Watch. The Pebble would count if it wasnât dead and absorbed into Fitbit, which is being absorbed into Google. Fitbit smartwatches are known for their multi-day-to-week-long battery life. The OnePlus Watch joins the exclusive club.
No third-party apps
This is probably the OnePlus Watchâs biggest weakness. While the third-party app support on the Apple Watch, Galaxy Watch, or Wear OS smartwatches donât resemble the breadth of their smartphone counterparts, the apps most people will want like Spotify, Strava, or Uber are there. Theyâre nonexistent on the OnePlus Watch.
The lack of third-party apps on the OnePlus Watch is yet another consequence of using RTOS instead of Wear OS. I donât know whatâs happening in OnePlusâ boardrooms so Iâm not privy to whether or not the company even had talks with third-party apps or considered them important to the OnePlus Watch. The Apple Watch I own and wear daily is a Series 4 from 2018 â new watchOS updates and third-party apps have expanded its original functionality for years. Iâm not sure Iâll be able to say the same about the OnePlus Watch â it feels more disposable to me.
When asked, OnePlus said there are âno plansâ to add third-party apps or âpartner with specific apps to include in the Watch.â Does this mean itâll never happen? âWe will continue to listen to our users and our community about how we can continue to improve the Watch,â a spokesperson said. I wouldnât hold out for it. For $159, third-party apps are a concession. The core apps on the OnePlus Watch work fine, but if youâre wanting more, you should look elsewhere.
USB-A must die
I noted in my first impressions that I wasnât happy with the included magnetic charger because the plug is USB-A and not USB-C. Thereâs no power adapter included in the box, so itâs only logical that if the OnePlus Watch is aimed at OnePlus phone users, then the charger plug should be USB-C to be compatible with the power adapter that comes with the phones. We know that USB-A plugs are cheaper and help keep costs low but if, like me, youâve spent the last few years transitioning to USB-C (come on, itâs been six years since USB-C debuted!), and purging as many USB-A power adapters from your life as possible, the USB-A plug on the charger feels like a step back to the stone age.
Besides cost, I can understand why OnePlus went with a USB-A plug: 1) the charger is probably going to be connected to an outlet and sit on a desk at all times and 2) the multi-day / week battery means you wonât need to charge it as often as a phone or other smartwatches so you may not even need to bring a power adapter if youâre traveling. Both of these reasons make sense. But I still donât like it. OnePlusâ position as an industry disrupter means it should be leading, not following. Remember when OnePlus was one of the first phone makers to embrace USB-C when everyone was reluctant to let go of micro-USB? Bring back some of that courage.
Good enough?
The OnePlus Watch is missing many features that put it on parity with the Apple Watch, Galaxy Watch, and Wear OS smartwatches. But it also costs $159. It feels unfair to complain about what the OnePlus Watch doesnât have when it costs considerably less than the competition. Itâs not like OnePlus is calling this smartwatch a âflagship killerâ or anything because it isnât one.
Thereâs a huge chunk of the world that doesnât need bells and whistles.
The features that the OnePlus Watch comes with might be good enough for many users. It tells the time, it does basic activity and sleep tracking, it shows notifications (when connected via Bluetooth), it measures your heart rate, and if youâre in India it can control your OnePlus TV. Thereâs no deception by OnePlus that the OnePlus Watch is supposed to do anything more. With OnePlus, itâs almost expected that corners will be cut to push prices down.
Me? I think itâs a good enough smartwatch for the price. Iâm spoiled by my Apple Watch, the Assistant in Wear OS smartwatches, and the satisfying controls on Galaxy Watches, but I know thereâs a huge chunk of the world that doesnât need all of these bells and whistles. People who maybe have a Fitbit or super cheap $30 activity tracker like the Mi Band 5 and want a tad bit more functionality, but not too much that itâd mean paying $300+ for a smartwatch.
For these users, the OnePlus Watch checks off enough of the boxes. Thereâs still lots of room for improvement on the OnePlus Watch 2. Just like how mid-range phones are the new battleground for value, I have a strong hunch that thereâs going to be a free-for-all for these âsemi-smartwatches.â
More OnePlus stories:
- OnePlus 9 Pro review: Samsungâs second-best phone
- OnePlus 9 Pro vs. Galaxy S21 Ultra: Which takes better night photos?
- OnePlus says screw it, here's the OnePlus 9 Pro from every angle
- Everything we know about the OnePlus 9âs Hasselblad cameras so far
- OnePlus and Hasselblad join forces for killer cameras on OnePlus 9
- Everything we know about the OnePlus 9 Proâs display and âSmart 120Hzâ refresh rate so far