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OnePlus launched its first smartwatch in 2021. And the company knows it was terrible. If you look at our review of the OnePlus Watch, you don’t even need to read it to understand how bad it was. The title says, “OnePlus Watch Review: Your Money Is Better Spent Elsewhere”. Thankfully, OnePlus took all of the feedback from the original OnePlus Watch and went back to the drawing board. This is why it was three years before a new model was released. But finally, here it is.
This review is going to start out on a brighter note than the original OnePlus Watch Review by saying that this might be my favorite smartwatch, period. It does so many things well and improves on a lot of the things that Samsung does with its Galaxy Watch models. On top of that, it’s priced right. It’s just $299, which is an incredible price for a watch made of stainless steel and a sapphire crystal display.
Now, let’s dig deeper into the review of the OnePlus Watch 2 and tell you the good, the bad, and the ugly. Spoiler alert: there’s not much that’s bad or ugly here.
OnePlus Watch 2 Review: Design and Build Quality
The OnePlus Watch 2 is simply stunning. It’s one of my favorite-looking watches on the market today. It has a stainless steel frame with a display that uses Sapphire Crystal. So that should tell you a lot about durability. Since Sapphire Crystal is so strong, it’s virtually impossible to scratch. OnePlus did get this certified for MIL-STD-810H spec, which is the highest durability certification you can get. This is great for biking, hiking, and more. It’s also rated at IP68 and 5ATM for water resistance, so you can wear it in the pool. These are things we wouldn’t normally expect from OnePlus. Some of you might be old enough to remember when OnePlus did not get IP ratings for its phones because it was “too costly.”
The display is rated at over eight on the Mohs hardness scale. Sapphire Crystal is one of the hardest materials around, second only to diamond. Now, we did not do any type of scratch tests here; we’ll leave that to JerryRigEverything. But in normal day-to-day usage, we have not encountered any scratches.
OnePlus offers the Watch 2 in two colors: Radiant Steel and Black Steel. The model we have here is the Radiant Steel, which is basically silver. One of the first things I was worried about when OnePlus told me this was a stainless steel body was the fingerprints. As someone who has used the iPhone Pro models over the last couple of years and the stainless steel Apple Watch, I know just how bad the fingerprints can get. The good news here? It’s not so bad. Fingerprints do still show up, but not nearly as bad as I thought they could. Most of the fingerprints show up on the side, near the buttons. If that’s something that’s still going to bother you, Black Steel might be the better option for you.
One of the interesting aspects of the design here is the flat right side of the watch, where the crown and side button are located. When looking head-on at the watch, you really don’t notice it. The side kinda melts right into the circular watch face, with the buttons sticking out on either side, as you’d expect. Honestly, I really like this design decision. With other watches that have the crown at the center of the side, I often press it by mistake. That has never happened with the OnePlus Watch 2. And they are both still easy to use and press when needed.
The downside to OnePlus using such premium materials is the weight. This is a 47mm x 46mm x 12.1mm watch, and it weighs 80 grams with the included strap or 49 grams without it. That’s roughly a 47mm watch face, putting it right in the middle of the 45mm Apple Watch Stainless Steel and the 49mm Apple Watch Ultra. The Apple Watch Ultra is 61.3g without the strap, while the Stainless Steel model (45mm) is 51.5 grams without the strap. So, the weight is pretty similar, but the OnePlus Watch 2 feels heavier on my wrist, and this comes from someone who has been wearing an Apple Watch Ultra on that wrist for almost two years.
Could it be that the OnePlus Watch 2 is denser than the Apple Watch Ultra, and that’s why it feels heavier? Who knows. But that is something to keep in mind if you plan on buying this one.
The band is surprisingly very comfortable to wear. I’d say it’s one of the most comfortable stock bands I’ve ever used on a smartwatch. Apple’s bands are pretty comfortable too, though I’m not a big fan of their sport loops. The OnePlus Watch 2 band is a silicon band with a nice texture on the front that makes it look more high-end. The silicon material is a good idea for OnePlus since it allows people to dress it up and also use it for workouts. It’s not a leather band and won’t get destroyed when you sweat a little bit.
On the bright side, if the included band is not your cup of tea, you can swap them out and use any 22mm band you want. That’s the same watch bands you’ll find on traditional watches too. The good news here is that OnePlus did not go with a proprietary connection like some other smartwatches have done.
The design and build quality is impressive here. Making it one of the best looking smartwatches on the market, even with the thick bezel around the display.
OnePlus Watch 2 Review: Display
The display on the OnePlus Watch 2 is a stunning 466×466 resolution circular display that measures about 1.43 inches. This is an AMOLED display that refreshes at 60Hz. It gets plenty bright, with a high brightness mode (HBM) of 1,000 nits. I’ve taken this outside quite a few times to walk the dog, run some errands, and such over the two weeks I’ve had it, and it’s great outdoors. It’s easy to see, even with brighter tiles like the weather, on the display. And that’s really all you can ask from a smartwatch display is the ability to see it outdoors.
It is an AMOLED display. However, you can see the display ends, and the bezel starts here, unfortunately. The bezels are pretty large, and they likely melt into the frame a bit more on the black steel color. But on the Radiant Steel color that we have here, it’s more apparent. And to be honest, it does not bother me at all. If this were a smaller watch, say a 40mm or 42mm watch, then the bezels might bother me more since the display would be much smaller. But at 47mm, it’s much less of a problem.
The display is super responsive, and I have to say, it’s stunning. I sometimes catch myself just looking at the OnePlus Watch 2 because it’s just such a stunning display.
OnePlus Watch 2 Review: Performance
For performance, OnePlus is doing something a bit different from the rest of the competition. It uses two different chipsets, which helps it offer a much longer battery life compared to the competition. Inside the OnePlus Watch 2 is the Snapdragon W5 chipset, as well as a BES2700, which runs the RTOS that is also included here.
The Snapdragon W5 is the same chipset that powers the Google Pixel Watch 2 that debuted last fall. Performance was pretty good on the Pixel Watch 2, and that is also the case with the OnePlus Watch 2. The Snapdragon W5 powers the Wear OS portion of the watch, and it is incredibly snappy. Moving throughout the OS, opening apps and even tracking workouts, the Snapdragon W5 doesn’t miss a beat.
The BES2700, which runs RTOS, is what helps the OnePlus Watch 2 last so long on a charge. This chipset is always on and uses RTOS to handle background activity and daily tasks. Only really moving to the Snapdragon W5 chipset when it needs heavy lifting, like running Wear OS apps. OnePlus says that they’ve spent countless hours tweaking the architecture to help develop the most power-efficient smartwatch yet. And they’ve done it. When navigating through the OS and even opening apps, you never really notice that it’s switching chipsets. That’s just how good this dual-SoC is.
Additionally, OnePlus has included 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. That’s going to be plenty of space to run multiple apps, and install tons of apps on your wrist. Neither the watch nor the watch shows you how much storage is used, so it’s tough to say how much storage space you’ll really need. But the largest app on my OnePlus Watch 2 right now is the Google app and it’s only using about 50MB right now. So that should be plenty of space.
OnePlus Watch 2 Review: Battery life and Charging
OnePlus said that the main reason for not using Wear OS on their first smartwatch was battery life. And it’s true. At the time, most Wear OS smartwatches struggled to hit a full 24 hours of battery life. You see, with wearables, you can’t just pack in a larger and larger battery, as that makes the watch or fitness tracker bigger and heavier. So what OnePlus did with the Watch 2 is they designed a dual-engine architecture, which basically uses two chipsets that will help preserve battery life.
On the OnePlus Watch 2, there’s a BES2700 chipset that runs RTOS, which handles all of the easy stuff. Like the always-on display, background activity, and daily tasks. Then there’s the Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 processor, which does the heavy lifting, like opening and running Wear OS apps. This helps the OnePlus Watch 2 to last for 100 hours, according to OnePlus, and it can last up to 12 days with Power Saver Mode activated.
Okay, those numbers are from lab tests. How do they relate to the real world? Well, I’ve been using the OnePlus Watch 2 for two weeks, which is connected to the OnePlus 12. And in those two weeks, I’ve charged the watch three times. That means it’s getting well over four days of usage. One battery cycle actually lasted me about five days, and I still had around 15% left.
This battery life smokes just about every other smartwatch on the market these days – and no, I’m not comparing it to hybrid watches like what Fossil and Withings have. The next closest is the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic, which Samsung claims is getting 30-40 hours of usage, and in our review, it was right around 36 hours. That’s a day and a half. The OnePlus Watch 2 is more than triple that, which is really impressive.
Charging is incredibly fast
OnePlus has brought its VOOC Fast Charging tech over to the Watch 2, though it’s not quite as fast as the OnePlus 12’s charging as you might expect. Instead, it charges at 7.5W. Now, the downside here is that there’s no brick in the box, just the USB charger, which is a USB-A charger.
The bright side here is that the charging puck is not attached to the cable and uses a USB-C to USB-A cable. So, if you really wanted to, you could use a USB-C to USB-C cable; however, it will charge much slower. In my testing, it charged at about 2W over USB-C compared to the max of 7.5W over USB-A.
OnePlus says that you can get a full charge in about an hour with the included cable. In our experience, that’s pretty accurate. While we did not charge it from dead to 100%, we did charge from around 4% to 100% and found it took about 58 minutes. That is still incredibly fast. Compared to the Apple Watch Ultra, which takes an hour and a half, though it does have an 8% larger battery. The Galaxy Watch 6 will take about an hour and 20 minutes, and it has a smaller 425mAh battery inside.
On top of that, if you just need a top-up, that’ll take only 10 minutes. So if you need to charge it really quickly, slap it on the charger, go take a shower, and when you’re finished, you’ll have enough juice to get through the day. Not too shabby.
OnePlus Watch 2 Review: Software
When it comes to the software, one thing that I really appreciate about the OnePlus Watch 2 is that it’s all in a single app. Most watches will have a companion app that lives on your phone, as well as a separate Health app for tracking your health and fitness. OnePlus decided to have a single app, and doing both was the better look.
The downside to that is the health and fitness section is not as feature-rich as, say, Fitbit, Apple Fitness/Health, or Samsung Health. It does give you most of the basics here, though, which is good to see. All of this is done in the OHealth app. The first tab is your Health data. This includes your daily activity, heart rate, sleep, stress, and SpO2, as well as your workout records. The next tab is fitness, and that’s where you’ll track your workouts. The third tab is devices, where you change your settings, Watch Faces, etc.
The app itself is nice and clean. I really like the app myself, compared to the many others I’ve used. It keeps it clean without cluttering the page with a lot of stuff that you might not be interested in.
Now, let’s talk about the software on the watch. It’s a Wear OS 4 watch. If you’ve used the Galaxy Watch 6 or Pixel Watch 2, you know what to expect here. You can long-press on the watch face to change it, or swipe up to see notifications and down for your quick settings. That’s the opposite of the Apple Watch, which has taken a bit of learning for me. Swipe left and right for your tiles, which is a feature that I absolutely love about Wear OS. Being able to swipe left to right to see the weather is amazing. Since I live in Michigan, where it’s Winter in the morning and almost Summer in the afternoon, I do tend to check the weather quite often.
If you press the crown, you’ll either go home or open the app “drawer”. Which is a slightly different experience compared to the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 and the Google Pixel Watch. Samsung uses a scrollable list of icons, Google has a scrollable list of icons with the names of the apps, while OnePlus basically went with the honeycomb layout that Apple has used on its watches. To be honest, I don’t hate it. You have four big apps in the center, with apps all around it. So most of your apps are in focus, without having to do much moving around. You can change this to a Grid View like Samsung has or a List View like Google uses. Just head into Settings on the Watch itself, then tap on General > App View.
OnePlus also has a ton of great-looking watch faces. However, since this is Wear OS, there are a bunch more available in the Google Play Store. So your customization of the watch faces is pretty much endless with this one.
The entire operating system on the OnePlus Watch 2 is so good. It’s smooth, not a single hiccup, and it’s only going to get better as the watch continues to learn how I use it. It’s by far my favorite Android-based smartwatch right now.
Updates
OnePlus rolled out a new update to the Watch 2 in early May, which brought along two new apps. It’s build OPWWE231_11_A.94 and adds new Relex and barometer apps. The update also optimizes data display during workouts, adds support for accessing music controller by swiping left during a workout, and many other known issues have been fixed.
Should you buy the OnePlus Watch 2?
After spending two weeks with the OnePlus Watch 2, it’s really hard not to recommend this smartwatch. Interestingly enough, it just does everything right and fixes all of my complaints about the Galaxy Watch 6. The major complaint was the battery life. Not only that, OnePlus made this a fast-charging watch, too, so you can really use this to track your sleep as well as your activity all day long. Not too bad.
At its regular price of $299, the OnePlus Watch 2 is also super competitive in the market right now. The Galaxy Watch 6 is priced at $299 as well, the Pixel Watch 2 is $349, and the Apple Watch Series 9 starts at $399. Though on the Apple Watch side, it’d be better to compare it to the Stainless Steel model, which is $699, since OnePlus is only offering this as a stainless steel option.
If you are in the market for a new smartwatch and want something that doesn’t need to be charged every day, then the OnePlus Watch 2 is definitely the one to get. It’ll work with any Android device, however if you use an iPhone, you’ll be out of luck.