It has been a minute since I’ve reviewed a OnePlus device, and the OnePlus Watch 3 is the first smartwatch I’ve used that’s made by the company. Android smartwatches are a dime a dozen, and there are really only a wristful of options that are good. See what I did there? I went into this review without expectations because the OnePlus Watch 3 is my first OnePlus smartwatch experience. I was genuinely surprised at what I discovered and how I had to rethink some of the things I’ve said in the past about Android smartwatches.
Estimated reading time: 13 minutes
From my past reviews, I’ve really enjoyed what TicWatch has been doing and of course, there is Samsung as well. But the OnePlus Watch 3 really threw me for a loop. Let’s get into the full review now. It is important to note, I did test this watch using the OnePlus 13R, these two devices were made for each other and work well together.
The Quick Take
The OnePlus Watch 3 really impressed me. The build quality, look, feel, and design were all very appealing and I now consider this, the best Android smartwatch you can buy. I know the Pixel Watch is out there, as is the Galaxy Watch and TicWatch. But OnePlus made this watch that much nicer and that much better, at least in my opinion.
Score and Bottom Line
OnePlus Watch 3
$329.99
Nailed it
- Fantastic design, look, and feel
- Premium build quality
- Easy setup and easy to use
- Outstanding display
- Fantastic performance
- Killer battery life
- Worth the price and best value
- Huge number of health-centric features
Needs work
- There is no LTE on this watch, this does not bother me but it may bother some
- This is a chunky boy and might be too big for some users
Overall, the OnePlus Watch 3 truly impressed me. The design, at first glance, looks like any typical Android watch, but there are some subtle differences that make it stand out. The placement of the crown was a great choice. I often accidentally push the crown on smartwatches when I have to bend my wrist.
The premium build quality is off the chart, even better than TicWatch and Samsung. It is straightforward to set up and use and offers fantastic performance. The display is brilliant, and the battery life is outstanding. This is totally worth the price and even slightly less expensive than the TicWatch Atlas, my previous best Android watch pick. This is, by far, the best Android watch available now.
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Specifications
The OnePlus Watch 3 has the following features and specifications:
- Material and Finish:
- Bezel:
- Black titanium
- Silver titanium
- Case:
- Black stainless steel
- Silver stainless steel
- Cover glass:
- Bezel:
- Size and Weight:
- 46.6mm(excluding lugs)47.6mm11.75mm(excluding sensor area)
- Fits 140-210 mm wrists
- 49.7g (excluding wrist strap)
- 81g (including the wrist strap)
- Battery Life:
- Power saver mode: Up to 16 days
- Smart mode: Up to 5 days
- Heavy use in smart mode: Up to 3 days
- Display:
- 1.50 inches
- 466*466
- LTPO AMOLED
- Up to 2200 nits Peak brightness
- Chip:
- Processor: Snapdragon W5
- MCU: BES2800BP
- Memory: 32GB
- Operating System: Wear OS by Google + RTOS
- Sensors:
- Wrist temperature sensor
- Optical heart rate sensor
- Optical pulse oximeter sensor
- Geomagnetic sensor
- Light sensor
- Barometer
- Acceleration sensor
- Gyroscope sensor
- Health:
- 60S Health Check-In
- Mind and Body
- Vascular Health（Arterial stiffness）
- Sleep monitoring including sleep quality score and sleep Snoring Risk Assessment
- Wrist temperature
- Heart rate monitoring, high/low heart rate notification
- SpO2 tracking-spot checks, all day
- OHealth application with Health Insights, Support Google Health Connect service; Strava;
- Health journey;
- Workouts:
- 100+ sports modes
- 11 Professional sports modes
- Skiing (speed, drop, slope, number of trips, full and single trip distance, etc.)
- Running (cadence, stride length, ground contact time, vertical amplitude, vertical stride ratio, left and right ground contact balance, running power)
- Tennis (swing speed, total strokes, serve, forehand, backhand)
- Badminton (swing speed, number of swings, longest continuous shot, forehand, backhand, overhand, underhand)
- Swimming (100-meter pace, number of laps, distance, number of strokes, swolf)
- Rope skipping (number of times, speed)
- Mountain climbing (distance, altitude, cumulative climb, cumulative descent)
- Walking (distance, number of steps, cadence)
- Cycling (distance, speed)
- Elliptical machine (cadence, number of steps)
- Rowing machine (paddle frequency, number of strokes)
- Connectivity:
- Bluetooth calling
- Support NFC
- Dual band L1+L5, Beidou, GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, QZSS
- Bluetooth 5.2
- Wi-Fi 5G/2.4G
- Durability:
- MIL-STD-810H
- Low pressure (altitude)
- High temperature, 70°C/158°F
- Low temperature, -40°C/-104°F
- Temperature shock
- Solar radiation
- Rain
- Humidity and heat test
- 96-hour Salt spray
- Sand and dust
- Immersion
- Vibration
- Impact
- Temperature-humidity-altitude
- Fluid contamination
- Acidic atmosphere
- Ice accumulation and freezing rain
- IP68
- 5ATM
What’s In The Box
- OnePlus Watch 3
- Charging base
- Strap
- User Manual
- USB-C charging cable
Design
The last Android smartwatch I reviewed was the TicWatch Atlas. That was sent to me in the silver colorway, which I loved. The OnePlus Watch 3 also comes in silver, as well as the more common black colorway. I admit, I have been getting bored with the black colorways of smartwatches. So I was nervous that I might not like the black colorway.
I was pleasantly surprised, though. This black casing has a nice shimmer to the metal, and it throws off some nice reflections in the light. The watch itself is pretty large and has some weight to it, and it only comes in one size. The weight and size is not an issue for me, but those with small wrists and who dislike heavy watches, may not enjoy wearing this.
The included watch band is nicer than any other Android smartwatch band I’ve seen, much nicer than the TicWatch’s. It is comfortable and has a wide range of holes for adjustability. The buckle is made of metal and is fairly robust, I think it could be a bit beefier, but it is decent. The band has a nice ribbed design that sets it off as more than just a basic rubber watch band.
The bottom of the watch houses all the sensors and tech bits. This looks basically the same as most other watches. The entire watch case is made of aluminum and glass, unlike the TicWatch Atlas. The front of the watch is typical, just glass and there is a diving style numbers around the bezel.
One of the design cues I love about the OnePlus Watch 3 is the placement of the digital crown. It’s set up towards the top instead of on the side. This helps to minimize accidental pushes when I am moving around and my wrist bends. Other watches, including the Apple Watch Ultra, have the crown on the side. I often accidentally push the crown when bending my hand and wrist. The OnePlus Watch 3 does not have this issue nearly as often. Sometimes it does happen, but way less.
The watch face is sapphire crystal glass and looks fantastic, especially with the always-on display active. As I mentioned, the watch is a chunky boy, but I love that it fits nice on my wrist.
Overall, the design, look, feel, and materials used are far more premium than the price point. There is a huge amount of value in the design and build of the OnePlus Watch 3.
Setup and Ease of Use
I set the OnePlus Watch 3 up with the OnePlus 13R. This was a breeze and worked almost the same as setting up an Apple Watch. The phone recognized that there was a watch in the area that needed to be paired, and a notification asked if I wanted to pair it. A very nicely designed notification, I might add.
Once you get into the pairing stage, it’s just a matter of following the prompts on your phone and pairing with the OnePlus OHealth app. I believe you can use the Wear OS app too, but you may lose some of the OnePlus functions. So I went with the OHealth app. Once you have that all set up, you can finish setting up on the watch.
There’s not much to that, again, it’s just a series of prompts that show you the basic functionality of the watch and how to perform them. Once you get through all of those set-ups. You can start using the watch. Overall, if you’re familiar with a smartwatch, this is simple and easy to use.
Display
The 1.5″ LTPO AMOLED display on the OnePlus Watch 3 gets to an excellent peak brightness of 2,200 nits and it looks spectacular. It does an excellent job in bright conditions, including direct sunlight. This being an AMOLED display, the colors are vibrant and punchy and the blacks are deep and inky.
The front glass is made of 2D sapphire crystal for improved durability, but don’t think it’s indestructible. Many other smartwatch makers use sapphire crystal, and it is robust, but dragging this thing across some rocks, isn’t going to return an unscathed watch face. You should still be careful.
The always-on display is great and easy to see at a glance without having to lift the watch up. Overall, this is the best display on any Android smartwatch, as of this review.
Software
The OnePlus Watch 3 is not only a chunky boy, but also a unique boy. This dude is running two different operating systems that are responsible for different portions of the software experience. More on the chip that runs this all in performance.
But essentially, we are running Wear OS alongside RTOS, or Real-Time Operating System. Wear OS is responsible for the heavy lifting parts of the system, while RTOS does the lighter weight stuff. Here’s what RTOS is partially responsible for and what it does.
- The RTOS handles essential, background, and power-efficient tasks. This includes basic watch functions, health tracking, and other core operations.
- By offloading these tasks to the RTOS, OnePlus aims to improve battery life significantly, and it does that.
- The RTOS is there to handle the basic functions of the watch, in a very efficient manner.
So, as for the software experience, nothing is that much different from any other Wear OS watch. Except maybe the OHealth app is being used instead of Wear OS. I actually preferred the OHealth app over Wear OS, and in the app you can adjust everything and anything on your watch, including watch faces.
As for the health bits of the OHealth software and app, they work really nicely, at least the ones I used. I can’t say a lot about accuracy, I think the jury is still out on just how accurate these health watches are. Results may vary from one user to another, and all I can say is, that the results from the OnePlus Watch 3 are pretty close to the results from my Apple Watch Ultra 2.
The OnePlus Watch 3 has a bevy of watch faces available, but you can also use 3rd party watch faces. I was delighted with the watch face seen in the photos in this review. Overall, the software experience was excellent.
Performance
Powering the OnePlus Watch 3 is the Snapdragon W5 paired with 32GB of RAM. The way OnePlus has this set up, is for the operating systems to work together but separate. As explained, Wear OS and RTOS are responsible for different operations and this increases performance and battery life. It’s not unlike Intel’s new Arrow and Lunar Lake chips having a CPU, GPU, and NPU. The Neural Processor in those new chips helps increase the performance of the system overall. Same concept here.
This dual-OS setup allows for a balance between the versatility of Wear OS and the efficiency of the RTOS addition. The result is a smartwatch that offers a robust app ecosystem while also providing long-lasting battery performance and overall app performance.
The One Plus Watch 3 using RTOS is a key component of its architecture, and it is brilliantly designed to optimize power consumption and ensure smooth, reliable performance for core watch functions. Overall, this is hands down the best performing Android watch on the market right now.
Battery Life
The OnePlus Watch 3 has an advertised battery life of 120-hours. This is VERY subjective and depends highly on your settings and the way you use the watch. I’m not much of a health nut, so I don’t do a lot of mapping of runs and rides. I walk, and I ride occasionally, but never bother to record these. So my use case is mostly using it as a watch, notifications, and quick replies to texts.
I thought the 3-days of battery on the TicWatch Atlas was impressive. The OnePlus Watch 3 easily hit the 5-day battery mark before I had to recharge, making this the king of battery life on Android watches. Remember, battery life is very difficult to measure and express for the entire population. It will vary from one person to another.
Price/Value
The price point of the OnePlus Watch 3 is one of its most alluring features. It sits right around the same as other Android watches but offers a tremendous amount more value. As of this moment, the OnePlus Watch is the best value in the Android watch world.
Wrap Up
Overall, the OnePlus Watch 3 truly impressed me. The design, at first glance, looks like any typical Android watch, but there are some subtle differences that make it stand out. The placement of the crown was a great choice. I often accidentally push the crown on smartwatches when I have to bend my wrist.
The premium build quality is off the chart, even better than TicWatch and Samsung. It is straightforward to set up and use and offers fantastic performance. The display is brilliant, and the battery life is outstanding. This is totally worth the price and even slightly less expensive than the TicWatch Atlas, my previous best Android watch pick. This is, by far, the best Android watch available now.
