While you might not sleep with an analogue time piece, more smartwatches are offering detailed tracking features to give you greater insights about your breathing patterns, nighttime heart rates, and even your snoring. As soon as the sun rises, however, the smartwatch is ready to become your jogging companion or your office organiser once more. For this, comfort is essential, as is the battery life.
To that end, we had the opportunity to review the OnePlus Watch 2 that retails at ₹24,999. Here is what we discovered.
At a Glance
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Technical Specifications
- Battery: 500mAh
- Screen: 1.43-inch round AMOLED display
- Weight: 80 grams in total
- Screen resolution: 466*466
- Maximum brightness: 1000 nits
- Chipset: Dual Engine Architecture SnapdragonTM W5 + BES2700
- Water resistance: 5ATM+IP68, MIL-STD-810H
- OS: Wear OS 4
- Storage: 32GB + 2GB
- Refresh rate: 60Hz flash rate
The OnePlus Watch 2 brilliantly tracks your sleep quality as well as several other health metrics | Photo Credit: Sahana Venugopal
Design
The OnePlus Watch 2 comes in a stainless steel chassis with a 22mm silicone strap that is an elegant dark teal shade.
The flip side, however, is a heavy device that presses into your skin, leaving it irritated after long hours of use. This is especially the case if you have a thinner wrist or sensitive skin. After wearing the watch overnight or through a day filled with meetings, you will find yourself wanting some time away from it in order to let your skin breathe. The strap, while soft and durable, tends to mark up the skin and dry it out when worn overnight.
The two available colourways are Black Steel and Radiant Steel.
User experience
The OnePlus Watch 2 was simply a joy to use, thanks to its rich, immersive touchscreen and diverse health trackers.
The watch face is a large circle and the screen quality is nothing short of breath-taking. The visuals are crystal clear and reading messages off your wrist requires just a half-glance. The sleek, dazzlingly bright screen is a joy to interact with and is perfect for those situations when you may have to read some wordier texts without straining your eyes.
The sleep, heartbeat, blood oxygenation, stress, calories burned, and step trackers were all on point and delivered accurate statistics. In particular, the sleep tracker measured a user’s light sleep, deep sleep, and REM sleep timings with incredible precision and analysis in order to show them how well rested they were (or not).
Most common sports as well as gym-based and outdoor exercise routines are covered across separate watch modes. This way, users can set up timers as they train or even measure specific metrics, such as the number/speed of swings they take in a game of badminton - and their longest rally.
The GPS feature enables runners to track their path to both capture their performance as well as analyse their workout once at home. Meanwhile, those who are ready to take a snack break can easily look up nearby eateries and their reviews, thanks to a seamless Google Maps integration.
For those in more academic or office-based roles, the smartwatch makes it easy to stay active with helpful nudges to get moving or complete quick workouts throughout the course of a regular day. If you work with the Google ecosystem, it is convenient to turn the watch into a full-time home and work organiser. Call quality is clear and manageable, suiting users on both ends.
However, the striking omission of Google Pay as a feature was a disappointment, as this is not yet available in India.
The screen’s touch response could have been a tad more sensitive, as it sometimes took us 2-3 tries to swipe between pages accurately.
On the other hand, the smartwatch was remarkably water resistant and powered through a number of accidental splashes and immersions without so much as a flicker. For this reason, we can certainly say the OnePlus Watch 2 will be an excellent fit for those who live by the motto ‘there is no bad weather; only bad clothing.’
The Watch 2 also comes with a plethora of accessibility-focused features for those with specific visual or auditory requirements. While these do take up more battery, they allow users to magnify parts of the screen for easier viewing or get text read aloud to them.
App
Watch users will have to download the OHealth app in order to store the health data collected by the watch. The app is easy to navigate and collects detailed information about your exercise, health, and sleeping patterns.
While the OnePlus Watch 2’s nighttime breathing/snoring tracker is quite rudimentary and requires the phone to be placed near the wearer’s mouth for analysis, the app on its own serves its purpose.
It also offers a vibrant gallery of well-designed wallpapers, so switching from an elegant analogue watch face to a neon-style digital wallpaper takes just a tap.
Battery
The OnePlus Watch 2 comes armed with a 500mAh battery that keeps the device powered for around 3 days without needing to be charged when it is used for daily tracking in the smart mode.
The smart mode does not feel as though it is restricting your activities or viewing experience in any way, and OnePlus claims the battery can last for up to 100 hours with it. However, we would put the number closer to 50-70 hours, and this was when the smartwatch wasn’t even syncing our calls, messages, and calendar.
The OnePlus Watch 2 comes armed with a 500mAh battery, while its charger feels durable | Photo Credit: Sahana Venugopal
However, a power saving mode stretches this out for even longer and gives you several extra hours to come home and locate your charger.
Once the OnePlus Watch 2 is completely drained, you only require an hour of charging to bring it back to 100%. This matches the company’s claims. The charger is sturdy and comfortable to use.
Overall, the battery life is satisfactory but OnePlus could have aimed for better in order to support the device’s formidable range of capabilities.
Verdict
The OnePlus Watch 2 is a well-engineered time piece that justifies its price-tag in a competitive market filled with maverick watch makers, but the weight of the chunky device is a definite drawback and its battery life falls short of the company’s benchmarks. Google Pay is also not enabled for users in India.
But if you are making discreet calls on the move, enjoying a game of badminton with a friend, checking your stress levels after a work presentation, skimming your text messages and calendar reminders, or hurriedly trying to find a new place to eat, the OnePlus Watch 2 delivers with both efficiency and sophistication.
