Review: OnePlus Watch 2

Not having to charge a smartwatch every night is so nice. After wearing it for over a month, that's my number one takeaway with the OnePlus Watch 2. This is the company's first Wear OS-powered smartwatch, the operating system managed by Google. The name indicates it's a successor to the original OnePlus Watch, but these two smartwatches are nothing alike.

The OnePlus Watch 2 ingeniously runs two operating systems with two different processors. Wear OS 4 is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 chipset, handling more intensive tasks like Google Maps and music playback. Then there's the Real-Time Operating System (RTOS), driven by a low-power BES2700 chip tasked with things like the always-on display and background activity. Google even retooled Wear OS to enable this dual-chipset architecture for OnePlus (and presumably other companies that want to follow this approach in the future).

The best benefit of all this work? Battery life. Smartwatches like Google's Pixel Watch 2 and the Apple Watch require daily recharging; Samsung's Galaxy Watch series can go up to two days on a single charge. But the OnePlus Watch 2 routinely sustained three full days of use with the always-on display turned off, and two and a half days with it on. It's solving a common complaint with these wearables, but unfortunately, you'll have to compromise on some features.

Big Watch

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

An easy way to stuff a big battery into a smartwatch is to make a big watch. At 46 millimeters, the OnePlus Watch 2 sits on the Very Large side of the wearable spectrum. I am a 6'4" guy with big palms, and it still looks a little large on my thick wrist. Like how the Pixel Watch 2 might be too small for some folks, this smartwatch will be too big for many, and there are no other size options.

Thankfully, it's comfortable to wear. The 22-mm fluoro-rubber strap is soft and doesn't attract dirt or lint, and it's easy to adjust the tightness quickly. I've had no problems falling asleep with it on my wrist, but this might not be the case for people with daintier hands. The rest of the watch's build materials are top-end, with a stainless steel case and a sapphire crystal protecting the 1.43-inch AMOLED display, which is sharp and gets plenty bright. It's IP68 water resistant too, so it can survive submersions in water (avoid salt water).

There are two pushers on the right side of the watch. The top opens your app drawer, a double tap opens the last-used app, and a long press triggers Google Assistant. The bottom opens the Workouts app and a double-tap opens Google Wallet, but all of this is customizable in the settings. The only weird thing here is that the top button rotates like the digital crown on many other smartwatches. However, the OnePlus Watch 2 doesn't support any scrolling. It's a shame too, because the button's position makes for a more natural access to the scrolling function than the typical centered crown, but alas, there's just no functionality there.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Despite having two operating systems and two chipsets, using the OnePlus Watch 2 feels like using any other Wear OS watch. There's no change on the user's end. All the Wear OS apps are present, including Google Home, YouTube Music, and Google Maps, and all of my typical smartwatch tasks have performed flawlessly. I can control my smart home gadgets, delete the endless emails I get per day, and respond to messages quickly and easily from my wrist. There's a decent selection of built-in watch faces too.

One caveat is that there's no LTE model, so your phone will need to be nearby for it to be connected (unless the watch is connected to a Wi-Fi network). Other standard Wear OS flaws apply here—I still wish for more third-party app support. I'd love to start conversations from the watch via apps like Telegram, Facebook Messenger, or Slack. There's improvement over prior years here, but there's always room for more.

Performance is slick, and again, the hallmark is the battery life, which typically lasts me around three days without the always-on display. You can extend it even further if you toggle on Power Saving mode. Best of all is the charging speed. It just takes an hour to completely refill the battery with the included charger, which features a detachable USB-C cable (Google, take note). Even when I pop the watch on the charger before a 15-minute shower, I find it has refilled the tank more than enough to keep it going for another day or two.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

I will note that OnePlus isn't the first company to try a novel approach to solving smartwatch battery life. Mobvoi's TicWatch Pro series has long used dual-display technology to conserve battery life, providing similar results to OnePlus. But that watch is bulkier, the software feels clunkier, and the company's update policy is spotty.

Speaking of, OnePlus is promising two Wear OS updates and three years of security updates. That's similar to what Google offers for its Pixel Watch lineup, but paltry compared to what you'll get from Samsung, which promises four Wear OS updates and five years of security updates for its Galaxy Watch6 series. What OnePlus offers here is decent, but it would be nice to see it match Samsung so you can enjoy the watch—with new features, security patches, and bug fixes—for as long as possible.

One of my favorite parts of the OnePlus Watch 2 is the fact that you only need to deal with one app. No need to have two separate apps for the watch's functions and to access health and fitness data like with its competitors. Everything is managed in OnePlus Health (OHealth). But health and fitness is where the compromises start to creep in.

Puzzling Health

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

I like how everything is laid out in accessible tiles in OHealth, and you can click on them to access more information, but the app has some quirks. For starters, and you'll see this in the picture above, there are some design issues, like words running into each other (see the step count goal). There are also missing health features like an electrocardiogram, skin temperature sensing, period tracking, and fall detection. All of these are on similarly priced competitors, but the quality of the information available is really the issue.

The discrepancies largely stems from step count and distance traveled. Wearing the Pixel Watch 2 on my other wrist, I noticed a big difference in these two metrics, with the OnePlus Watch 2 frequently undercounting, sometimes by 2,000 or 3,000 steps. On February 29, I traversed around Barcelona, sightseeing, and the Pixel Watch 2 says I walked 12.35 miles with 25,000 steps. OnePlus's watch says it was 5.82 miles with 24,000 steps. With rudimentary estimates, 25,000 steps equates to roughly 12 miles, so there's clearly some issue here with the OnePlus.

My resting heart tracking data was generally the same. However, during tracked activities, the OnePlus' beats per minute didn't hit the same highs as the Pixel Watch 2. The heart rate tracker on smartwatches typically provides very similar results when I'm running comparison tests, though they can be off by two beats or three. The OnePlus Watch 2 was routinely down 10 or 15 beats from the Pixel Watch 2's data.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

The good news is that the SpO₂ data, sleep tracking results, and dual-frequency GPS maps of my walks performed much more reliably and matched the data from Google's smartwatch. Automatic workout detection is also solid, and it does a good job of pausing and restarting workouts too. Just know that there's not much in the way of insights in OHealth—much of it is just the raw data.

Pro tip: When you turn on Sleep Mode to conserve the watch's power and disable the display, if you press and hold the settings tile, you'll see an option for Auto Sleep. You should toggle it on. I'm so annoyed I discovered this feature so late, but it automatically disables sleep mode after you wake up. Too often, I realized hours after waking that I left sleep mode turned on.

The reason to buy this watch is the three-day battery life, and if you particularly fancy how it looks. (You can match it with your OnePlus phone, though it works with any Android phone running version 8.0 or newer.) Anyone serious about tracking fitness data will likely want to stick with a fitness tracker, or a smartwatch like the Pixel Watch 2 or Galaxy Watch6. But if you just want those smartwatch features without having to fuss with a charging cable every night, the OnePlus Watch 2 does the job.