The wearables section in Indian has been rising at a quick clip, particularly in latest occasions. Whereas health bands are a dime a dozen, the smartwatch area has additionally seen quite a lot of uptake. Manufacturers like Apple and Samsung are previous palms (pun unintended) on this class, however different smartphone manufacturers seeking to diversify their portfolios have additionally ventured into smartwatches just lately. This consists of the likes of Realme, Xiaomi and OPPO. Quickly after dipping its toes into the health band section, OnePlus has additionally jumped into the fray now with its aptly-named OnePlus Watch.
As a wrist companion, the OnePlus Watch has loads to supply for its asking worth of Rs 14,999. Let’s dive into the features that work properly for it, and likewise those that don’t. Earlier than that although, right here’s a take a look at the important thing specs and options it brings to the desk, and to your wrist:
Options
- 46mm round stainless-steel watch case
- 1.39-inch, 454 x 454 pixel AMOLED show with 2.5D curved glass
- 5ATM, IP68
- 4GB storage (2GB obtainable)
- 110 exercise modes
- Automated exercise detection
- Tracks sleep, stress, coronary heart charge, steps
- Blood oxygen monitoring (SpO2)
- NFC
- Constructed-in GPS, together with GLONASS, Galileo, and Beidou
- 402mAh battery
- Constructed-in mic and speaker for dealing with calls
- Syncs with OnePlus Well being app (solely on Android as of now)
What’s good
- First issues first. The OnePlus Watch conforms to the model’s ideology of premium, and the machine exudes class when it comes to feel and look. The Midnight Black model I’ve strapped on my wrist is a looker, however in a delicate, elegant form of method. It’s the form of look that watch connoisseurs would recognize, and may work properly each within the pub in addition to the boardroom.
- The strap is made out of fluoroelastomer (which is analogous to silicone however is meant to be extra resilient) and takes cues from Apple Watch’s Sport Loop band when it comes to design. It’s fairly comfortable to put on for lengthy intervals too. Additionally, The straps characteristic fast launch pins, which implies you’ll be able to simply take away them and swap them out with any common watch bands of the identical width.
- The AMOLED touchscreen is nice when it comes to colors, viewing angles, and daylight legibility. It’s very responsive too.
- The UI is sort of intuitive and fluid. The display screen wakes up while you increase your wrist. There are two buttons on the edges, with the one on high displaying varied apps and capabilities, and the underside one exhibiting the record of exercises. This button may be customised and set to any perform of your selecting. Swiping up on the watch face shows the record of notifications, whereas swiping down exhibits fast settings. Swiping left shows the music participant, coronary heart charge and sleep knowledge, one after the opposite.
- The apps / capabilities obtainable on the watch are seen as soon as the facet button is pressed. These embrace Actions, Exercise, Fast health check, Coronary heart charge, Blood oxygen, Sleep, Stress, Respiratory, Telephone, Music, Climate, Alarm clock, Stopwatch, Timer, Flashlight, Barometer, Compass, TV join and Discover telephone. The record covers all of the fundamentals and many of the capabilities work as marketed too.
- The watch options 4GB inner storage, out of which 2GB is accessible to make use of. This may be utilised to retailer music tracks (through the companion app). The watch may be paired with a Bluetooth headset straight, permitting you to depart your telephone at residence while you’re out for a jog, and use the built-in music participant to play songs.
- The watch additionally encompasses a inbuilt mic and speaker, permitting you to deal with calls supplied your smartphone is related. It really works moderately properly too, and whereas I wouldn’t use it to carry prolonged conversations, the perform works properly for dealing with fast calls when your palms are in any other case occupied.
- The OnePlus Well being app is neatly laid out, providing you with a hen’s eye view of your well being metrics and bodily exercise over time. The info syncs fairly quick, and through the app, you’ll be able to management varied watch settings, select the apps that may ship notifications, dive deeper into your well being knowledge, load music on to the watch and so forth.
- The OnePlus Well being app provides a bunch of watch face choices, with a few of them trying fairly good. A couple of of them may be customised too (when it comes to colors, issues and so forth), and you’ll actually have a picture of your selection as a watch face. The watch itself has 14 slots for watch faces.
- From what I could make out, the well being and health knowledge logged by the watch is fairly correct, together with step rely, coronary heart charge, and sleep patterns. The auto exercise detection labored properly too, once I tried it out with a brisk stroll.
- Dropping nearly 35 p.c over 4 days, the OnePlus Watch ought to have the ability to ship about 10 days value of utilization off a single cost. That is barely shy of the 2 weeks promised by OnePlus, however nonetheless superb. In fact, this might range fairly a bit primarily based on utilization, and the way usually you employ the exercise capabilities, music playback, and so forth, and likewise primarily based on whether or not you may have capabilities like steady coronary heart charge and sleep blood oxygen monitoring enabled. What’s extra, the watch helps quick charging too.
What’s not so good
- The premium design means the watch is sort of heavy, which doesn’t bode properly from the attitude of those that’re into intensive bodily exercise and sports activities. That additionally means you may not discover it snug sufficient to put on it to mattress… which is required if you’d like it to log your sleep patterns. Additionally, the 46mm case is likely to be too huge for these with slender wrists.
- The OnePlus Watch isn’t actually a real smartwatch within the sense that it doesn’t have assist for third-party apps. I’d have additionally liked to see extra choices for watch faces.
- Gmail notifications on the watch solely present e-mail headers, and you’ll’t learn your entire content material of the emails. There’s no method to reply both, to emails, SMSes, or messages from different apps (like Slack for instance). As of now, you’ll be able to solely reply to WhatsApp messages.
- When you can reply to WhatsApp messages straight from the watch, you solely get 5 predefined messages to answer with. There’s no method so that you can customise these messages, a minimum of as of now.
- Personalisation choices are restricted, and you’ll solely have 14 watch faces loaded on the app, despite the fact that the app has extra choices obtainable. You may’t add extra widgets to the primary display screen too.
- The TV connection characteristic on the watch lets you management quantity and energy on a OnePlus TV straight from the watch. Nonetheless, it didn’t work for me, and whereas the watch was in a position to seek for and determine the OnePlus TV, it was unable to attach.
- There’s no always-on show, which is a bummer given how good the battery lifetime of the watch is.
- As of the time of scripting this, the OnePlus Well being app is just obtainable for Android, and never on iOS
Verdict
The OnePlus Watch is a strong first effort from the model. Whereas it isn’t good and has room for enchancment, the machine will get the fundamentals proper and scores excessive on many features. Because it seems, plainly most of the niggles I’ve talked about can probably be sorted out through firmware updates, through which case the OnePlus Watch positively has the potential to come back throughout as a particularly compelling choice. Whereas the Mi Watch Revolve (assessment) and the Realme Watch S Professional are priced decrease, the strongest competitors for the machine comes from the likes of the OPPO Watch (assessment) and the Samsung Watch Energetic 2 (assessment). Each of those are priced equally and are correct smartwatches within the sense that they provide third-party apps. That stated, every of them has its pluses and minuses, and regardless of its niggles, the OnePlus Watch nonetheless comes throughout as a worthy contender should you’re on the lookout for a classy smartwatch with good battery life, and one which covers all of the fundamentals.
Editor’s ranking: 3.5 / 5
Professionals:
- Premium design and wonderful display screen
- Fluid interface
- Full of options
- Good battery life
Cons:
- Lacks assist for third-party apps
- No always-on show
- No assist for iOS
- Dear
Pictures by Raj Rout