OnePlus Watch 2 review

You don’t have to be shy with the OnePlus Watch 2. This stainless steel and sapphire crystal glass mini-burger can take on the messiest workouts and the toughest terrains. Well, it's not ironclad like the Garmin Fenix or Epix but the OnePlus Watch 2 is built to the MIL-STD-810H US military standard so that should mean something. 

At 47mm, it’s also quite thick and big, so you may want to walk into a OnePlus store and put this on your wrist before you decide to buy it. That is if you’re unsure how chonky you want your wrist computer to be — because OnePlus only sells a single-size variant. That said, the OnePlus Watch 2 is the most comfortable watch we’ve tested. The fluor rubber strap bundled with the watch feels like a hug and there’s no reason to upgrade from it unless you’re bored of the two colours you get at launch. 

OnePlus says that only the two colours are available at the time of launch but the quick-release buckle for the straps is of 22mm standard format, so you can buy third-party straps and find another reason to keep wearing the watch.

Two buttons on the side of the watch can be reprogrammed to whatever you fancy. Moreover, both buttons can be multifunctional with long press, single press and double tap. We had the crown button for Google Assistant and Google Maps, meanwhile, the lower button would spring forth our running workout and music controls. The rotating crown doesn’t function as a scroll wheel like the Apple Watch but it rotates regardless.

OnePlus says the 1.43-inch AMOLED round display has 1000nits of brightness on High Brightness Mode (HBM) but we have some reservations about the accuracy of those numbers. It’s legible under harsh sunlight and it’s super sharp with its 466x466 resolution but we like the Apple Watch and Samsung Watch brightness because those have a more consistent sustained peak brightness. Albeit, you won’t find your nose stuck to the strap to read a text or see the navigation pointer on the map, but it’s sharp and bright for the price you pay.

The Watch 2 will barely leave your wrist and that’s entirely because of the battery life. OnePlus says the Watch 2 can run for 100 hours on Power Saver Mode and about two days on heavy use. We can confirm that those numbers are close to real-life use. We got around three days of battery life with heavy fitness tracking, calls, messages, app usage and sleep tracking. You can drain the battery faster if you keep fiddling with more apps and use Google Maps constantly or you can make it last up to four days with basic tracking and smart features. You can even push the battery beyond four days by being careful with your tracking and also by turning off the ‘Assess Breathing Problems’ feature in Sleep Mode. 

In Power Saver Mode the OnePlus Watch 2 pretty much retains many of the core functions of the watch. Things like sleep and heart rate tracking, calls and some fitness tracking modes like swimming, cycling, and badminton are still available.

The phenomenal battery life is actually due to a smart dual chipset integration. The Snapdragon W5 performance chipset runs WearOS 4 and handles all the clever duties of running apps and tracking intense workouts. Meanwhile, the BES2700 efficiency chipset is always running in the background and manages background activities like notifications, calls and the RTOS for heart rate tracking and other key features. It also wakes up the Snapdragon W5 to do the heavy lifting for tasks like running Wear OS apps. It’s a clever system that works in favour of the OnePlus Watch 2’s battery life and the results are immediate.

It’s designed for the urban jungle and made for precision tracking during workouts. There are a ton of nuanced metric calculations for runners with vertical amplitude, ground contact time and balance, maximal oxygen consumption, and stride length. OnePlus has also paid special attention to tracking Badminton, Tennis and Skiing.

The OnePlus Watch 2 is also a very good sleep tracker and closely to our Garmin Epix Pro 2 when it comes to accuracy. The OnePlus Watch 2 can also track your breathing problems and snoring issues at night. And if you’re the kind to hold your breath and swim with the fish, the Watch 2 is IP68-rated for water and dust resistance. You can go as deep as 50 metres underwater with the watch.

We compared the statistics against Garmin Epix Pro 2 (a one-lakh-rupee smartwatch, mind you) and the OnePlus Watch 2 keeps up with pretty much everything. The OnePlus Watch 2 has an L5 and L1 GPS frequency with two separate antennas. It helps the watch accurately chart out your activities but it’s not as thoroughbred as Garmin Watches that let you track back your routes during offgrid hiking and mountaineering. For ₹24,999, we’re not even complaining. The absence of ECG and satellite doodah is fine with us. 

Oh, and if you see the Google Pay app on the OnePlus Watch 2, it doesn’t work because it’s region-locked by Google, so it will only work in countries where Google allows Google Pay via WearOS.

All of the data is neatly organized on the watch for you to see and if you want a bit more detail, the OHealth app is supported on Android 8 and above devices. The sleep and workout data is comprehensive and detailed. It’s very similar looking to Apple’s Watch app but much, much better than Garmin’s app. You can also customize the watch face and download more from the Play Store. Some of the good ones will require you to cough up an extra dosh.

The OnePlus Watch 2 embodies the OnePlus brand perfectly by disrupting the smartwatch segment with great battery life, a proper suite of apps and undercutting juggernauts like Samsung and Apple in terms of pricing. Both in terms of battery life and smart chops, the OnePlus Watch 2 delivers and if you’re an Android fan, this is the watch to buy.