I Tested the OnePlus Watch 3 and Its Battery Life Won Me Over
I’ve been testing the $330 OnePlus Watch 3 for 48 hours and found it to be a powerful person Smart watch Wrapped in stylish, low-key design. OnePlus aims to compete with its Android competitors by offering a robust set of health and fitness features and promises to blow them all away over five days of battery life. Ordinary use.
I’ve heard similar promises about smartwatch batteries before, and I doubt it. Companies usually hype battery life, just buried in beautiful prints that require power saving modes – stripping away the “smart” feature and turning the watch into nothing more than a glorious digital clock. To my surprise, the default settings on the Watch 3 include using all of its features completely, minus the always-on display, which I usually activate.
The only changes I made were swapping the analog watch for a glance to surface that shows battery life, as well as workout shortcuts, weather and fitness tracking. Big mistake. It turns out I unknowingly picked one of the worst criminals – wearing three-thirds of the operating system battery meter.
Two days before the Watch 3, I used it to receive text and email notifications, track an hour-long outdoor running GPS, record indoor strength exercises and Track two nights of sleep. As a result, the battery of the watch 3 dropped to 50% in the first 48 hours.
While this hasn’t met the promised five days, I still deserve a full four days of battery life from the watch 3, which is an impressive one, considering most Android smartwatch Work hard for three. For the full review, I will switch to a low-power surface to see if I can push it onto the OnePlus’ five-day claim.
Watch 3 has a lot to unpack, and so far I’ve been pleasantly surprised.
Battery life is the center stage
After two days of testing, the best feature of the Watch 3 is battery life.
OnePlus’ reputation began as delivering quality equipment at a more affordable price than high-end competitors like Samsung and Google. The fourth watch 3 of the Chinese company is designed to change some traditions.
Different from the original $160 OnePlus Watch And last year’s $180 watch 2rThe Watch 3’s low price is the main appeal, with priority priority, appeal at a low price. OnePlus wants Watch 3 to be a premium flagship device that will compete directly with other watch OS devices Google Pixel Watch 3 and Samsung Galaxy Observation 7. If provided, what sets it apart is battery life.
OnePlus claims that the Watch 3 can last for five days on its default settings. This is thanks to the large 631mah battery and dual-chip system that uses its Snapdragon W5 processor to focus on powered applications, while its BES2800 MCU efficiency chip handles low-power background tasks.
During my first two days, I was impressed with the battery life of the Watch 3 despite my choice of using the battery thirsty surface. It’s worth noting that the Watch 3 has a super-powered mode, which OnePlus claims can be fully charged for up to 16 days.
Design upgrades and interfaces
That’s what the OnePlus Watch 3 looks like.
The OnePlus Watch 3 keeps the sleek stainless steel design of its predecessor and has some significant upgrades. It has a rotating crown-like texture with an easy-to-grip texture and titanium bezel around the screen – reminiscent of the swivel bezels on my early Samsung watches that I like. It’s thinner and stays in place, but I love how it lifts the design so it doesn’t look like a giant round 1.5-inch Amoled display tied to my wrist. The screen is bright and easy to get in direct sunlight. The watch comes in silver or black with rubber belts for comfort all day and night.
The Watch 3 runs on Wear OS 5 and has other OnePlus designs and features, such as the OHealth app, that you need to download on your phone to access the watch’s full range of health tracking capabilities.
The interface of Watch 3 feels a bit dull and the response time is slightly lagging. It’s hard to say if this is an OS wear or an actual watch, but the navigation isn’t completely seamless – although I do improve when I’m more familiar with buttons and gestures. The interface is not particularly intuitive either – some settings, such as the workout view, require digging into menus (known issues with wearing OS). I also have a hard time setting up my account in the OHealth app and syncing it with my Google Health data. This may be due to using the developer version of the app, but it is still cumbersome.
Accessing all my health data through the OHealth app is pretty good due to its visual, user-friendly interface.
Health and fitness characteristics
Here is the OnePlus Watch 3 next to the OnePlus 13 that is opened by the OHealth app.
OnePlus’ investment in health and wellness is evident in this watch. In addition to basics like heart rate and calories, it measures nuanced health indicators such as cardiovascular health, SPO2, wrist temperature and general well-being (including mood and stress levels), although not without some warnings. None of these functions are FDA approvalwhich means they are not intended to be used as medical-grade data. In addition, ECG functionality is not available in the United States or Canada. Watch 3 also lacks menstrual health tracking – I think it’s a kind of supervision – especially since wrist temperature monitoring (now the standard for its main competitor) can be very useful for ovulation tracking.
Watch 3 also lands on a 60-second health check for the first time, a feature that checks all life in one position by pressing your finger on the bottom button of the watch. My first healthy check-in was about the red exclamation mark next to it and showed a red exclamation mark. After further examination, it turns out that all my life is in scope, but it is my sleep score that biases the results. I admit that my sleep habits are not very good, partly because of my one-year-old daughter, but I think I should at least get a pass.
When it comes to fitness, the OnePlus Watch 3 covers all the basics, with over 100 different exercise modes, with 6 automatically detecting: running, walking, boating, elliptical, cycling and swimming. It also provides a “professional” model for 11 sports that retains more nuanced indicators related to the sport. For runners, it can track form and foot balance, while for tennis players, it can measure swing speed and stroke. While this may be an overdoing for most people, as a runner, he has recently learned how to use the heart rate zone to strengthen exerciseI’m happy to be nerdy on these other metrics.
Another key feature for outdoor enthusiasts is its dual-band GPS tracking system, which OnePlus claims can be accurately positioned even in challenging environments, such as crowded cities rising up by high-rises. I live in a completely different environment with more sheep than skyscrapers, so I can’t fully test this statement. It really positioned me perfectly on my usual trails over oaks and vineyards.
With an IP69 rating, the OnePlus Watch 3 also has waterproof up to 50 meters.
Everything else
I plan to dig deeper over the next few days and test some other features of the Watch 3 for my full review. But for the moment, if battery life is at the top of your wishlist, then this is mine, and it’s an Android smartwatch that is definitely worth considering.
The OnePlus Watch 3 is now available for pre-sales through OnePlus’ website, with an official release date set on February 25.
