The OnePlus Watch 3 Has a Lot More to Offer Than Killer Battery Life
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The Good
- Extra-long battery life
- Fast and smooth operation
- Advanced fitness tracking for common activities
- Robust build
- Standardized watchband connection
The Bad- Very bulky
- Only one size
- No cellular option
Table of Contents
Third time’s the charm
OnePlus has always taken a little time to hit its stride on new product types, and the OnePlus Watch 3 is a fresh reminder of that. The original OnePlus Watch was a bit of a dud to Lifehacker's colleagues at PCMag, Then the OnePlus Watch 2 and 2R stepped in the right direction. Now, the OnePlus Watch 3 has pushed its way into true greatness, with adjustments to the design, added features, and a big boost to battery life.
The catch is the increased price, which OnePlus has historically been on the lower end of. Due to tariffs, The OnePlus Watch 3 has had shaky pricing recently, but OnePlus appears to have settled on $349. This is unfortunately more expensive than prior models, but if you’re looking for a relatively elegant Wear OS device, the OnePlus Watch 3 remains competitive, especially once you start comparing it to the more premium models its performance puts it in conversation with.
Big, but built well
The OnePlus Watch 3 is massive, and that’s about its biggest issue. Its case is 1.83 x 1.87 inches and measures almost a half-inch thick before accounting for the small bulge that comes from the sensors at the bottom. It also weighs a tenth of a pound — considerably heavier than most Apple Watch and Samsung Galaxy Watch models, though a little lighter than the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and Samsung Galaxy Watch6 Classic. There’s only one size as well, so unless you can handle a bigger watch on your wrist, the OnePlus Watch 3 might not be a viable option for you.
But while big and weighty, the OnePlus Watch 3 is built well. The main portion of the case is stainless steel (likely where a good portion of the weight comes from), and that’s capped with a titanium bezel. These parts of the watch come in two colors, a smokey dark gray or a polished silver. Meanwhile the top of the watch is covered with sapphire crystal.
Overall, that’s a lovely combination of hardware for a watch to be built with. By all accounts, it’s sturdy. I’ve worn it daily for about a month, going on many runs and even rock climbing with it a few times. Through it all, it remained unblemished. Most mobile products I test end up with some scuffing on the display or on their aluminum, but the stainless steel, sapphire crystal, and titanium have held up perfectly here. And underneath that sapphire, OnePlus has fitted a 1.5-inch LTPO AMOLED display that looks satisfyingly sharp and gets plenty bright for use outdoors in direct sunlight. Taking it to the beach is no problem either, as it's rated to go down to 50 meters underwater.
The style might not be for everyone, though. Notably, the bezel has minute indicators printed on it, giving the watch a bit more of a utilitarian look than that of a classic timepiece. The angled rotating crown and button also lend a more techie vibe to OnePlus Watch 3, though the arrangement makes them exceedingly easy to use.
The watchband is somewhat stifling, too. It doesn’t have much stretch to it, so it can feel constricting around the wrist if it slides up very far. It also doesn’t breathe very well, leading to some skin irritation when worn for long stretches. It’s fairly stylish for a sports band, at least. Better still, the OnePlus Watch 3 supports standard 22mm watch bands, so there’s no need to buy bands with a proprietary connector or find an adapter.
Another clever move by OnePlus comes in its choice of charger. The OnePlus Watch 3 has a magnetic charging puck, but the puck has no built-in cable. Instead, there’s a small USB-C port, so you can plug it into whatever charger you have handy. This makes it easier to bring along with you on trips without it contributing to cable clutter. It also enables ultra-fast charging when paired with a high-wattage charger.
Plenty of features, but no cellular
The OnePlus Watch 3 is a fully featured smartwatch, combining the advanced sports and health tracking of a fitness watch with the more flexible capabilities of a smartwatch.
For health tracking, it combines various sensors to track heart rate, SpO2, wrist temperature, and arterial stiffness. Combined with its acceleration sensor, gyroscope sensor, and GPS tracking, it can also track over 100 sports with advanced tracking for 11 popular activities (like running, swimming, walking, and cycling). While this makes for solid sport and everyday-health tracking, it doesn’t come with specific women’s health tracking — an area its predecessors were lacking in as well. Android Authority recently reported that menstruation tracking had been added to the OHealth companion app for the phone, but at time of testing, the watch itself was not actively tracking any of this data.
On the smartwatch side, the OnePlus Watch 3 supports the wide world of Google's Wear OS apps. It can tap into Google Wallet to store various cards and make them available on your wrist. It can pull up Google Assistant, take text message dictation, and control Google Home devices. You can fire up Google Maps and navigate to your destination right on the watch screen. It even has 32GB of storage, providing room to download music, podcasts, or audiobooks and play them from the watch directly to Bluetooth headphones, so you can leave your phone behind on walks.
One thing that the OnePlus Watch 3 notably doesn’t offer is cellular connectivity. Most Apple and Samsung smartwatches come in either a Wi-Fi-only or an LTE model. The OnePlus Watch 3 exclusively relies on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections to receive data and link back to your phone. While you may be able to go a long walk with just this connectivity, you won’t be able to go as far from your phone and society and still get as much capability out of the watch as you would with others.
Quick and capable
The OnePlus Watch 3 cruises all day long. The Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 processor inside keeps the operating system running smooth, and I haven’t noticed a hitch yet. Motion on the watch is fluid, and apps launch quickly. Both Google Assistant and Google Wallet are also readily accessible within a second, and that’s especially handy if you’re rushing to catch a train and pull up your card to pay.
But given that the watch can access Gmail, notifications, Google Wallet, and Google Assistant, security is also important. Luckily, the OnePlus Watch 3 can lock itself behind a PIN code if you like, and it’s satisfyingly aggressive about requesting the PIN as well. Even if it detects being off my wrist for just a second, it will require me to enter the PIN.
The watch tracks some fitness activities impressively well, too. I’ve been training with a Garmin Venu 3, which covers not only the basics but also provides advanced metrics like cadence, vertical oscillation, and ground contact time while running. Comparing data recorded on both watches for a long run, the OnePlus Watch 3 manages impressively close metrics. It clocked my average pace, heart rate, stride length, and cadence within 2% of Garmin’s measure. There were some slightly larger discrepancies in average ground contact time and vertical oscillation, but that may stem from the watches being worn on different wrists and inconsistencies in the motion of my arms while running. Still, the OnePlus Watch 3 generally clocked my rather poor performance in those metrics. And really, I was simply impressed it was even considering these metrics at all—they're great for helping you know where you need to improve. The OnePlus Watch 3 was also able to automatically detect when I’d been running or walking for a few minutes, and would prompt me to record the activity.
For general workouts, like weightlifting, I was less impressed. The watch will continue to monitor heart rate and time spent working out, but you won’t find rep counting or anything like that. The OnePlus Watch 3 may be a great fitness tracker for the few activities that it has advanced tracking for, but for broader fitness tracking, Garmin still has the lead.
One small nuisance for fitness tracking is that, after you select your workout and press start, the watch does a 3-second countdown — a minor annoyance if you’re trying to sync it with a separate timer.
Taking Wear OS to new levels of longevity
One thing that has plagued smartwatches since their inception has been battery life. It’s hard running so much on a piddly little battery. Fitness trackers and even Garmin’s smartwatches pull it off because they’re running much lighter software than Wear OS, sometimes lasting up to 14 days in between charges, but it seems the OnePlus Watch 3 is finally starting to catch up.
For a Wear OS smartwatch, the OnePlus Watch 3 has excellent battery life. I regularly made it through 4 full days (and well into a 5th) of use before the watch would prompt me to switch over to its battery-saving mode. That’s not 4 days of nothing, either. That’s 4 days of checking the time, weather, and notifications as well as tracking sleep and workouts with the GPS. Compare this to the Samsung Galaxy Watch7’s struggles to last more than a single day in PCMag’s testing, and the difference is stark.
I was also quite pleased to see that the Battery Saver mode didn’t feel like an altogether neutered experience. It won’t run third-party apps and disables Google Assistant and Wallet, but it can still show phone notifications, control audio playback on the phone, and track activities with the GPS.
All that battery life almost makes it that much more of a shame that there’s no cellular connection available, as this would be all the better able to take advantage of it.
Should you buy the OnePlus Watch 3?
The OnePlus Watch 3 is an interesting mix of ideas. It doesn’t go all-out, having opted not to include cellular connectivity as an option. But it’s otherwise a solid match for the much more expensive Apple Watch Ultra and Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra, going above and beyond the standard smart watch. That may make it a confusing choice given OnePlus' more budget-oriented history, but if the bulk of the watch and lack of LTE aren’t a concern, then you’re truly getting a lot of watch for the slightly increased price here.
It’s built exceptionally well. And while it may not look like jewelry as the Pixel Watch does, it’s also far more robust. The inclusion of a sapphire crystal display goes a long way to extending the lifespan of the watch, too, and proves its merits having survived unblemished in my time testing the watch.
Take all that and give it both the speed and capabilities you expect from a smartwatch and the multi-day battery life you don’t expect from a smartwatch, and you’ve got the recipe for a great little companion for your wrist.
