There’s no avoiding the past; the OnePlus first smartwatch just wasn’t very good, with its half-baked proprietary software and poor activity tracking letting down its slick design.
After wearing the OnePlus Watch 2 on my wrist for the better part of two weeks, you get the distinct feeling this is the smartwatch OnePlus should have launched in the first place—it finally gets third-party app support by way of Wear OS 4 and takes a dual-chipset, dual-operating approach to saving battery life.
Yet, for something to sit pretty on your wrist, the OnePlus Watch 2 has to look good, and it does, if you’re into large watches, that is. With its 47 mm case and an adequately bright 1.43-inch circular watch face, it’s sizeable for smaller wrists, and there’s no smaller variant unlike smartwatches from Samsung and Apple.
The glossy stainless-steel casing draws inspiration from the OnePlus 12, although there’s a sleeker matte black variant as well. The right curved edge features two buttons, one a rotating crown and the other an action button, and both can be customised to trigger workout modes or other actions.
Oddly, though, while the crown can rotate, it serves no purpose, such as scrolling through menus, messages, or lists. Despite its size, the 80 g weight paired with a fluororubber band allows the Watch 2 to be comfortable enough to wear for multiple days and nights at a stretch without any associated fatigue. It’s durable too, meeting MIL-STD-810 standards and up to five ATM water resistance.
Peek under the hood, and you’ll see how the Watch 2 manages its claimed 100-hour battery life. It employs two chips — a Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 chip handling heavy Wear OS duties and another low-power BES2700 chip running a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) for everyday tasks—and the system intelligently switches between the two (in an auto-switching Smart mode) to maximise battery life.
Or if you want, there’s a Power Saver mode that limits your use to basic notifications and activity tracking but extends your battery life to up to 12 days! In my experience, I could eke out nearly three days of use with the always-on-display enabled for most waking hours, and you can go on a multi-day trip without the charger and not have to sweat. Impressive stuff. The charger, a convenient-for-travel puck with a USB-C port, charges the 500 mAh battery in just under an hour.
The downside? While it has all the usual sensors for heart rate, blood oxygen, and accurate route tracking, it lacks tracking for ECG and skin temperature. Sleep tracking is rather accurate, but fitness/workout tracking is a little off; it’s good enough to glance at for broad activity levels but not exact enough to rely on for the fitness conscious.
Rating: 8/10
Price: INR 24,999
