OnePlus Watch 3 review - a solid big smartwatch with battery for literal days

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REVIEW – I’ve been a smartwatch wearer since 2012, with the Pebble smartwatch. The primary purpose of a smartwatch for me has always been to screen calls and notifications before actually taking my phone out to respond or interact with them. The Pebble pretty much only did that function, and subsequent smartwatches over the years have added tons of additional features that are nice to have (and some people deem necessary), but for me that original purpose of screening stuff has remained the most important. The OnePlus Watch 3 is capable of much more than my simple needs though, so I kicked the tires for several weeks before writing this review for you.

⬇︎ Jump to summary (pros/cons)
Price: $329.99
Where to buy: OnePlus

What is it?

The OnePlus Watch 3 is a Google Wear based smartwatch with everything that entails (like sleep and fitness tracking, making and receiving calls directly from the watch, and much more). It’s available in two colorways at launch (“Obsidian Titanium” and “Emerald Titanium”, otherwise known as “black” and “green/silver”). It sports a large 1.5″ AMOLED display, a titanium bezel, and a stainless steel case.

What’s included?

Watch Body
Charging base
Strap
User Manual
USB-C cable

Tech specs

Materials: Titanium bezel, Stainless steel case, Sapphire crystal cover glass, Rubber strap
Size: 46.6 mm x 47.6 mm x 11.75 mm (excluding lugs and sensor area)
Weight: 81 grams
Wrist size: 140-210 mm wrists
Battery life: 3-16 days (depending on mode)
Display: 1.5 inches, 466 x 466 pixels, LTPO AMOLED, 2200 nits peak brightness
Processor: Snapdragon W5
MCU: BES2800BP
Memory: 32 GB
OS: Wear OS by Google + RTOS
Sensors: Temperature sensor, Optical heart rate sensor, optical pulse oximeter sensor, geomagnetic sensor, light sensor, barometer, acceleration sensor, gyroscope sensor
Connectivity: GPS dual band, Beidou, Galileo, GLONASS, QZSS, Wifi 5G/2.4G, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC
urability ratings: MIL-STD-810H, IP68, 5ATM pressure, temperature range -40°C/-104°F to 70°C/158°F, tested for solar radiation, salt spray, sand/dust, immersion, vibration, impact, acidic atmosphere
Mobile payment: Google wallet supported

Design and features

At first glance, the OnePlus Watch 3 looks very similar to their Watch 2 (and many of the other round style smartwatches on the market). I immediately appreciated the small-on-paper-but-noticeable-in-daily-use jump in screen size from my previous daily driver (the Ticwatch Atlas). The watch is easy to read in any conditions, gets very dim in bedtime mode, and can run an always-on-display with minimal battery impact thanks to the LTPO AMOLED technology in use.

The back of the watch has charging pins, health sensors, and a typo that has resulted in a month-delay for launch (“Meda in China”). You can also see the quick release buttons on the watch strap in the photo above, these make installing and changing the band very easy.

Speaking of the band, the rubber material used is quite comfortable. It didn’t pull my arm hair at all like some bands do and can be fastened tighter than many thanks to the stretch in the band (which keeps the sensors firmly on my wrist and keeps the watch from wiggling around).

The functioning crown on the top button is a nice addition, any vertical menu or wall of text can be scrolled through using the crown and pressing the crown functions as the main button.

The lower button pulls up a start-a-workout screen by default with a single press, and Google Wallet with a double press. You can map either of these to a variety of functions though, or have it open installed apps.

The watchband has a standard watch fastener, which works with no complaints from me.

The titanium bezel is raised a fraction of a millimeter above the watch face itself, so if you place it face down on a surface it won’t scratch the screen. I love that it isn’t raised way above the screen, some watches that I’ve used in the past have more protective bezels but this makes it hard to swipe in the screen. Watches with no protective bezels like Google’s Pixel watches feel much more prone to damage to me, so this setup is my ideal smartwatch setup (minimal but very strong bezel).

The watch is in the middle of the pack in terms of thickness compares to all the others I’ve tried. I banged it on doorways and other obstacles far less than some, and it held up great with the few good whacks I did give it.

oneplus watch 3 6 — Notification controls

The screenshots above show some of the screens and settings in the Ohealth companion app (required to pair the watch, available on iOS and Android, tested on Android with Google Pixel 9 Fold Pro). There are extensive notification options that I appreciate, as well as full control over what activity and workout reminders you get (I’m not the type of person to appreciate these so I turned them all off).

Assembly, Installation, Setup

oneplus watch 3 9 — ECG disabled at launch

Setup on the OnePlus Watch 3 was similar to the half-dozen or so previous Google Wear smartwatches I’ve reviewed or bought over the last few years. You do need to install the Ohealth app, and there’s a couple of things I don’t remember from other watches I included in screenshots above (these may just be newer Google Wear features or things I’ve forgotten from past watches). One thing to note is the ECG analyzer option disabled while I was reviewing the watch (it hasn’t been cleared for approval in the United States yet, but OnePlus says it’ll be coming out later this summer).

Performance

First things first, battery life is crucial for me. I hate devices that can barely make it through a day on a battery charge, so OnePlus’s promised 3+ days of battery life even with heavy use was something I was eager to test. I’m happy to report that for my use I’m seeing 4+ days on a single charge (on average I get notifications throughout the day, often respond to a few or glance through a couple emails directly on the watch, and record at least one or two 20-minute bike rides or other workouts). I charged the watch while I showered each morning, and after the first few days it was almost always at 80% battery come the next morning. My morning routine is about 20 minutes long, at which point the watch was often at just over 90% battery. This meant that each day I’d drop 10% from the previous day, necessitating a longer charge every few days. I do wish that it would charge just a tiny bit faster, so I didn’t have to leave it on longer periodically, but this definitely feels like a nit-pick rather than a deal breaking complaint.

For workout tracking, things seemed to track accurately in a variety of workouts including runs, bike rides, and “freestyle” workouts (where I was doing strenuous rhythm games in VR like Beat Saber).

While you’re in a workout, information and statistics are clearly readable on the watch at a glance. GPS tracking seemed very accurate, with no noticeable large deviations from my actual running/biking routes (other watches in the past have often had big squiggles off the actual trails when reviewed later).

I love a Google Wear watch that actually supports Google Assistant, and the OnePlus Watch 3 is great for this. Long pressing the crown invokes Google Assistant (short press pulls up the app menu), and I found Assistant to be just as responsive as on my phone. You can turn on always listening behavior, but I much prefer to use the button press for talking to Assistant.

Final thoughts

After using the OnePlus Watch 3 for a few weeks, I’ve switched to it entirely as my daily driver over the previous Ticwatch Atlas that I had been using. Battery life is great, and I love the large screen. I felt like I could more easily read incoming notifications and emails over smaller watches, and even using the small watch keyboard was much more usable than previous attempts for typing out a quick reply (though voice dictation remains the easiest and fastest way to perform this task on watch).

What I like about the OnePlus Watch 3

Great battery life
Large, beautiful screen
Rotating crown is nice

What needs to be improved?

Would prefer wireless charging over the proprietary charger
Wish charging was just a bit faster

Price: $329.99
Where to buy: OnePlus
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by OnePlus. OnePlus did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.