Oko Dot All In One Technology Solutions By Likhon Hussain
In this article, I will talk about the OnePlus Watch 2 and it’s an excellent upgrade over the Watch 1 that launched in the year 2019. I’ve been testing this watch for the past few days, and there’s much to discuss. Some really good things and some not so much but overall, I am really impressed with this watch. So let’s dive into the main point.
OnePlus Watch 2 Design
Starting with the design, watch 2 retains the circular design from watch 1and it looks very premium in the stainless steel chassis. On the right side, there are two buttons. Pressing this takes you to the home, and the other one is the customizable action button.
One thing to note here is that the circular button rotates but it doesn’t do anything. OnePlus should have integrated scrolling into the circular button to make it more useful. At the bottom, you get the sensors, mic, speaker, and pins for charging.
Display
On the front, there’s this beautiful 1.43” circular AMOLED display protected by Sapphire Crystal which is nice considering watches do get scratched quite easily. The display is sharp and bright and in our testing, it reached 1000 nits which is pretty good.
The auto-brightness also works well in both indoors and outdoors also, the Raise-to-wake and touch-to-wake options work just fine. Always on Display is also present here.
Size
However, if you look closely, you’ll see that the bezel around the display is slightly on the thicker side. OnePlus Watch 2 comes in just one size which is 46 mm and it weighs 80 grams with the straps so it could be a bit big and heavy for some but I have been using the Watch Ultra for quite some time and I find the size to be appropriate.
Internals & Performance
Now let me take you through the internals of the watch because that’s where things get very interesting. OnePlus believes that the only thing holding back the wearOS smartwatches is the subpar battery life and with watch 2, they’ve solved this problem.
Here’s how: OnePlus Watch 2 is powered by two chipsets and two operating systems. Snapdragon W5 works as the performance chipset and the BES2700 is the efficiency chipset So, for intensive tasks involving the wearOS, app launches, maps, music, etc, W5 kicks in.
For moderate tasks such as always on-display background activity, notifications, etc, the second operating system RTOS comes into the picture that runs on BES2700.
And the best part is that all this happens automatically in the background and the user doesn’t have to do anything. This dual chipset-dual OS functionality is responsible for the extended battery life in the OnePlus Watch 2 which I’ll talk about later in the article.
Watch Faces & Features
Overall, the UI is pretty smooth and responsive to swipes and gestures the haptics are also very strong and of very good quality by the way, wearOS 4 is based on Android 13and OnePlus has promised 2 years of updates to this watch when it comes to rest of the features and customization there are 20 Watch Faces available on the watch, and more can be added from the companion app.
You can also install 3rd party watch faces from the Play Store and there is support for 3rd party widgets as well. There’s one thing though, the OHealth app is only available for Android users. These are all the sensors on the OnePlus Watch 2.
Heart rate and SPO2 are pretty accurate in our testing. Sleep tracking also works well with accurate timings and there is a detailed breakdown in the app with proper sleep score.
Step data was slightly off when we compared it against Apple Watch Series 9 on a 20-minute treadmill walk, but the heart rate was on point and when it comes to workouts, there are options for walking, running, cycling, rope, badminton, swimming and moreThe call quality on the watch 2 is also good.
The mic quality is great, the other party didn’t have any complaints but the speakers are slightly less loud. Lastly, watch 2 also has dual frequency L1+L5 GPS for navigation. The precision that OnePlus claims is 30cm.
However, in my testing I found the GPS to be out of touch with the route. The compass was a bit finicky and required recalibration at times while walking down the street with navigation on.
Battery
Coming to the battery, the OnePlus Watch 2 packs a 500mAh battery and supports VOOC charging which takes the watch from 0 to 100% in just 1 hour as for Battery life, OnePlus claims 2 days with Smart Mode and 12 days with RT OS.
I used the watch extensively for 24 hours with every fitness feature set to on, connected to my phone all the time. I played some music, used GPS navigation, and tried out various fitness tracking modes and the watch was still left with a 30% charge. So, the watch can easily last one and a half days without any problems which is pretty good.
Conclusion
And I almost forgot to tell you that OnePlus won’t be launching a cellular variant of this watch. All said and done, the OnePlus Watch 2 is a solid upgrade over the Watch 1. The clever use of two operating systems and two chipsets to enhance the battery life of the watch is a move in the right direction.
Apart from that, there’s everything you expect from a smartwatch, a nice and bright display, very good build quality, all the fitness features, and of course WearOS. Ya, the lack of different size options and the LTE variants can probably put off some users but other than that, this is a solid smartwatch.
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