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OnePlus Watch 3 Intro
OnePlus is now a pretty active player on the smartwatch scene, and just recently revealed the third generation of its flagship OnePlus Watch, building on the super-strong foundation laid by last year's OnePlus Watch 2 and Watch 2R. And, spoiler alert, the OnePlus wearable is pretty good!
How did we get here? The very first OnePlus Watch wasn't really a smartwatch, a litmus test that had multiple issues. It took OnePlus a couple of years to readjust its course, but it was well worth it, as both the OnePlus Watch 2 and 2R were a massive leap in the right direction. Both of these were unique with their dual-chip/dual-OS philosophy, which basically gave you a proper Wear OS smartwatch and an efficient digital watch in the same package.
The OnePlus Watch 3 is here with the same philosophy in mind, but also aiming to fix some shortcomings of the previous devices. We finally get a rotating digital crown that actually lets you navigate the interface, we get improved and broader health and wellness functions, and finally, we get a brighter display and better battery life.
The best part of it all? Well, with the pretty sensible price tag of $330, the OnePlus Watch 3 proves to be a much better value than just about any other smartwatch out there, especially Samsung and Apple's Ultra wearables which are much, much pricier.
Pre-order OnePlus Watch 3 for $80 off
$249
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$329
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$80 off (24%)
Pre-orders for the OnePlus Watch 3 are live! You can pre-order a unit via the official store, which can save you $80. To get the discount, you must provide any trade-in in any condition and use coupon code "TIME1010" for an extra $30 discount.
There is just a single version of the OnePlus Watch 3. available in either Obsidian Titanium (black with black band) or Emerald Titanium (silver with green band).
That's simultaneously good and bad––on one hand, you don't really have too much leeway as to what version to get, so you're pretty limited in your purchasing options. On the other hand, it simplifies the buying process: you only need to ponder what color to get.
Sadly, there's no cellular variant of the OnePlus Watch 3 right now, though the rumor mill claims we might get one later in 2025.
As far as hardware specs go, here's what the OnePlus Watch 3 offers:
Specs
Watch Series
Models (Size, Weight, Prices)
47.6mm, 11.75mm thick, 49.7gr (no band), 81gr (with band)
631mAh Up to 5 days battery life in Wear OS (Smart Mode) Up to 16 days battery life in RTOS (power saver mode)
Sensors
Heart-retae monitoring ECG (not available in the US) Wrist temperature sensor Optical heart rate sensor Optical pulse oximeter sensor Geomagnetic sensor Light sensor Barometer Acceleration sensor Gyroscope sensor
Connectivity
NFC Bluetooth 5.2 Wi-Fi 5GHz/2.4GHz L1+L5 GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, QZSS
New features
Rotating digital crown Better battery life New wellness and fitness features High performance dual-frequency GPS
Endurance
5ATM + IP68 MIL-STD-810H
OnePlus Watch 3 Unboxing
OnePlus Watch 3 and its accessories (Image by PhoneArena)
Inside the OnePlus Watch 3 box, you will find the following:
OnePlus Watch 3
Charging base
Strap
User Manual
USB-C charging cable
OnePlus Watch 3 Design, Sizes, and Bands
Smart and stylish looks
A well-designed smartwatch that looks great in any occasion (Image by PhoneArena)
The OnePlus Watch 3 is a continuation of the company's previous smartwatches and inherits the same super-stylish and smart aesthetics. The round stainless-steel case comes with a truly flat sapphire-clad display, with two buttons on the right side of the bezel. The latter is made of titanium alloy, which elevates the design language of the OnePlus Watch 3, but doesn't really play a big role in the overall utility of the watch.
One of the significant changes with the OnePlus Watch 3 is in the buttons themselves. The digital crown introduced with the OnePlus Watch 2 is now finally functional, allowing you to navigate the interface by rotating it, similarly to an Apple Watch. You can still click it to go back or open your app drawer, just like on the previous OnePlus Watch. This is a great change, fixing one of the bigger issues with the former watch.
The digital crown is finally functional (Image by PhoneArena)
In terms of size, there's no two ways around it––the OnePlus Watch 3 is a large wearable, spanning 47mm across, or as big as a Galaxy Watch Ultra. It works well for people with wider wrists, but looks off on thinner ones, making this a fairly masculine watch. Fortunately, this doesn't translate to increased heft: the OnePlus Watch 3 isn't too heavy at all.
The display up front is ever-so-slightly larger at 1.5 inches, a 0.7-inch increase from the OnePlus Watch 2. It's an LPTO OLED panel with sapphire crystal protecting it against scratches and scuffs, but the biggest upgrade here is the maximum brightness.
The OnePlus Watch 3 can get up to 2,200 nits of peak brightness, which makes it that much more legible under bright lighting. A major improvement over the 1,000-nit display of the OnePlus Watch 2.
Not a small wearable (Image by PhoneArena)
The OnePlus Watch 3 is IP68-rated, meaning impervious to dust and freshwater submersion up to 1.5m for as long as 30 minutes. Moreover, the wearable is also rated for 5ATM, which means you can use it for swimming, but OnePlus warns it's not suitable for shallow or deep diving, sauna, or hot water showers.
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Our OnePlus Watch 3 unit was the Obsidian Titanium, and it comes with a single black fluorelastomer rubber band with a stainless-steel buckle. It's a fairly robust and lightweight band, but it does not offer good perspiration, which means your skin will get sweaty fairly easy.
It's easy to switch watch bands (Image by PhoneArena)
Thanks to the simple attachment mechanism, removing the band is very straightforward. The OnePlus Watch 3 will take any 22mm watch strap, so you're welcome to mix and match!
OnePlus Watch 3 Software & Features
Dual brains for the win
The OnePlus Watch 3 comes with two operating systems. Google's Wear OS takes care of the smart mode, providing you with access to all the same apps you have on your Android phone and allowing you to download many more from the Play Store.
Google Pay is supported, of course (Image by PhoneArena)
The other operating system is called RTOS, and it offers a decidedly more rudimentary and basic functionality, but stretches the battery life to around two weeks, which is great. In Power Saver mode, many watch faces are replaced with basic ones, some apps and tiles are unavailable, some complications may fail to showcase data, SOS calls are unavailable, and most accessibility features are disabled. The biggest problem here is you can't view the remaining battery life––this feature is only available in Smart Mode.
Some new features in the interface are two new watch faces, which enable you to use videos or photos as a watchface. These are cool, but their utility will vary depending on the video you use. Additionally, almost all stock watch faces can now be customized, enabling you to change up the colors, the complications, and the watch layouts.
The only downside is that switching between the two modes/operating systems takes some time, especially when switching from power saver into smart mode, but that's not a very big issue.
Performance is good despite the lack of chip upgrades: the device still uses the same Snapdragon W5 chip as last year. There has been an improvement to the RTOS power-saving chip, though, which is now built on a 6nm manufacturing node, so it's faster and more efficient. That's always great to see.
The OnePlus Watch 3 only works with Android devices; you need to get the OnePlus Health (OHealth) app to pair it. After a successful pair, all standard smartwatch features become available to you. OHealth not only lets you pair the watch with your phone, but you can customize all available home screen tiles, personalize the watch faces, and more.
On-board RAM remains 2GB, while storage is 32GB, more than enough for multiple music playlists, other media, and apps.
The OnePlus 3 Watch isn't compatible with iPhone.
Workout features
The OnePlus Watch 3 will track more than a hundred different sports and activities, including 11 professional sports. Even some niche ones like frisbee, kite flying, and darts are supported.
When tracking an activity, you're presented with a plethora of available data fields, which vary depending on the type of sport you pick.
Running is unsurprisingly the most feature-rich activity, enabling to choose up to five data fields from the following ones: distance, duration, heart rate, pace, calories, average pace, cadence, average cadence, steps, stride length, average stride length, elevation, total ascent, average GCT, average vertical oscillation, real-time power, and average power.
The OnePlus Watch 3 will track just about any sport (Image by PhoneArena)
Swiping up and down gives you even more information screens, showcasing your heart rate zones, ground contact time, and more.
GPS
But what good is a sport companion smartwatch without a good GPS?
OnePlus knows this and has introduced an improved GPS functionality on the OnePlus Watch 3. It's still L1+L5 dual-band GPS, but uses a much faster and more efficient 7nm Broadcom SYN4778 chipset. Not only that, but the OnePlus Watch 3 also comes with a new omnidirectional GPS antenna, which can detect signals from various directions and thus largely eliminating signal refraction.
What this means is that the watch is much faster to lock onto a GPS signal in dense metropolitan areas, where buildings offer interfere. The new antenna also works better in weak-signal scenarios.
Sleep tracking
The OnePlus Watch 3 comes with very comprehensive sleep tracking. For each sleep session, you get awarded a Sleep Score. Your sleep also gets broken down into the four main categories: deep sleep, light sleep, REM, and awake duration. Each category shows your result compared against the ideal length, which lets you identify issues with your sleep.
The OnePlus Watch 3 will also track your vital signs during sleep, monitoring your respiratory rate, heart rate variation (HRV), and even identify breathing problems and detect snoring.
Naps are also detected successfully, which is good to see here.
Health features
The OnePlus Watch 3 comes with four upgrades to the sensor at the bottom. First, the sensor now receive more lights thanks to a more transparent glass. Second, the layout design of the LED and photodetectors at the bottom has been changed to improve the signal quality. The new curved strap now fits more snugly, minimizing the chance for a wrong measurement. Finally, algorithm changes improve the heart-related sensor functionality.
There's also a wrist temperature functionality, just like most current-gen smartwatches, like the Galaxy Watch 7 and the Apple Watch Series 10.
One of the cool new features of the OnePlus Watch 3 is called 60S Health Check-In, and honestly, it's genius. What it does is take a multitude of different health tests and assesses three health risks (heart health, arterial stifness, and breathing problems) and seven other health indicators (ECG, vascular age, heart rate, mind and body wellness, SpO2, sleep, and wrist temperature).
You're only required to hold your finger on the bottom button for a minute, and as a result you're given with a fairly comprehensive all-in-one health report that takes all mentioned factors into account.
Another cool new feature is called Mind and Body, which is essentially a stress tracker. It takes into account your heart rate variability, heart rate, and activities throughout the day, delivering a holistic estimation of your physical and mental health. The more you use your watch, the more accurate this feature should become.
OnePlus Watch 3 Battery and Charging
Marvelous!
The OnePlus Watch 3 comes with a massive 631mAh battery, which uses the same energy-dense NanoStack battery tech as the OnePlus 13. That's the largest battery on a smartwatch we've used so far, with batteries bigger than the Galaxy Watch Ultra (590mAh) and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 (542mAh). That's incredible, as the OnePlus Watch 3 isn't significantly larger than neither one of these.
With such a large battery and efficient hardware inside, the OnePlus Watch 3 does wonders when it comes to battery life. It's safe to say I've never used a smartwatch with such endurance!
OnePlus says the watch will last for around five days in smart mode, or up to three days with heavy use. Personally, I averaged around four days of battery life during my first battery cycle, but nearly reached the coveted five-day battery life during my second stint when I used the watch more sparsely.
Forget about daily charging (Image by PhoneArena)
And if that's not enough, switching over to the power-saving mode can extend the battery life to 16 days of battery use! I never felt the need to switch to this mode, as frankly said four days of battery life is already awesome enough, but being able to tap into this power reserve gives a peace of mind.
Charging is relatively fast. The OnePlus Watch 3 comes with a 10W wireless charger, which attaches to the wearable magnetically. It takes around an hour and 15 minutes to juice up the watch from around 20% to 100%, which is great.
OnePlus Watch 3 Voice Calls and Haptics
Audio is good on the OnePlus Watch 3. You can make and take phone calls, and the voice quality is fairly good.
Haptics are okay, but the vibrator motor is a bit too tinny and lacks the strength and accuracy of other smartwatches, like the Galaxy Watch Ultra or the Apple Watch Ultra. That's not a very big problem, but definitely acts as the proverbial fly in the ointment that slightly disappoints.
If OnePlus could fix this, its smartwatches would definitely become even better value when compared against those notable rivals.
OnePlus Watch 3 Competitors
Speaking of competitors, the OnePlus Watch 3 contends with the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 in terms of size, but the Galaxy Watch 7 and the Apple Watch Series 10 when it comes to pricing.
Confused? Don't be––the OnePlus Watch 3 is just an awesome value that's priced very aggressively and punches way above its price tag. The awesome battery life and comprehensive health feature set this one apart.
Why would you get a Galaxy Watch Ultra? It's a pretty similar Wear OS device, but it's a bit more rugged and has some extra hardware buttons and features that make it more suitable for adventurous folks.
The same applies to the Apple Watch Ultra 2, which is an identical offering that's tightly isolated into the Apple ecosystem.
The OnePlus Watch 3 takes everything that made the OnePlus Watch 2 great and turns it up to eleven!
We get better performance, better battery life, more customization and personalization, improved design and much more comprehensive and holistic health- and wellness-features.
All things considered, it's a superb Wear OS smartwatch that does a lot of things right, and just a few wrong. I don't really like the weak haptics and the fact that there's just a single size and no cellular version, but that's pretty much it when it comes to criticisms.
Everything else about the OnePlus Watch 3 simply works, proving that you don't need to shell out more than $500 to get a capable smartwatch with excellent battery life.
At $330, getting the OnePlus Watch 3 is a no-brainer: it's a smartwatch that I can recommend to all Android users out there.
Peter, an experienced tech enthusiast at PhoneArena, is captivated by all things mobile. His impartial reviews and proficiency in Android systems offer readers valuable insights. Off-duty, he delves into the latest cryptocurrency trends and enjoys sci-fi and video games.
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