OnePlus Watch 3 Review: WearOS Battery Life Champ, Great Display

	OnePlus Watch 3: Starting at $329.99 The OnePlus Watch 3 is one of the very best smartwatches on the market, and the new WearOS battery life champion.
	Superb design and build Beautiful LTPO display Smooth performance Outstanding battery life Comprehensive health and fitness features Great user experience	Weak speaker and haptics No optional 4G LTE connectivity OHealth app needs improvement

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We just spent a week testing and living with the OnePlus Watch 3. Could this be the new Android smartwatch to beat? Read our full review here to find out...

OnePlus Watch 3 Hardware And design

In terms of design and size, Watch 3 is almost identical to Watch 2. The circular case is made of stainless steel, and features the same satin finish on the left side, and signature polished bump on the right side, which is home to the crown at the 2-o’clock position, and a pill-shaped button at the 4-o’clock position. Speaking of the crown, we’re happy to report that it’s now larger, tapered, pleasantly knurled, and fully functional – at last!

Processor	Snapdragon W5 + BES2800BP
Display	1.5-inch LTPO AMOLED, 466 x 466, 1-60Hz, 2200 nits (peak)
Memory	2GB
Storage	32GB (4GB for RTOS)
Battery	631mAh
OS	WearOS 5 + RTOS
Dimensions	46.7 x 46.6 x 11.75mm
Weight	49.7g
Connectivity	Wi-Fi (802.11n), Bluetooth 5.2, NFC
Colors	Obsidian Titanium, Emerald Titanium
Pricing	OnePlus Watch 3: $329.99 - Find It At OnePlus.com

Instead of using 2.5D sapphire glass that flows directly into the case like Watch 2, Watch 3’s sapphire glass is flat and surrounded by a narrow titanium bezel with engraved labels at the 5-minute positions. Not only does this look way better, but it also protects the edges of the sapphire glass. Like its predecessor, Watch 3 is rated IP68, MIL-STD-810H certified, and water resistant down to 5ATM (50m).
Watch 3’s AMOLED display is larger than Watch 2’s (1.5 vs. 1.43 inches) and brighter too (2200 nits peak), but it’s the same 466 x 466 pixel resolution. It’s an LTPO screen this time around, with a 1-60Hz adaptive refresh rate and DC dimming. Around the back you’ll find improved optical PPG sensors for measuring heart rate and blood oxygen level (SpO2), and the same four charging contacts as on Watch 2.

As for the magnetic charging base, it’s almost identical to last year’s. It’s made of the same white plastic and features the same USB Type-C charging port. We like this approach better than having a base with a captive cable since it allows us to charge our watch without having to detach the charging cable from our existing chargers. Note however, that the circular indent in Watch 3’s charging base is slightly larger than on Watch 2’s.
You can still charge Watch 3 with Watch 2’s charging base (and vice-versa), but it’s not a perfect fit. On the subject of fit, we’re not the biggest fans of the supplied fluororubber strap. It’s fine overall, but it can’t pivot around its lugs, making it almost impossible to rest Watch 3 flat on any surface. At least this smartwatch uses standard 22mm wide bands, so you have a lot of options when it comes to replacing the strap.

Under the hood, Watch 3 is powered by the same hybrid application processor (SoC) + microcontroller (MPU) architecture as Watch 2. It packs the same Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 SoC, 2GB RAM, and 32GB of storage as its predecessor, but the MPU has been upgraded to a Bestechnic BES2800BP, a 6nm FinFET chip that boasts a 2x CPU and 4x NPU performance improvement over the BES2700 in Watch 2.
This hybrid WearOS + RTOS combo allows Watch 3 to be extremely efficient, with up to 120 hours (5 days) of battery life in the default “Smart Mode” (vs. 100 hours previously). Most of the time, when you aren’t interacting with the watch, the MPU does all the work – handling notifications, counting steps, measuring heart rate and blood oxygen levels, updating the always-on display (if enabled), keeping a connection with your phone, etc…

When it comes to connectivity, Watch 3 strangely lacks 4G LTE (cellular), but it features Bluetooth 5.2, WiFi 4 (802.11n), NFC, and dual-band AGPS, Beidou, Galileo, GLONASS, QZSS positioning (using a Broadcom SYN4778 7nm chip alongside a new circularly polarized antenna for better reception in urban environments). Unlike Google’s Pixel Watch 3, the OnePlus Watch 3 doesn’t support UWB.

The on-board mic and speaker are fine, but could be louder – decent enough to take a call in a pinch, as long as you’re in a quiet space. Haptics on Watch 3 are okay as well but could be stronger. The Apple Watch’s Taptic Engine still has the edge here.

OnePlus Watch 3 Software, Features, And Battery Life

Like its predecessor, the OnePlus Watch 3 runs Google’s WearOS on the Qualcomm SoC, alongside a custom RTOS (real-time OS) on the Bestechnic microcontroller. The Watch 3 gets WearOS 5 out of the box, which is likely also coming (hopefully soon) to Watch 2. This means you get all of Google’s software goodness, with proper support for features and apps like Google Assistant, Google Pay, Google Maps, etc...
As you’d expect, OnePlus’ build of WearOS is lightly skinned to resemble OxygenOS on the company’s phones – with custom watch faces to match. While you can install and run almost any WearOS-compatible watch face, only OnePlus’ watch faces are optimized to run on the RTOS when you enable the always-on display or raise-to-wake. In other words, you’ll want to stick with OnePlus’ watch faces for the best battery life.

WearOS on Watch 3 feels smooth and responsive, just like it does on Watch 2 and the latest Galaxy and Pixel watches. Basically, you get the same user experience as any other WearOS smartwatch, and the same UI as well. From the home screen, swipe down for the quick settings, swipe up for notifications, and swipe left or right to access the tiles. Within apps, swipe right from the edge to navigate back.
The button assignments are equally intuitive but can be customized. By default, press the crown at 2-o’clock once for the app list, double-press for the most recent app, and long-press for Google Assistant. Press the 4-o’clock button once for workouts, double-press for Google Wallet, and long-press for the power menu. You can long-tap the home screen to manage watch faces, and long-tap any tile to manage tiles. Easy peasy.

As we’ve alluded to several times above, battery life is where Watch 3 really shines. It’s what sets it apart from the competition. OnePlus advertises up to 120 hours (5 days) of battery life in the default “Smart Mode” with the always-on display disabled, and so far, in eight days of wearing this smartwatch, we’ve fully charged it only once – the evening of day four. We charged it again on day eight (from 26 to 56%) to take pictures for this review.
For the record, we’ve been using Watch 3 with the always-on display enabled, continuous heart rate and blood oxygen monitoring activated, and the “access breathing problems” feature selected – all of which are power hungry settings. Then again, we didn’t spend much time running apps on the watch, doing workouts, making calls, or streaming music. We mostly just received notifications and tracked activity and sleep.

Besides monitoring sleep, activity (steps, etc…), stress, heart rate, heart rate variability, and blood oxygen level (SpO2), Watch 3 also measures wrist temperature. Sleep tracking also provides a sleep quality score and accesses breathing problems by monitoring snoring duration and loudness. In addition, the watch can alert you when your heart rate is too high or too low, or when your blood oxygen level (SpO2) is too low.
On the health front, Watch 3 delivers several useful apps and features. The 60s Health Check-In app simultaneously evaluates six key health indicators – heart rate, blood oxygen level (SpO2), mental wellness, wrist temperature, sleep quality, and vascular age – in less than 60 seconds by simply holding still and touching the 4-o’clock button. This provides a quick and easy health check, anytime anywhere. 

The Mind and Body app analyzes the recent watch data to deliver a holistic assessment of your emotional and stress levels, and display the result with an emoji and a simple score out of 100. The Vascular Health app estimates arterial stiffness, and the ECG app (which is not certified for use in the US) can help detect arrhythmia and atrial fibrillation. Both work by holding still and touching the 4-o’clock button.
In terms of fitness, Watch 3 supports over 100 sports and activities, plus eleven professional workouts, which include running, walking, cycling, swimming, hiking, skiing, tennis, badminton, table tennis, soccer, basketball, boxing, and yoga – to name a few. To make things more convenient, the watch can auto-detect six of these activities: running, walking, rowing machine, elliptical machine, cycling, and swimming. 

We only scratched the surface when testing workouts, but – for what it’s worth – we didn’t experience any problems with walking. In practice, the OnePlus Watch 3 appears to track activity, sleep, stress, and other vitals about as well as the Galaxy Watch Ultra and Google Pixel Watch 3. To validate this, we’ve been wearing an Ultrahuman smart ring alongside Watch 3, and in general, the watch data matched the ring’s within 10%. 
A couple interesting Watch 3 features worth mentioning are Video Watch Face and Easy Control. The former lets you create a unique watch face using a 5 second video clip as the background. Easy Control allows you to remote control TikTok and YouTube Shorts from the watch by using swipes and double taps on the watch’s display. It also doubles as a camera remote, but only with OnePlus and Oppo phones running Android 15.

The OHealth app is OnePlus’ companion phone app for Watch 3. It provides an in-depth look at your health and fitness data, and lets you manage personal and smartwatch settings. Most of the time you’ll be using this app to manage watch faces, parental controls, apps, tiles, notification settings, plus health and fitness settings. It also syncs health and fitness data with Google Health Connect, Google Fit, and Strava.

OnePlus Watch 3 Review Summary

With Watch 3, OnePlus has taken the already excellent Watch 2 and made it even better. It delivers a more refined design, superb build quality, an improved display, smooth performance, outstanding battery life, comprehensive health and fitness features, plus a great user experience thanks to WearOS. More importantly, the $330 price remains competitive. This smartwatch isn’t cheap, but it offers solid value.

Still, there’s room for improvement. The speaker and haptics are a little weak, and the lack of (optional) 4G LTE connectivity and UWB support are a miss. In addition, OnePlus’ OHealth app doesn’t match the breadth and quality of Samsung’s Health app or Google’s Fitbit app when it comes to functionality, presentation, recommendations, or coaching. So keep that in mind if health and fitness tracking are paramount to you.
Regardless, the OnePlus Watch 3 is one of the very best WearOS smartwatches on the market, and we highly recommend it. It’s available for pre-order today online from OnePlus for $329.99, with general sales starting February 25. You can save $30 by using discount code TIME1010 at checkout until supplies last, and trade in any device in any condition for an additional $50 off as well.