OnePlus Watch 2 Review: Total Redemption!

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(upbeat music)

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- So this smartwatch

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has one really interesting trick up its sleeve

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that I haven't seen in any other, and that, honestly,

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I don't think we're ever gonna see again.

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So at this point we know

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what a smartwatch is already, right?

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This is a stable, mature category.

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They deliver mostly across the board

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on all the same functions.

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And aside from the one crazy trick,

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this one is no exception.

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This is the OnePlus Watch 2,

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three years after the original OnePlus Watch

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and it costs 300 bucks.

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So for the $300 you're spending,

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you're getting a pretty nice circular watch design.

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It comes in this black or silver stainless steel body

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and a sapphire cover glass

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over a 1.4 inch, 60 hertz AMOLED display.

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Design-wise, you could argue

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it takes cues from maybe the OnePlus 11

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or the OnePlus 12 with the way the camera bump

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is melted into the side rail of the phone.

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They've done a similar thing here

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with the buttons on the side of the watch.

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So there's a circular button at the top

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and this rectangular button at the bottom.

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And I kind of like it. It's a nice shape.

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It's got this little subtle, classy variation

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of just the pure circle.

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And then the back looks pretty standard too.

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You got the four pins at the top, those are for charging.

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And it has all the sensors you'd expect

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for a smartwatch in the middle,

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optical heart rate sensor,

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pulse oximeter for blood oxygen,

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and of course, it still has the interchangeable bands,

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same as gen one.

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And the whole thing is actually both IP 68

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dust and water resistant

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and reaches a US military standard for durability.

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Basically means it can also withstand extreme temperature

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and moisture

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and shock among other things. (watch taps)

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It's not too heavy, it's built pretty well.

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This display goes up to a thousand nits peak brightness.

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So it looks good. It's built well across the board.

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Nice. So what's the catch?

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What's the weird twist?

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Well at the beginning I mentioned like we already

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kind of know what a smartwatch is,

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which is a tiny computer on your wrist with a tiny screen

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and a tiny battery.

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And that's fine.

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Like they all tend to have pretty short battery lives

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just because they're so small,

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and so you kind of just charge 'em every day.

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And that's the way it is.

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Like the main competitors here are the Apple Watch,

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which is 18 hours,

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although that's not the most direct competitor

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'cause that's the iPhone.

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But the Galaxy Watch, one of the best,

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40 hours of battery,

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and the Pixel Watch, the newest one,

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24 hours of battery life.

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But this one, OnePlus is claiming 100 hours.

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100 hour battery life in Smart Mode,

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which is not the battery saving mode,

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it's actually the default mode out the box.

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100 hours.

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So 96 hours is four days.

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I feel like, you know, 100 sounds cooler

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so they just went with 100.

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But four days of battery sounds a lot less inconvenient.

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So, you know, I had to put that to the test.

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So for the past four straight days

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I've been that guy walking around

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with both an Apple Watch Ultra,

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which claims 36 hours of normal use

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and this thing.

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Doing all the same stuff with both watches on,

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getting notifications, doing workouts,

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just poking around the UI.

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And by the end, I was actually very impressed with both.

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So the $800 Apple Watch Ultra

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actually over performed the 36 claimed hours for me.

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By hour 56 it was about ready to die.

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Now meanwhile, the OnePlus Watch had about 15% left.

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Now you're probably thinking, wait,

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that's not even close to 100, it's like 50 something.

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But OnePlus told me that

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if you turn the always on display off,

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that's good for two more days of battery life,

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it's actually off by default.

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I turned it on for this test,

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but that would get you well over the 100 hour mark.

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To be fair, that's also probably true

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about the Apple Watch Ultra.

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Now one detail to consider that I think actually mattered

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for this particular test.

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I've been wearing hoodies a lot

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'cause it's that type of weather.

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And so even with the sleeves on this Chevron Hoodie,

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which I'll link it below

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'cause you probably wanna check it out.

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It covers the watch.

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And so when you cover the watch with your sleeve,

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it thinks it's in the dark

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'cause the light sensors are covered

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so it turns the brightness way down on the watch.

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And so I think that's why it outperformed

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the battery numbers that it's claiming

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is 'cause I had a sleeve over it a lot of the times

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and the brightness was low.

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But even still, this $300 watch

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outperformed this $800 smartwatch just in terms of battery.

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Now here's the thing.

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The way that they're achieving this battery life

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is, I think, more interesting than the battery life itself.

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This is the twist.

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See, most smart watches have a chip inside,

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computing everything,

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with some high powered cores and some high efficiency cores

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to balance out power and battery life.

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This watch has two entirely separate processors

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and two different operating systems

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running for each of them.

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So there's a high powered Snapdragon W5 inside,

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that's powering Wear OS 4

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and that only lights up for things connected to that.

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Then there's also a BES 2,700 chip

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that is always on and runs RTOS.

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And they both share the same 32 gigs of base storage

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and two gigs of RAM.

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So Wear OS kicks on for the more intensive tasks

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like maps or music playback.

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But the RTOS that's always on

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is for those basic, low power tasks:

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heart rate monitoring, phone calls,

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notifications, background stuff.

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It's like a hybrid car.

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It's really interesting.

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And a fully electric car, you guys already know

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has all the benefits of being really responsive

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but not the best range.

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But a gas car has a ton of range,

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just not as responsive as fully electric.

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So if you get a hybrid, best of the both worlds,

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responsive and range.

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And this watch, it's a hybrid with the best of both worlds,

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responsiveness and range.

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So I've been pretty impressed.

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You know, using this thing, it's responsive.

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It has a ton of watch faces.

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There's a lot of custom workouts

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which look very familiar with tracking

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and everything that still sends all the data

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to the OHealth app in plenty of detail for me.

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I do still wish now, shoveling snow was a workout type,

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but that's another story.

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But you know, these here are regular weightlifting workouts.

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And also, can I say I really like that it is

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hold to end the workout, not tap to end.

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So it's way harder to accidentally stop a workout.

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Great idea.

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Also another weird quirk,

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this button here has a crown that rotates.

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But that rotation doesn't actually do anything.

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It doesn't change the volume,

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it doesn't scroll up or down in anything.

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It does nothing. It's not connected to anything.

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It just freely spins.

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apparently, that's literally just to make it

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more durable upon impact.

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Doesn't serve any function.

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Also, it does have this weird hitch,

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that it hasn't really gotten any less annoying,

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which is if I get a notification,

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I feel the buzz on my wrist,

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then I lift up my wrist

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and it takes like a full two seconds

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to show me the notification I just got.

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Not that two seconds is a disaster, it's not a ton of time,

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but it's longer than you expect,

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and it kind of annoys me to have to wait

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in comparison to other watches,

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which will just show me the notification right away.

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And I feel like you can actually see the moment

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that it fires up the Snapdragon W5

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and Wear OS kind of snaps on right in front of you

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before it shows you that notification.

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It's very odd.

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But here's the other twist on top of

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everything we've already talked about.

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I don't think this dual chip system

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is all of the magic creating this great battery life,

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because this watch also has a 500 MilliAmp hour battery.

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Now 500 MilliAmp hours doesn't sound like a lot,

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but here's the sizes of other smart watches

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in competition with this and their battery sizes

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and how long they last.

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And it's a little bigger than you'd expect.

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Now if I gave the Pixel Watch 2,

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which also has a Snapdragon W5, by the way.

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If I gave the Pixel Watch 2 a 500 MilliAmp hour battery,

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do we think it would last 50 hours?

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I don't know, but there you go.

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Honestly, at the end of the day

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I just came away from this mostly just impressed

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that they actually kept the price of this watch so low.

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Because two chips and two OSs

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and the work that goes into that,

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I dunno, to me that just sounds expensive

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and it's really not missing anything else too drastic.

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I think it's competitive in a lot of good ways at 300 bucks.

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So I think the clear positives would be:

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a nice design, really classy looking design, nice display,

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dual frequency GPS, so that's for better accuracy,

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and then of course really good battery life.

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The four days we talked about is awesome,

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but if you put on power saver mode,

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it's up to 12 days of battery life.

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Now this is gonna disable a lot of the Wear OS things,

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so it's just basic stuff, exercises, heart rate monitoring,

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but you could get it to really last a week if you wanted to.

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But then the weaknesses are

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definitely the delay in checking your notifications.

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The haptics also aren't that nice,

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and there's no iPhone compatibility,

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but you already knew that.

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But I would also say the charger is not that cool.

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Honestly, it's kind of clunky.

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I mean it works perfectly fine, don't get me wrong,

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but it's just like a big plastic block

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with pins and magnets in it.

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But it'll get you a full day's charge in 10 minutes

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and a full charge in an hour.

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So that's acceptable.

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But for 300 bucks, I'd say OnePlus has redeemed itself

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from its previous efforts in smart watches.

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It's pretty good.

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Like in a world of smartwatch gimmicks,

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there's the one with earbuds inside,

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there's the one for fitness,

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there's the one for the iPhone.

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Maybe this is the one with the hybrid system

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and pretty good battery life.

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(upbeat music) Maybe that's enough for you.

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Let me know in the comments below.

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Either way, that's been it.

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Thanks for watching.

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Catch you the next one. Peace.

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