OnePlus Watch 3 review: The best battery life, but not a great fit for everyone

The third time's the charm. This is a pretty cliche term that can be applied to anything, but it's especially true for the OnePlus Watch 3, OnePlus's incredibly successful third attempt at making a full-fledged smartwatch solution.

Last year's OnePlus Watch 2 relaunched the brand's hopes of having a successful smartwatch by introducing the first dual-CPU, dual-OS smartwatch powered by Wear OS. It got several things right — most notably battery life — but failed to meet the rigorous fitness tracking expectations that Wear OS watches are known for.

I'm happy to report that OnePlus ironed things out with its unique smartwatch architecture, which not only improved battery life over last year's watch but also fixed all the issues I had with fitness and workout tracking accuracy. The display is better and more eye-friendly, the rotating crown actually does something this year, and the company is offering an additional year of security updates.

It's a generational leap, as our OnePlus Watch 2 vs OnePlus Watch 3 comparison proclaims, and it's well worth your hard-earned money, even if there are a few things missing.

OnePlus Watch 3: Price, availability, and specs

The OnePlus Watch 3 retails for $329.99 USD or $449.99 CAD and comes in two colorways: Obsidian Titanium (black with a black band) and Emerald Titanium (silver with green band). OnePlus only offers one size, and neither color option supports LTE connectivity. The watch was initially scheduled to ship at the end of February but was delayed until April due to a typographical error on the watch.

OnePlus sells a handful of different band styles and colors, including a blue one that matches the Ocean Blue OnePlus 13. Any 22mm strap will work on either watch, though, so you don't have to stick to OnePlus's own selections if you don't want to.

The watch ships with a charging dock and a red cable in the box. You'll need a OnePlus charger to get the fastest charging speeds, and you can use the one that comes with any OnePlus phone.

OnePlus Watch 3: What you'll love

If the OnePlus Watch 3 has any one overarching theme, it's improvement to the point of excellence. OnePlus has come a long way since the original OnePlus Watch launch in 2021 and now offers best-in-class performance, battery life, health tracking accuracy, and hardware design.

Essentially, the only things "wrong" with the watch are things it's missing. Everything it does is great, and that's what makes this an easy-to-recommend watch.

When choosing a smartwatch, you often have to choose two major features at the expense of a third. Do you want great battery life, excellent fitness tracking capabilities, or lots of apps to play with? Galaxy Watches and Pixel Watches almost all exclusively offer great fitness tracking and app support but, with the exception of the Galaxy Watch Ultra, have to be charged every single day.

Smartwatches from companies like Garmin or Coros offer great fitness tracking and super long battery life but lack the apps of a Wear OS watch. The OnePlus Watch 3 is able to cover all three of these pillars without issue, and it's seriously impressive.

With AOD on, sleep tracking every night, and one hour of tracked exercise every day, I regularly got a full 4 days of battery life from the OnePlus Watch 3. While that's similar to the OnePlus Watch 2, the Watch 3 is able to do all this without the heat rate sensor problems and occasional notification issues the Watch 2 suffered from.

Out of the box, the watch comes with AOD disabled, which will add roughly another day to your battery life. If you don't care about sleep tracking but just want this as a workout tracker and a daytime notification hub, you'll get a full 6 days of use from a single charge. Typically, with this configuration — AOD off and no sleep tracking, just wearing it during the day and tracking a 1-hour exercise — you could stretch that to day 7.

When the battery eventually gets low, topping up takes no time at all. In typical OnePlus style, a 20-minute charge will add about 75% to the battery, and another 20 minutes will bring it to a full charge. Even if you only had a few minutes to top it up before walking out the door, you'll absolutely get a full day's worth of use without worry.

If you don't care about Wear OS apps at all and just want fitness tracking, notifications, and sleep tracking, the OnePlus Watch 3's battery save mode will make it last over two weeks on a single charge. While this mode makes it more like a Garmin watch, you have the flexibility to switch back to regular "Smart mode" to get your apps back at any time.

The OnePlus Watch 3 addresses a number of design and display changes I've wanted to see on smartwatches for a while. It includes a rotating crown at the 2 o'clock position instead of at the awkward 3 o'clock position, making it better for working out if you prefer the crown facing your hand.

This digital crown is larger than the one on the Watch 2 and, again, actually works as a rotating crown to scroll through menus. It's got a lovely grippy texture on it which, combined with the size, makes it incredibly easy to use. It's also got Pixel Watch-like haptics when scrolling which further enhances its appeal. This is the best digital crown on any smartwatch, no contest.

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OnePlus increased the screen size and reduced the bezels on the Watch 3 versus the last two, all while keeping the size of the watch the same size. The bezel looks much nicer to me now that it has a protective metal bezel around the face, plus the 10-minute tick marks add a bit of visual flare that I see as an improvement to the design over the Watch 2's all-glass front.

OnePlus Watch 3 PWM and dithering tests - YouTube

Watch On

The watch also uses a vibrant, bright DC-dimmed OLED panel that's easy to see in the sun but also that won't cook your eyes in a dark room. That's all without sacrificing brightness or display quality. A win-win if I ever saw one. Lots of other smartwatches use PWM dimming, which isn't great for anyone sensitive to flicker, meaning OnePlus is taking the lead on Wear OS eye health.

Last year, I wore a OnePlus Watch 2 and a Pixel Watch 3 to a Spartan Race. The OnePlus Watch 2 did a decent job but it fell victim to a heart rate sensor problem that regularly happened to me most of the time I wore it. Essentially, the watch seemed to ignore any high heart rate data if your heart rate spiked too rapidly. Given the intensity of the workouts I usually put myself through, this watch simply wasn't a good match for me.

The OnePlus Watch 3 fixes all of that and is not only right in line with data from the Pixel Watch 3 — which I've been wearing since its release because of its heart rate sensor accuracy — but it also does several things better than the Pixel Watch 3 from a fitness tracking standpoint.

First up is the health dashboard. OnePlus OHealth app (not a fan of this app name, but whatever) makes excellent use of screen space and presents eight different data points without scrolling: daily steps taken, calories burned, workout minutes, activity sessions, heart rate with averages and a graph, sleep time plus a graph, mind and body score, and SpO2 measurements.

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The Fitbit app, which is used by the Pixel Watch 3, only shows 5 data points upfront, so OnePlus has a massive advantage in design because the most important average metrics are in full view the moment you open the app.

The downside is that it's not as customizable as Fitbit's view. What you see is what you get with the OnePlus OHealth app, for better or worse.

The same design principles apply to the rest of the OnePlus Watch 3 experience, as well. When you finish an outdoor run or walk, the OnePlus Watch 3 displays a nice little map complete with a fantastic breakdown of your fitness metrics, including easy-to-read graphs and additional data if you want.

The Pixel Watch 3 tells you "good job" and gives a handful of stats, but the way the information is presented is often far too succinct. Any additional information can only be found in the Fitbit app on your phone, and even then, lots of it is hidden behind a paywall.

I also love that all of my watch data from the OnePlus Watch 3 is kept on my phone and my watch. OnePlus uses standardized cloud data to analyze my workouts for some of its AI processing functions, but my actual workout data isn't being processed anywhere in the cloud. It's all done on the phone.

That is not only nicer for privacy reasons, but it also means there's no monthly subscription to pay for to get all your data. Samsung also does this, so OnePlus isn't alone, but it's a nice change coming from the Fitbit subscription-laden Pixel Watch.

OnePlus also includes some truly useful data in each workout summary that I don't see on my Pixel Watch or in Fitbit.

On the OnePlus OHealth app, the map generated after an outdoor walk or run is not only more visually rich than on the Pixel — it shows a proper satellite view by default — but it's animated similarly to a hiking map generated through AllTrails. On top of that, you can select from two of eight data points to display on this map, complete with different line designs, map and route styles, and different video lengths to generate for the animated map.

Seeing all this data on a map is truly useful for anyone training to get more physically fit as it can help directly identify problem points on a usual route, plus where and how you can specifically improve over time. It's genius, and it fits right in with a lot of other things going on with this watch.

None of this matters if the watch isn't accurate, and I'm happy to report that OnePlus has completely fixed this aspect of its latest smartwatch. I've completed dozens of workouts while wearing the OnePlus Watch 3 and the Pixel Watch 3 at the same time — one on each wrist — and I've been impressed with OnePlus' metrics.

This is a watch I'm confident wearing for any workout, and I can even wear it fairly loosely and still get great metrics thanks to redesigned LEDs and heart rate sensors.

While the capture metrics were largely identical, one thing kept me coming back to using the OnePlus Watch 3 for all my workouts: auto-pause. It's not a revolutionary feature, nor is it the only watch that does this, but OnePlus's auto-pause works so incredibly well that it felt like a game changer for me. It nearly-instantly auto-paused my walking and cycling workouts the moment I stopped, and it impressed me every time.

I wore the Pixel Watch 3, OnePlus Watch 3, and OnePlus Watch 2 on several different multi-mile walks, using a manual counting app to log my steps. As I had come to find out previously, the OnePlus Watch 2 and 3 are far closer to my manual counts than the Pixel Watch 3.

One example is posted above but, on average, the OnePlus Watch 2 and 3 were usually within 30 steps of accuracy while the Pixel Watch 3 was typically counted around 150 extra steps.

OnePlus Watch 3: What could be better

The OnePlus Watch 3 has more positive qualities than negative ones, no doubt, but that doesn't mean it's a perfect device. OnePlus addressed almost every single critique of last year's watch with this release, but it's actually the lack of features that adorn the list of cons for this year's watch — not missteps.

The biggest issue I have with the OnePlus Watch 3 is the physical size of the thing. I'm someone who prefers the smaller Pixel Watch model and even chose it when Google introduced a larger size model with the Pixel Watch 3. I already don't like the feeling of something on my wrist all the time, so when I wear a watch, I want it to disappear as much as possible. The OnePlus Watch 3 definitely does not do that.

While it's great to have such a large display on my wrist, I find this large of a smartwatch a hindrance to activities like sleep tracking. Maybe a different kind of band would help, but as it is, there were plenty of nights where sleep tracking was less than accurate because I wore the watch too loosely, a direct correlation to its size relative to my wrist.

Based on the number of absolutely huge smartwatches out there — plus the advent of the "ultra" form factor from some brands — I'm clearly an anomaly here. Still, imagine people with thinner wrists might not enjoy a big honkin' watch adorning them. Next year, I'd love to see OnePlus offer a smaller size, even if that means I get worse battery life.

Some people would also love an LTE connection if they want to take their watch hiking or swimming and want to leave their phone behind. Unfortunately, that's just not an option here, as the OnePlus Watch 3 only supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity.

And on the topic of "one size fits all," the OHealth app could use a few more customization options. I love the default data presented on the dashboard, but there's no way to customize it at all. You can't select different metrics to show, and you can't move the existing sections around at all despite having a long-press animation that seems to infer that this is a function.

I'd also love to see OnePlus start to incorporate some more advanced health-tracking features. Outdoor walks, runs, cycling, and other activities can plot step cadence, pace, and some other really interesting statistics but Fitbit is able to calculate the cardio load to help you better balance fitness growth while managing recovery effectively.

It's effectively the difference between wearing a smartwatch to meet surface-level goals like step tracking and using a smartwatch's ample data to scientifically improve your health and fitness journey.

The OnePlus Watch 3 is roughly the same price as its biggest competition — $300-$330, depending on when and where you buy it — yet offers at least one fewer OS update than those watches. The Google Pixel Watch 3 will see the end of its support around the same time as the OnePlus Watch 3 despite launching more than 6 months before it. If you're keeping track, that means these watches will see security updates through the end of 2027.

Considering my history with smartwatches, I think this is ample support time for a $300 smartwatch. OnePlus promises quarterly updates for its watch, which means you should get four updates per year, including four security patches and (presumably) one OS update. Samsung offers two additional years of updates for its watches but hasn't historically been very good at keeping up with these updates. In short, if you're worried about having a secure smartwatch in three years, you're just going to have to upgrade.

Outside of that, no ECG in North America is more than just a bummer; it's a huge missed opportunity for OnePlus in the world's largest smartwatch market.

The FDA requires that OnePlus pass a series of (expensive) tests in order to get ECG approval, which is why OnePlus didn't include the feature here. Elsewhere in the world, you'll be able to access this feature without issue. The latest Pixel Watches and Galaxy Watches all support ECG, so this is a major setback for OnePlus' fitness initiatives.

OnePlus Watch 3: Competition

Competition in the Wear OS space has dwindled as Samsung and Google have strengthened their chokehold over the market. If multi-day battery life is a must, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra is the only real Wear OS 5 alternative. Even then, you'll only get a maximum of three days out of the Watch Ultra on a single charge.

If detailed health metrics or AI insights are important to you, both Samsung and Google do a great job in this area, but Google's Pixel Watch 3 pulls ahead with Fitbit-powered insights. It also supports ECG in North America, unlike the OnePlus Watch 3. The downside is that you'll have to pay Google $80 per year (or $10 a month if you don't want to commit) for this kind of data. For what it's worth, I don't think most people will find this level of data useful, but the ECG could be life-saving.

The Pixel Watch 3 offers three years of security updates and 3 OS updates, meaning it'll get Wear OS 8 before Google ends support. Samsung's Galaxy Watch 7 family will get an additional year of updates beyond that, making it the best choice for anyone who wants to hold on to their watch for a long time.

OnePlus Watch 3: Should you buy it?

You should buy it if...

• You need a beautiful watch with a bright, eye-friendly OLED display.
• You want a watch that'll last most of the week on a single charge without sacrificing fitness features or app support.
• You use your watch for a variety of exercises and physical activities and need one that's capable of tracking all of them accurately.

You shouldn't buy it if...

• You need LTE connectivity
• You live in North America and want a watch with ECG support.
• You like small smartwatches

The OnePlus Watch 3 is the new best Wear OS smartwatch for anyone who likes big watches. It's got the best battery life among any Wear OS watch, including a secondary mode that'll triple the already excellent battery life if you don't mind reduced app support. Fitness tracking works impeccably well, meeting and beating my previous favorite, the Pixel Watch 3.

OnePlus's OHealth app has improved to the point where I prefer its UI and features over rival apps. Data is kept and processed locally, and moving the watch between phones works exactly as you'd expect, meaning all your precious data moves with you when you upgrade phones. It even has some interesting and unique features, like an animated map after outdoor exercises and a short-form video scrolling remote if you pair it with a OnePlus phone like the OnePlus 13.

OnePlus can further improve the experience by adding a few more customization features to the OHealth app and giving customers more size and configuration options, but outside of those few requests, this is as good as Wear OS 5 gets.