OnePlus Watch 2R: Hey, not bad at all!

OnePlus is a relatively new player in the smartwatch market, but has not yet filled a gap with its smartwatches.

The OnePlus Watch 2, for example, was a proper smartwatch with two chipsets and two operating systems that offered long battery life and all the smartwatch features you need.

Now, almost half a year after the OnePlus Watch 2 debuted, there’s a slightly cheaper version of the device, the OnePlus Watch 2R. It appears to have the same feature set as the regular OnePlus Watch 2, just in a slightly less premium package and at a cheaper price.

Key hardware features here are the dual chipsets as well as the dual operating systems that stand out from the rest of the specs in the table above. Just like the OnePlus Watch 2, we have a powerful Snapdragon for more demanding tasks and a low-power chipset that significantly increases the device’s potential battery life.

Design, sizes and straps of the OnePlus Watch 2R

A modern classic

Putting two standard hands on the dial of the OnePlus Watch 2R can fool a lot of people into thinking the device is a regular mechanical watch! Okay, not quite, but the design is pretty classic and straightforward without anything too fancy or exciting going on here.

The only design liberty taken with the OnePlus Watch 2R, which we certainly haven’t seen on many other smartwatches, is the printed 24-hour dial on the front of the watch, which definitely breaks the monotony of the classic but somewhat boring design.

Otherwise, the watch body is made of smooth aluminum, which is nice to the touch. The back of the case is made of plastic, which certainly helps keep the weight down. In fact, the entire OnePlus Watch 2R without straps weighs just 37g, which is the same as a regular 45mm Apple Watch.

Size-wise, it’s a 45mm device, which is undoubtedly too big and may not look as good on people with thinner wrists.

On the front we find neither sapphire glass nor Gorilla Glass, but normal 2D glass, which is certainly an indication that scratches and grooves can form here over time and that you should therefore pamper the watch a little more than usual.

The watch itself is IP68 certified, meaning it’s waterproof in up to 1.5m of water for up to 30 minutes by default, but OnePlus warns that you shouldn’t take the watch with you for diving, snorkeling, visiting saunas, hot springs, and in strong currents.

The display itself is a 1.43-inch OLED display with a maximum brightness of 600 nits and a peak brightness of 1,000 nits when the watch detects it’s exposed to intense lighting. It’s a wonderfully sharp and vibrant display, so there’s nothing to complain about in that regard. My only complaint is the minimum brightness, which still feels a little too bright and distracting at night.

When it comes to straps, OnePlus relies on the tried and tested 22mm lug system. This means that you are not tied to a specific lug mechanism, but can use any standard strap. This is cool because it gives you unlimited options when choosing the strap.

OnePlus Watch 2R: Software and features

The basics, covered

The OnePlus Watch 2R comes with two operating systems – Wear OS and RTOS.

The Wear OS environment is called Smart Mode and it gives you all the regular Wear OS features and functionality. RTOS, on the other hand, is activated when you enable Power Saving Mode. You can download third-party apps, control your Google Home-enabled devices at home, respond to notifications, and talk to the Google Assistant.

In power saving mode, you can only use a handful of features, such as heart rate and SpO2 monitoring, sleep tracking, workouts, alarms and timers, media controls, and basic navigation thanks to the Compass app. At the same time, most third-party apps, fancy watch faces, and SOS calls are unavailable.

Smart mode features 32GB of storage and 2GB of RAM, while in power saving mode the watch can access dedicated 4GB of eMMC storage.

You pair the smartwatch with the OHealth app on your Android phone. It doesn’t have to be a OnePlus device, you can use it with any device with Android 8.0 or higher. iOS is not supported, however. However, OHealth doesn’t provide as much data as Samsung’s own Health app, for example.

The OnePlus Watch 2R features dual-frequency GPS L1+L5. If that sounds familiar, it’s the same GPS found on the Galaxy Watch Ultra and Apple Watch Ultra. It offers improved accuracy in urban areas with tall buildings that might otherwise obstruct the GPS signal. I tested the GPS accuracy during a workout and it’s pretty accurate, all in all pretty much on par with its much more expensive competitors. Great!

Plus, there’s NFC with full Google Wallet support, so you can make quick payments without having your phone nearby, which is always a nice feature.

Training functions

There are probably more than 100 different workouts: from outdoor running and tug-of-war to darts and kite flying, everything is covered. During activity tracking, the OnePlus Watch Ultra 2 shows you your current heart rate, calories burned, activity duration, effort zones and cadence, and allows you to change media controls. The interface is straightforward and easy to navigate.

Sleep tracking

The sleep monitoring on the OnePlus Watch 2R is pretty good. Not only is the watch lightweight and comfortable to wear, but it also offers accurate sleep monitoring with sleep stage tracking that’s consistent with other smartwatches. I wore both this and an Apple Watch Ultra for two consecutive nights and they provided pretty similar data.

The watch has an automatic sleep mode that kicks in once it detects you’ve fallen asleep. From what I can tell, it seems to be pretty accurate to the minute. The smartwatch also detects if you’re taking a nap during the day, if you do take one, which is a great feature.

After sleeping, you can examine your data on the watch. It will break down your sleep and give you an overall sleep score that allows you to compare your daily sleep.

Health characteristics

There is heart rate monitoring and relatively slow SpO2 tracking, but other than that there isn’t much in the way of health monitoring. Heart rate accuracy isn’t ideal either, taking quite a long time to get a reading, sometimes up to 10 seconds.

The results are not very consistent: while the watch is taking a measurement, there is quite a large amplitude between the min and max values, even when you are sitting still and completely still. The heart rate on the Apple Watch is as high as 3-4 beats per minute. Probably neither of them is particularly accurate, but it is worth noting that there is a discrepancy here.

OnePlus Watch 2R – Battery and Charging

This is the battery life

Nowadays, a smartwatch is usually expected to have a solid battery life of one day, or two to a maximum of three days if you opt for one of the super high-end and expensive smartwatches like the Apple Watch Ultra or the Galaxy Watch Ultra.

However, OnePlus once again delivers exceptional battery life with the OnePlus Watch 2R. The smartwatch packs a respectable 500 mAh battery, but what impresses here is the efficiency achieved with the Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 and BES2700BP chips.

In my personal experience and with my specific, relatively low usage, the phone consumes up to 25% per day in Smart mode. This means that I can use the full features of Wear OS, such as custom apps, a flood of notifications and sleep monitoring during the night. So I can easily use the watch for up to 4 days straight, which is great.

Disabling Smart Mode logically limits the overall functionality of the device (fancy watch faces, SOS calls, most apps and tiles are unavailable), but it increases the potential battery life up to 10 days. However, you can still use the basic features: heart rate and SpO2 monitoring, sleep tracking, workouts, alarms and timers, media controls and basic navigation thanks to the Compass app.

While this power saving mode puts the OnePlus Watch 2R on the fine line between a proper smartwatch and a “dumb” smartwatch, it’s a surprisingly viable way to use your smartwatch. The only downside here is that switching back to smart mode requires the entire smartwatch to restart, which isn’t ideal.

As for charging, it takes about an hour to fully charge the device. That’s OK: with such good battery life, any charging time is technically forgivable.

Voice calls and haptics of the OnePlus Watch 2R

You can take and make calls with the OnePlus Watch 2R, but only if the paired phone is within Bluetooth range. Call quality is reasonably OK: you’ll hear and be heard, but don’t expect anything too fancy.

The haptics of the OnePlus Watch 2R are pretty terrible, similar to the regular OnePlus Watch 2. Although you can adjust the vibration intensity, you get vibration feedback that is either too weak or too annoying. The watch lacks the precision and strength of higher-end smartwatches, which is normal to expect, but still worth mentioning.

OnePlus Watch 2R competitors

Starting at $200, the OnePlus Watch 2R is a highly competitive wearable that could well punch above its weight class.

Among the competitors of the OnePlus Watch 2R, we have a wealth of choices.

From the Wear OS camp, the competition is represented by the Galaxy Watch 7, another proper smartwatch with a very good software feature set, a host of health-related features, and a higher-quality build, including a sapphire display and better water resistance (up to 50 meters). The only downsides are the worse battery life and the slightly higher price.

Another alternative is the OnePlus Watch 2. It is essentially the same smartwatch, but slightly higher quality. We would still recommend this OnePlus Watch 2R, which offers a much better price-performance ratio.

Apple gives you plenty of options, like the Apple Watch Series 9 or the Apple Watch Ultra 2. However, both are more expensive, can’t keep up with battery life, and are part of a completely different ecosystem that’s not easy to get into.

Should you buy it?

For $200, this model is definitely worth considering. It’s a pretty decent smartwatch with a very attractive price tag. Most importantly, though, it addresses one of the major issues that most modern smartwatches still suffer from – battery life.

The smartwatch certainly has some issues. In terms of health, it only covers the basics and I would approach it with a grain of salt anyway.

If you’re in the Android ecosystem and don’t want to spend too much on a smartwatch but are still thinking about getting one, the OnePlus Watch 2R could be a worthwhile purchase.