My Honest Opinion - The OnePlus Watch By Code the Things

So, this probably isn't the first review that you have seen about the OnePlus watch and, while honestly, it takes some time to vet out a wearable, and I don't have early access to any hardware. So it took me a week of wearing it trying it out- and I wanted to give my honest opinion about the current state of the OnePlus watch, plus where I see OnePlus is taking wearable devices. So let's check it out. So for starters, the box for the watch starts with a wonderful peel that has a nice tab that you can pull and easily take off the plastic film. But I will say that the box is oversized, and I get it. They wanted to showcase the watch, but really they've just wasted materials and I feel, like they've, increased their cost, while just increasing waste worldwide, so neat.

But why now inside the box? You get the device, of course, and you get the little puck to do the wireless charging. You don't get the wall wart, and you don't get the typical red, cabling or braided cabling that you see from OnePlus devices, and this seemed like more of an afterthought to quick, throw in the box or a rebranding of a different company than it was actually specifically made for an OnePlus device. Now they do advertise 20 minutes charge time, which I feel is more to do with how they lay out the batteries inside the watch just like on their phones. They do two batteries, so that might be the benefit on why this charge is so fast compared to anything else and not necessarily the charge cable, because the phones they require a special wall, wart to actually hit the warp charge, speeds and well again, this didn't come with a Walmart. Now, as for the body of this device, it is all stainless steel, and it is very, very light the rubberized band, I like the texture overall if it was going to be an athletic band, but it does take a little to actually learn or get the feel for connecting it, because you want to just hit the little knob, and then it tucks in and under which is a little of a unique approach to watch bands.

In my opinion, the watch itself, of course features heart rate sensor and an oxygen sensor, which many have said is inaccurate. I will be honest. I couldn't actually get it to function, so that might be a problem with the watch itself or what I'll go into, which is the watches app on the phone. So the watch itself doesn't actually feature android wear to the relief of quite a few. Just because Google has pretty much neglected their wearable department, uh like they do with most things they think of an idea, and then they push it off to the side time to move on to the next.

What I thought was OnePlus was going to give their own branch to wear and add some improvements. Instead, they built their own operating system on it, which is truly to the detriment of the watch. Now, like most things, v1 they're, truly in a broken state, just because they're trying out something brand new and usually the v2, makes it better, but the fact that they broke from being able to use the play store means that you can't install some typical apps. You would on a wear watch, and you are truly stuck with what comes on this, which is very, very little in fact, to expand on that. If you receive a text typically with a smartwatch, you can do some sort of quick reply or bring up the keyboard or do some voice to reply to it, and this does by the way, have a microphone in it because it can do calls and answer calls.

But you can't reply to text messages. Besides a quick reply, there's no messaging app that you can download, so you can't get your own. It is just basically, I can read the text coming in huzzah and that's not of really any benefit if you were not near your phone or anything else. Additionally, it comes with GPS inside it, which I could never get to accurately work, and you can't install any other third-party apps like strata or something else. If you are, you know going on a run riding your bike, you're solely bound to what this watch comes with, which is all OnePlus gear and their tracking abilities and hoping it syncs to, or can share that data with the third party, app that you prefer for those workout sessions of whatever it may be, taking a look at the app it's very lightweight and what it shows you and, as you can see, I had just incredible amounts of sync issues.

Wearing this watch nearly around the clock, I only had a few times my heart rate actually sink back. My oxygen levels, never sink back. GPS doesn't seem to actually function and just shows a black screen. Almost every single time. I open it and the settings options are very limited on the phone itself on what you can configure on the watch in some of these settings.

I would actually think would be on the watch settings typical to android wear, but they are not also the app it can only record if it stays open at all times, so they recommend that you lock it in the background. It needs your location at all times. It is a massive battery drain and the fact that the app needs to be open and can't run some background services is very concerning because it doesn't seem to truly function with any sort of android-esque environment. In fact, that's why it doesn't even work with iOS, because their app is just that amateur. So what does that mean? Well, if you can see past all the flaws of the software and think that things will be fixed later on with patching uh kudos to you, but at 159 dollars, it teeters the line of expensive workout watch and high-end smartwatch, and really it doesn't seem to have the smartwatch functionality that you would come to expect now.

Fitness wise, if you think that the software updates will truly improve life and come in the near future, which OnePlus is pretty good at patching their phones. You do have some nice things around the watch. I mean it's ip68 water resistant again. The band is waterproof and very comfortable, albeit weird, to put on uh. It should have GPS working, so maybe faulty product.

Maybe it's a firmware update that they have to do, and that could be great now, with the lack of apps on there. You do have to transfer any music you want. If you want to go running without your phone on the four gigs of storage, it does have one gig of ram, so it's snappy enough to do any of the tasks that you feel like it needs to, especially without running wear. It feels a lot more lightweight, but again with that lightweight came a cost. Now, as for battery life, it's touted to have a two-week battery life, which would be fantastic for anybody concerned around fitness or monitoring like their heart rate, or anything like that during the evenings- and I haven't charged this yet, and I'm sitting at 52 batteries, so not bad living up to what they say and when it is empty.

It charges within 20 minutes, which is pretty phenomenal if that truly holds up throughout the lifespan, we'll see how the batteries degrade over time. Part of why I think the battery's lasting so well is because the syncing with the app is broken, the heart rate, the oxygen levels. There is no always on display, so in a moment there it is off and that kind of defeats the purpose of a watch. You would even want some sort of you know, motion of looking at your watch maybe turn on. That's not there, there's no tap to wake, so you have to hit the button, and that is obviously saving battery, but it is making the functionality of a watch defeated at that point.

So my final verdict, I'm going to send the OnePlus back and this wasn't a buy, try and send back. I really wanted to love this device. The price point was perfect. I knew it wasn't going to be a classy watch, even though I could change the bands with the quick disconnects to a standard size, maybe class it up a little. I wanted this to be my workout athletic watch that don't really have to take off a lot, and then I'll use my fossil watch for the kind of dress uptime and the fossil is, I mean it's too heavy the buttons protrude to do athletic stuff.

It was going to be perfect. However, this is just too flawed, and I think I'm going to have to stick with what I have over here is my Huawei classic two, it's a little heavier surprisingly than the OnePlus, even though the OnePlus is a larger nicer screen. So that's pretty awesome, but it's just more functional and that's saying more functional wearing or running android wear, which is your know, just an oxymoron in itself. It's just. It's been crippled without the play, store or significant third-party application support the sensors on it isn't working for what I would want it to do, which is the heart rate and up, and ideally the oxygen um, and even the GPS for folks who go untethered from their phone and well it's just it's a good attempt at v1, but really no one should buy this.

At least at this price point sub 100 bucks, okay, I'm in 159! Now you can get buy better with things like some Fitbit trackers or some of the upcoming watches that we think are going to be announced like the pixel watch, so stay tuned for that when or if that ever does come out. Well, as always, I'm Chris from code, the things appreciate you watching be sure to click like or subscribe, so you don't miss out on any future videos I'll have part two of my arcade build as well as a couple other fun projects, I'm about done, editing to get out on YouTube. So until next time I'm Ron burgundy, you.

Source : Code the Things