With a battery that lasts days and a functional crown for navigating Wear OS, this beautiful watch is one of the best of the bunch.
The OnePlus Watch 3 is here, and I decided to take it on a different kind of review – a snowboard trip to the mountains of Colorado! I wanted to see how it held up against the elements, how well it tracked my fitness and sleep, and whether it could truly last through days of intense activity. After six days of snowboarding, hot springs, and mountain living, here's my unique take on OnePlus's latest wearable.
Pros:
Cons:
First, let's talk battery life, a standout feature on last year's model that has seen even more gains this time. OnePlus touts a five-day battery, but I was skeptical considering all the tracking I planned on doing. After pulling the watch off the charger near the start of my trip, with constant fitness and sleep tracking, I got a solid 3.5 days, or around 84 hours on a single charge. On my second full charge, with the always-on display now activated, I managed about 2.5 days, or 62 hours. This is still great, considering my heavy reliance on its tracking features.
To give you some context, this wasn't just casual wear. I was snowboarding all day, tracking almost every run, monitoring my heart rate, and even using it to track my sleep at night. The only major omission was on the last day on the mountain, when I discovered that the watch had inadvertently deactivated tracking earlier in the afternoon. I'm uncertain what happened to cause the deactivation, but the OnePlus Watch 3 would have lasted a bit less if that had not happened.
As for charging, OnePlus once again includes the familiar square magnetic puck from last year's model with no changes to the hardware. Charging was incredibly fast, going from 0% to full in 36 minutes.
The fitness tracking on this watch is impressive, and I say this as someone who typically shies away from the inconvenience of tracking my fitness data. The watch itself does a good job of showing basic stats. I was particularly impressed by the level of detail you get when you sync the watch with the OHealth app. One of my favorite features was the day replay, which uses GPS data along with a constant stream of up to the minute sensor data to recreate your entire day on the mountain. You can see your location, track your stats for each run, customize it to show the stats you care most about, and essentially relive your day.
You also get the traditional workout summaries, heart rate zone analysis, real-time speed data, and elevation tracking. I did notice one weird speed blip that seemed like a glitch, but overall, the data was seemingly accurate and insightful.
While the OnePlus Watch 3 provides a ton of data – sleep duration, deep sleep, light sleep, REM sleep, and awake time – it didn't always align with how I felt after a night's sleep. For example, one night I woke up multiple times, but the watch only registered six minutes of awake time. While I wore the watch to bed every night, I grew to mistrust my sleep results when things didn't match up with my sleep experience.
Ultimately, I'm not a huge fan of wearing a big watch to bed in the first place. To that end, the OnePlus Watch 3 is a pretty large and heavy time piece that weighs itself down during sleep, making this one of the few aspects of the watch that I can't wholeheartedly recommend.
Durability was a major concern for me, especially on the slopes. But the OnePlus Watch 3 held up like a champ. I got it wet, subjected it to freezing temperatures, and even banged it against the chairlift a few times. The sapphire crystal display is as pristine as when I pulled it out of the box. The titanium bezel didn't pick up a single scratch either. I have the utmost faith in the OnePlus Watch 3's long term durability.
Last year's model had one big oversight in its non-functioning digital crown. Thankfully, the OnePlus Watch 3 corrects that oversight with a tapered design that makes interacting with Wear OS incredibly satisfying, especially in the cold. With gloves on, touchscreens can be a nightmare. But with the digital crown, I could easily navigate the watch, scroll through tracking data, and access incoming notifications as needed. It made all the difference on the mountain.
I did notice that the crown would occasionally bump into my glove, causing the screen to wake up unintentionally. This undoubtedly impacted battery life, though I could not estimate by how much.
Unfortunately, the Google Assistant was a major disappointment. I tried using it on the mountain, but it just wouldn't work. It would get stuck recording my voice and then give me an error message. Eventually, I had to disable it to save battery life.
After six days of snowboarding and intense testing, I'm incredibly impressed by the OnePlus Watch 3 and consider it my favorite Google Wear OS watch on the market. The incomparable battery life, comprehensive fitness tracking, durable design, and the amazing digital crown demonstrate how OnePlus took its winning formula from last year's wearable and fixed its shortcomings to make this watch an undeniable contender.
Overall, the OnePlus Watch 3 offers a fantastic experience, especially for active people who spend time outdoors. At $329, it's a fantastic value and well worth strapping to your wrist in a snowstorm.
With a battery that lasts days and a functional crown for navigating Wear OS, this beautiful watch is one of the best of the bunch. Let's just hope your wrists are large enough to wear it!
