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Art et designTranscription
00:00Hey what's up? MKBHD here. Alright, so I had to do it, I had to spend a couple days wearing
00:15both an Apple watch and a OnePlus watch at the same time. It's a tough job but somebody's
00:20got to do it. So I want to start this video with a quote actually. Expectations are the
00:27thief of joy. It's very true. So a lot of people, including myself actually, before
00:32this was announced, when we heard that OnePlus was going to be making a watch, we all thought
00:36oh great, okay, that'll probably be a pretty premium type of thing. Maybe this is like
00:41the Apple watch for Android type of thing that a lot of us have been waiting for for
00:46a long time. So there are other smart watches for Android. There are the Galaxy watches
00:50of the world, there's Moto 360s, there's even rumors of potentially a Pixel watch upcoming.
00:56But as of right now, there is no equal to the Apple watch if you don't have an iPhone.
01:01If you use an Android phone, you won't have the same experience. So now, player four enters
01:06the game. OnePlus is in the picture, right? And hey, while they've been doing the premium
01:10thing a lot lately, they've been wanting to get into that upper echelon, their prices
01:15are going up, so maybe they're going to do the premium Apple watch competitor. Because
01:19hey, never settle, right? But this watch, this watch absolutely does settle. It's actually
01:26all about settling. It's kind of the whole point. It costs less than half of what an
01:31Apple watch series six does. And so if you can settle for a not very premium overall
01:36smart watch that only costs 159 and has a basic feature set and lasts a week and a half,
01:43then that's what you're getting. But it has to be what you want. So 159, that puts it
01:47in the mid-range smart watch category. That's in line with the discounted Galaxy watch three,
01:52which is cheaper than the Moto 360 and even cheaper than the Apple watch SE right now.
01:57But the design is kind of, I'm going to use the word peacocking, meaning it looks just
02:01as high end as all the premium smart watches out right now. It's got a big 1.4 inch OLED
02:07display, 454 by 454 resolution, pretty sharp. And it's housed in this pretty modern, clean
02:13version of the traditional circle watch shape. It's the dark polished stainless steel all
02:18the way around. It shows more fingerprints than straight up aluminum, but it's not bad.
02:22And there's only two buttons. There's no rotating bezel or digital crowns or anything like that.
02:26Just the two buttons on the side, one of which has the only OnePlus logo on the whole watch.
02:31And inside the bezel, there's some nice little concentric rings that only show when it just
02:35hits the light the right way. It's just, the thing is big. Like this is a 46 millimeter
02:41watch. And if you're like me, you've got smaller wrists or you just don't want a huge circle
02:45on your wrist, consider yourself warranted. This is a big watch. But yeah, I mean, aside
02:49from the kind of thick bezels, this is a pretty premium build smartwatch. It's stainless
02:54steel, IP68, pretty high resolution display. It's chunky. Maybe it's a little generic,
03:00but I don't think they've settled on the build of the watch. It's when you start to use the
03:05watch that the settling starts to become more obvious. So let me just say the best part
03:11of using the OnePlus watch is the battery life. 100%, it's the battery life. It's got
03:16a 402 milliamp hour battery, and it lasts at least a solid week of regular use. I'm
03:22not exaggerating at all. It's great. You literally don't have to worry about it for an entire
03:26week of battery. I do know GPS tracked workouts are about the fastest way to burn through
03:30the battery, but this thing is still rated for 25 hours straight of GPS tracked exercise.
03:37So you literally can't kill it in a day. OnePlus says, if you have light use, you can get up
03:42to two weeks. And I don't doubt that even with my fairly heavy use of getting all kinds
03:46of notifications and doing workouts with it, keeping brightness high when outdoors, I went
03:51a week using it every day and I still didn't kill it. One thing you'll notice is it's pretty
03:55snappy with the race to wake, but it's equally super fast to turn off the screen as soon
04:00as possible. Like as soon as it thinks you're not looking at it anymore, screen is off.
04:04And the max screen timeout you can set in the app is only eight seconds. So it's really
04:09not trying to have the screen on for too long when you're not using it. But of course,
04:13that also means there's no always on display, which could be a deal breaker for some people.
04:17And OnePlus did say they're going to add that in a later software update, but we'll see
04:20what that does to the battery life. But when it finally does get to be time to charge,
04:23which I only had to do once at the end of my week of testing, uh, there's these two
04:29pins on the back and then there's a plastic puck with magnets in it that does an impressively
04:33good job of snapping into place, just lining up the pins. And then it charges up to full
04:37within half an hour and you're good to go for another week. So premium build, check.
04:43Nice battery life, check. Using the watch, uh, disappointing in every turn. It's, it's
04:49honestly like surprising how many features it either lacks compared to the competition
04:54or just doesn't do well at all. So the UI through this custom OS is simple. Swipe down
04:59for quick settings and battery, swipe up for notifications, press the top button to go
05:04home and swipe left to go back. And there's some decent controls within the OnePlus health
05:08app, which works on all Android phones. That'll let you change watch faces or change your
05:13step count goal, preload music, simple things like that. But the list of things this watch
05:18doesn't do yet or just straight up can't do at all is pretty long. Okay. So there are
05:23no third party watch faces at all. And the included watch faces have very minimal customization
05:29and almost never any complications. There is no assistant, no NFC payments, no always
05:36on display as of right now, and bizarrely no tap to wake. So I kept trying to tap to
05:41wake this watch because every other watch has tap to wake. This one doesn't. The watch
05:47shows you notifications, but you can't really do anything about them. Like you can't manage
05:51notifications by clearing them individually. And only a handful of apps actually support
05:57any canned replies. There are no third party apps and there are only about 20 pre-installed
06:02ones, which seems like a lot, but that includes apps like the flashlight, which just turned
06:05the screen white, better than nothing, I guess. Or the breathe app, which uses haptics and
06:11a soothing animation to help you breathe deeply, kind of like apples, and then puts that data
06:18nowhere that I could find. And then there's the stress app, which just tells you if it
06:23thinks you're stressed or not. So you're literally opening an app to have it tell you if you're
06:26stressed or not. You can connect headphones and listen to music from the watch, but only
06:32through the OnePlus Music app. So if you go for a run with your watch and you're out
06:35of range of your phone, there's no streaming Spotify through the watch to your headphones.
06:40Only music you have stored locally on the watch through the OnePlus Music app. So then,
06:44like I said, your boy walked around with two watches on, just had to do it to test these
06:49things. And I've been hearing, as I'm testing, I'm reading a lot of articles and seeing videos
06:53of people who are getting off step counts, like the OnePlus watch will count like dramatically
06:59less steps than other smartwatches. So that's something I kept an eye on. And sure enough,
07:05at the end of my testing, I did have less steps counted, not as dramatically less as
07:09some other people, but I did have less steps counted on the OnePlus watch. I had a day
07:13with 4,457 Apple watch steps and the OnePlus watch on the opposite wrist on the same day
07:19counted 3,987 steps. So I'm sure over longer workout periods, that roughly 10% difference
07:25is going to really start to add up. Then the fitness tab in the OnePlus health app, it's
07:30supposed to show a map down here. You can tell because it says Google at the bottom
07:34for Google maps, but it's not showing a map. Sleep tracking data doesn't really sync yet.
07:39There is no parkour mode like there was in the launch video commercial. Apparently that's
07:43coming with a promise software update. So all those negatives, they're settling basically.
07:50But technically all of these things are also comparisons to other smartwatches, like their
07:58expectations. If I'm expecting this watch to behave like other smartwatches, because
08:02it kind of looks like one, then maybe I'd be disappointed. So if all you expect from
08:07this watch, if all you really need is just basics, show you the time, gives you your
08:11notifications and happens to have like a two week battery life and maybe has a couple
08:16extra bonus features, then that's fine. That's what it does. But if you have any other extra
08:22specific needs over that, then there are better options. My overall theory with this watch
08:27is it was rushed, which I don't know why, for some reason, like it's April. It didn't
08:32have to be out now or rushed, but it's missing so many things that could potentially be better
08:38or change the software. And there are already a bunch of software updates either happening
08:43with OnePlus's app or already planned and promised by OnePlus for this watch. Here's
08:49the thing. My golden rule in tech, as you might already know, is never, ever buy a gadget
08:57or a piece of tech based on the promise of future software updates. Like you should buy
09:02it being happy with the way it is now with no updates. And if it happens to get some
09:07updates, then that's a bonus. But yeah, a lot of the stuff about this watch is definitely
09:12just software. So it's running an STM32 processor and it has four gigs of RAM, but that's a
09:18lot for a watch, four gigs of RAM, but yet the performance is still choppy. Maybe that
09:23can be fixed with a software update. You know, that step counting difference, those workout
09:28tracking deficiencies, maybe that can be fixed with a software update, but that's all a big
09:32maybe right now. It's also gotten a software update already that's improved GPS accuracy
09:37and improved notification sync, even though I still have a bug with it. And there's some
09:41other promise software updates that would enable always on display and should add all
09:46110 workout modes so you can finally track those parkour workouts. But again, that's
09:51just promised. Maybe someday there will be an update with third party apps or third party
09:55watch faces, but that's a maybe someday. I wouldn't count on it. So the point is it's
10:00just all very maybe and promised and future. It's just not, it's not what you're buying.
10:06So my job is to show you what you're buying, which is the OnePlus watch. It's a big, basic,
10:15kind of generic smartwatch, but that does its job of a couple of things. Shows you
10:19the time, shows you notifications, lasts a long time on battery. And that's about it.
10:25It's just funny that they've packaged it in like this, such a nice premium body. If
10:31you were looking forward to like a Apple watch for Android type of competitor, that's not
10:36what this is clearly. I am still looking forward to maybe that pixel watch that's coming out.
10:40We've seen the rumors. Maybe that'll be it. But until then, it's all maybe. Lots of maybes
10:46in this video. Let me know what you think. Would you get, would you be down with this
10:49type of settle for a OnePlus watch that just does the basics? Let me know. Either way,
10:55that's been it. Thanks for watching. Catch you guys later. Peace.