OnePlus launched the Nord Watch, the company’s first Nord series watch in India, last month. It has an AMOLED screen, 105+ sports modes, SpO2 monitoring and promises up to 10 days. I have been using the latest smartwatch from OnePlus for a month now, and here is the review.
Box Contents
- OnePlus Nord Watch in Deep Blue colour
- Charging dock
- User manual
Design and Build
The watch has the square design that is similar to most watches, and there are bezels around the 1.78-inch large screen. It measures 45.2 × 37.2 ×10.4mm and weighs 52.4 grams with the strap, which might look more, but it is just fine when wearing.
The smartwatch has IP68 water resistance, and there is no 5ATM water resistance, even though there is no Bluetooth calling. There is Accelerometer, 24h Heart Rate Monitor and SpO2 Sensor. It uses Bluetooth 5.2 to connect to Android and iOS devices.
Coming to the strap, it has a lightweight 22mm interchangeable strap that is made of skin-friendly material, and has a stainless steel buckle. The quality of the strap is good.
The smartwatch has a case made of zinc alloy and plastic, and a button on the right side that lets you open the menu and also go back. Since the case has a glossy finish, it is prone to fingerprints, as you can see in the image. However, I didn’t notice any scratches.
On the back, you can see the heart rate and SpO2 sensors that have glowing green and red LED lights when you are using it to measure heart rate and blood oxygen.
Display and features
Coming to the display, the Nord Watch has a large 1.78-inch (368 x 448 pixels) 326 PPI AMOLED touch screen with 2.5D scratch resistant glass that is similar to the realme Watch 3 Pro. You can set it to turn on when you lift your hand, and the screen turns off in a few seconds to save power. Even though there is an AMOLED screen, there is no always on display option.
Outdoor visibility is good since it has up to 500 nits brightness. You can adjust the brightness by swiping to from the top or from Settings→Display →Brightness. There is an adjustment slider for brightness control instead of percentage or value, and increase the screen time out till 30 minutes, but there is no auto brightness adjustment since it lacks an ambient light sensor. For indoors, medium is good, and you need to set it to high for bright outdoors.
When you swipe from the top, you can see quick settings. This has flashlight, DND, Theatre mode, screen timeout settings, Calendar, Raise to wake toggle, ‘Find my phone’, Brightness adjustment, and settings. It has 70.7% screen-to-body ratio, which is decent. Overall, the Nord Watch has a brilliant screen.
Pressing the function button, shows watch face, Activity, heart rate, sleep, SpO2, One-tap measurement (Takes 2 minutes to measure heart rate, SpO2 and stress at once), Workout, Workout records, Stress, Weather, Info, Breathe, Women’s health, Calendar, Calculator, Timer, Alarm, Pomodoro timer, camera control and settings.
Swiping to the right shows activity data, heart rate data, stress, SpO2, and sleep. There is also an easy notification shade when you swipe from the bottom on the home screen. You can read them and dismiss, but can’t reply.
Software
The OnePlus Nord Watch uses a proprietary OS based on RTOS, similar to the OnePlus Watch. It uses OnePlus N Health companion app on Android and iPhone. It shows all the important details in the Home tab. There is an exercise tab for workouts and the ‘Me’ tab lets you customize the watch.
Inside the settings, you can watch faces from the face gallery. The company says that there are 100+ online customizable Watch Faces.
The settings option also lets you select call alerts, notifications from the preferred apps, health reminders such as 24-hour HR monitoring, Night SpO2 Sedentary reminder and more. It has an option to sync your data to Google Fit, but it didn’t work for me.
Fitness and Sleep tracking
The Nord Watch has 105+ workout modes, with the main workouts being, outdoor walking, indoor walking, outdoor running, indoor running, outdoor cycling, climbing, hiking, trail running, elliptical machine, machine rowing, free training, and more. ‘More activities’ option has ball sports, dance, combat sports, and other sports with several sub categories.
For outdoor activities, you get all the details such as distance, calories burnt, average heart rate, average pace, and duration. You can also see heart rate zones for outdoor activities such as running. Since there is no built-in GPS, you need to connect it to the phone and use the N Health app to get the GPS data for outdoor activities. It takes some time for the GPS lock, but it is accurate when compared to Strava running on mobile. You can share the workout data as an image.
Sleep tracking shows light and deep sleep and awake time. Tracking is good and accurate. You also get a sleep score based on the sleep quality.
Heart rate and SpO2 monitoring
The smartwatch uses LED lights and photo-diodes to illuminate the blood vessel for a while and monitors the heart rate via the change of green light absorbed, and it uses red light for SpO2 or blood oxygen monitoring. You can’t say this is 100% accurate. Heart rate recordings — both resting and active, and SpO2 readings are decent compared to oximeter. There is stress monitoring, including an all-day monitoring option in the watch, but I couldn’t find any data for it in the app.
Battery life
The Watch has a 230mAh battery, and the company promises up to 10 days of battery life with typical use and 30 days of standby. During my use for the month, I got about of week of battery life with 24h heart rate tracking, and night blood oxygen level monitoring enabled. Battery life might vary depending on frequent use of the display with increased brightness, use of the heart rate monitor during workouts, and all the notifications turned on.
It has a magnetic charging dock that you can even plug it in a USB port of a PC or a laptop or use power bank in low-power mode. It takes about 2 hours to charge the watch fully from 0%. Charging time doesn’t matter since it lasts for a week.
Conclusion
The OnePlus Nord watch is a decent smartwatch with an AMOLED display that gets all the basics right. Wish it had GPS support and Bluetooth calling capabilities. The build quality is good, but it misses 5ATM water resistance ratings.
The OnePlus Nord Watch is priced at Rs. 4999 and is available from OnePlus.in and on Amazon.in. There is Rs. 499 discount with select cards on Amazon.