Have you ever boarded your flight, sat down in your seat, and been envious of those in the front of the plane? Well, that’s exactly how I feel about most budget smartwatches. The game has changed thanks to the brand-new OnePlus Nord Watch that has been unleashed upon consumers.
Simply put, the OnePlus Nord Watch is pure elegance on a budget. But is that enough for it to be a hit with consumers? Let’s find out.
Smartwatches are important tools in our lives as they help with our fitness, and sleep by keeping track of them daily. Smartwatches can even reduce our dependency on our smartphones. The smartwatch market is huge as there as models for as low as ₹1,500 and going all the way up to ₹1,00,000 and more.
The moment you unbox the OnePlus Nord Watch, you realise that a lot of thought has gone into the design. The packaging is small, as is the watch. You get the smartwatch, the USB-D charging cable, some reading material and that’s about it.
It’s a square smartwatch, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as any Apple Watch fan will tell you. The strap is textured and can fit all sizes of wrists, as there are many buckle holes included. The smartwatch weighs 52.4g and is very comfortable to wear for long periods. There’s a single button (power button) on the side. The one downside is that the display protrudes a little bit. This means that one has to be careful and avoid any accidental knocks, lest you want many scratches. The smartwatch is IP68-rated for dust and water resistance, which is good.
The OnePlus Nord smartwatch features a 1.78-inch AMOLED display (368x448 resolution) with a 60Hz refresh rate. For me, the screen was plenty bright even under direct sunlight. I have close to zero complaints about the design and the display except for the fact that there is no ambient light sensor, which means the absence of auto-brightness.
In fact, the OnePlus Nord smartwatch might be the fastest and smoothest in the budget category. But that’s where the superlatives stop.
A Budget Smartwatch In Every Which Way
It took me a lot longer to set up the OnePlus Nord smartwatch than I anticipated. I had to download the N Health app, then register with an email ID and thereafter proceed with everything else.
Once you set it up completely, you can play around with all the various watch faces the app provides. Plenty of fun to be had there.
Take the smartwatch out for a run, and you realise where it makes some missteps. The OnePlus Nord smartwatch was always a couple of hundred steps off of my actual count. I was using a Galaxy Watch 5 Pro side-by-side and the OnePlus Nord smartwatch was always off. I manually counted from 0 to 1,000 steps to see it was still off.
Idle Alert is something also that was off as it would beep even when I was walking.
Sleep tracking wasn’t wholly accurate as well. In fact, the OnePlus Nord smartwatch doesn’t identify REM sleep at the moment, but it might with a future software update.
It’s not to say that the OnePlus Nord smartwatch is bad at the step and sleep tracking. It’s actually pretty good for the price segment it fits into. It’s just always a little bit off from the higher-end trackers. If you’re not after the ‘smart’ features and solely want to track steps and sleep, then a Fitbit or something might be a better investment. Even the Xiaomi Smart Band 7 would be a good option.
Furthermore, the OnePlus Nord smartwatch doesn’t make calls, and can’t send messages.
The real-time heart rate monitor was easy to understand and worked as intended. The smartwatch can also measure blood oxygen and stress levels, and produce an overall health summary which was nice to see.
The Battery Life Is The Best Part About The OnePlus Nord Smartwatch
Yes, you read that correctly. The battery life on the OnePlus Nord smartwatch is nothing short of phenomenal.
Under the hood is a 230mAh battery that can last up to 10 days on a full charge according to the company. In my 9 days of testing, I didn’t have to charge the band even once. I had sleep tracking enabled, did plenty of workouts, and call alerts were on and yet I couldn’t kill the battery.
Is The OnePlus Nord Watch A Good Purchase?
The OnePlus Nord Watch joins the likes of Amazfit and Noise with their budget smartwatches and fits right in. The OnePlus Nord Watch has an elegant design, excellent battery life and many sports modes. It’s the app that needs a vast redesign and overhaul to be more useful. The AMOLED display, which is bright and easily readable, is attractive to many consumers.
The OnePlus Nord Watch gets a lot right for the segment but it just isn’t there yet. Maybe the next iteration will fix a lot of the issues plaguing this one. The OnePlus Nord Watch does stand up to the competition but falls a little short of knocking them out.
