The new watch adds a rotating crown
The $330 OnePlus Smartwatch 3: Powering up the Battery and Playing Catch-Up with a Bit of Catch-up, Not an Android Watch
Battery life has also been improved from 100 hours to 120 hours — or five days with regular use and the always-on display turned off. Turning on the AOD shortens that to roughly three days. That’s fairly typical for all flagship smartwatches these days. You can get 16 days in a power-saving mode. OnePlus says it’s managed to stuff a larger 631mAh battery in the Watch 3 using the same silicon nanostack battery as the OnePlus 13. Since it runs Wear OS 5, that should add some extra battery mileage. I haven’t been testing the watch long enough to definitively comment on battery life just yet, but I always appreciate faster charging. You can get a full day’s worth in about 10 minutes.
Even though fitness trackers and some watches from brands like those from Garmin can last a while, they don’t have access to the plethora of apps and smart functions found on Apple Watches or Wear OS watches. That’s what makes this $330 OnePlus smartwatch exciting.
The watch 3 is not completely different from the watch 2, but it is somewhat similar. The display is slightly larger and brighter at 2,200 nits, but with a slightly smaller screen-to-body ratio that is partly due to a slight design change. The screen is good to look at and the video watchface allows for uploading your own clips. (I, of course, have uploaded one of my cat asking for belly rubs.) The titanium physical bezel is a different material than the Stainless steel one. It gives it a more classic analog look, but otherwise, this isn’t a dramatic change. My biggest complaint is that the watch only comes in a single 47mm size. I have smaller wrists and the gaps in the grip of them are notable. Offering just one size excludes folks with smaller wrists from comfortably using the Watch 3, and that feels like a missed opportunity.
The $329.99 OnePlus Watch 3 is so far an not anAndroid watch that flips the script. It is a story of playing a bit of catch-up instead of pushing boundaries. And you know what? I am fine with that if it means a strong alternatives with a rotating crown that scrolls.
It is disappointing given the new health features. The 60S Health Check-In is the biggest, where you can get a quick Scan of your heart rate, blood oxygen levels, mental wellbeing, wrist temperature, and sleep quality. European users will get EKGs included in Q2 2025. Also new is a vascular health test, which measures your arterial stiffness. Oura introduced this feature last year and is meant to gauge your circulatory system’s overall state. (Mine is “normal.”)
This oversight was forgiven because there is a proper rotating crown. This time, you can use it to scroll through screens, which was a missing aspect from the last watch. There are delightful touches that go along with it, which is comforting for me as I feel that the company has seen the error of its ways and now upholds the covenant that a rotating crown must scroll.
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is a senior reporter focusing on wearables, health tech, and more with 13 years of experience. Before coming to The Verge, she worked for Gizmodo and PC Magazine.
