OnePlus Watch 3 Review

View offers for the OnePlus Watch 3 here, with a free set of earbuds worth £199

Introduction

The OnePlus Watch 2 was a complete rethinking of the original watch, and it paid off, earning our award for the Best Smartwatch of 2024. Can the new OnePlus Watch 3 replicate that success?

You might imagine it’d be hard for OnePlus to top what it did with the OnePlus Watch 2 and its impressive 100-hour battery life, but the OnePlus Watch 3 is wholly more capable. 

The new OnPlus Watch 3 not only lasts longer at an industry-leading 120 hours in Wear OS mode, but it has better GPS connectivity, way better durability, new sensors and a rotating crown that actually does something. 

All that, for just £319. Is this one of the best smartwatches of 2025? It very well could be. 

Design and Screen

• Larger 1.5-inch AMOLED screen with smaller bezels
• The rotating crown actually works this year
• MIL-STD-810H certification

The OnePlus Watch 3 looks a lot like its predecessor at a glance, but there are a few meaningful changes this year that help elevate the overall look and feel. 

The general look and feel closely matches last year’s OnePlus Watch 2. There’s a combination of a crown in the top-right and a workout button in the bottom right, the return of the striped fluoroelastomer strap and the same 46mm case option. It also sports the same green and black colour options as the original watch, and despite shaving off a few millimetres, it’s similarly chunky. 

That means that, like the OnePlus Watch 2, this isn’t what I’d describe as a unisex watch based on size and colour options – something I hope OnePlus addresses sooner rather than later. 

That said, there are several enhancements that I’ve rather enjoyed over the past week or so. The first and most immediately noticeable, to me at least, was the thinner screen bezels. The OnePlus Watch 2 wasn’t exactly egregious in this regard, but compared to the Watch 3, it looks dated. 

That’s paired with a nice titanium bezel frame borrowed from the Nordic Blue edition of the OnePlus Watch 2, helping give it that traditional wristwatch look. It certainly looks the part, with a nice polished sheen in the light and a slight curve in its shape to fit on the wrist a little nicer. Overall, it feels solid and well-built. 

The stainless steel rotating crown has also had a meaningful upgrade. It was present on last year’s wearable, and you could press and rotate it, but the latter did nothing. This year, it performs as you might expect, with rotations providing an easier way to scroll and zoom while keeping the screen entirely unobstructed.

It might sound like a small change, but I found myself ditching the touchscreen for the crown for most scrolling activities within hours of putting the watch on my wrist. There’s a reason it has been a staple of the Apple Watch since its first generation, and I’m glad OnePlus has finally jumped on the bandwagon. 

You’ll also find a slightly larger 1.5-inch AMOLED screen, thanks to the reduction in screen bezel thickness. It also features the same LPTO AMOLED technology and Q10 emitting material as the flagship OnePlus 13. This allows it to jump from 1-120Hz and offer a peak brightness of 2200nits. 

This not only ensures smooth performance when swiping through interfaces and reading notifications but also a more battery-friendly always-on display. It’s also just as legible in direct sunlight as in the shade, and I had no complaints following routes on Google Maps in London on an oddly sunny day. 

Essentially, it’s sharp, vibrant, and responsive. That makes both Google Play apps and OnePlus’ suite of first-party watch faces look impressive on the wrist. 

The OnePlus Watch 3 retains the same IP68 dust and water resistance and 5ATM certification as the OnePlus Watch 2, along with full MIL-STD-810H certification. Essentially, it can survive in the most extreme conditions. 

OnePlus has tested the watch at up to 95% humidity at 80 degrees Celcius, and it works fine. As part of the MIL-STD certification, it can also survive elements like salt ingress and even rapid pressure changes. 

Other watches offer the same superb protection from the elements, but the likes of the Galaxy Watch Ultra and Garmin Instinct 3 are way more rugged-looking than OnePlus’ sleek option. 

Performance and Software

• Same dual-OS setup as OnePlus Watch 2
• Wear OS 5 software improvements
• Most features work with any smartphone

The OnePlus Watch 2 was a big deal mainly because it offered support for both Wear OS 4 and OnePlus’ own RTOS simultaneously. That trend unsurprisingly continues with the newer Watch 3. 

This time around, however, you’re getting the upgraded Wear OS 5 and all the new features that come with it. That includes a grid-based app tray layout for easier organisation, more face customisation options, and access to all your favourite Android apps and elements like Google Pay on the go. 

The accompanying OnePlus RTOS platform has not changed much, providing more battery-efficient access to most key smartwatch features (sans third-party apps). However, that’s arguably more of a backup for Wear OS than the main OS you’ll be using. 

That’s powered by a dual-chipset system comprised of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon W5 and a low-power BES2800 chipset – the latter of which is an upgrade from last year. And, like with last year’s hardware, the W5 powers the Wear OS experience while the BES2700 chipset handles elements like displaying notifications, the always-on display and other background tasks. 

This is, in part, what allows for phenomenal battery life – but more on that in a bit. 

In general, the Wear OS experience is slick and smooth, no doubt aided by the screen’s adaptive refresh rate and the W5’s power. 

There is a nice range of pre-installed watch faces, from classic to modular. Most are customisable in some way, whether that’s colours, widgets, or even the design of the clock hands. I also appreciate the labelling system when switching between watch faces, which gives you an idea of how much battery it will drain at a glance. 

Of course, you’re also free to download third-party alternatives via Google Play, along with any Wear OS app you like – the key benefit compared to wearables with their own home-brewed operating systems. It’s useful to be able to get directions from Google Maps without taking my phone out. 

Other handy new additions to this year’s software experience include a remote control app that lets you swipe through TikTok videos and YouTube Shorts remotely. If you’ve got a OnePlus phone, it also doubles up as a remote camera shutter.

In fact, that’s the one and only OnePlus phone-exclusive feature on the Watch 3, and that’s something OnePlus should be applauded for. Regardless of whether you install the OHealth companion app on a OnePlus, Samsung or Xiaomi-branded smartphone, you’ll get access to all the same features and functionality. 

The only phone it isn’t compatible with is Apple’s iPhone, but that’s more a limitation of Wear OS 5 than OnePlus’ hardware. 

Still, it’s a refreshing change in a world where wearable manufacturers like Samsung emphasise using their own branded smartphones to access advanced features. 

Health and Sleep Tracking

• New sensors offer improved metric tracking
• 60-second Health Check-In is handy
• Wellness scores can be hit-and-miss

The OnePlus Watch 3 aims to deliver a holistic tracking experience. That means monitoring heart rate, blood oxygen, steps, sleep and even wrist temperature.

The latter is a new addition to this year’s roster, helping both with cycle tracking and general well-being. 

The OnePlus Watch 3 does the job as a general fitness tracker. It displays current metrics in an Apple Watch-esque ring fashion, albeit with four rings focusing on step count, calories burned, active hours, and workouts. Results were generally in line with my Whoop 4, the baseline for most of my fitness tracking. 

That’s thanks in part to improved hardware from this year’s wearable. The layout of sensors on the back of the Watch 3 has been tweaked to improve performance, and new a material covers the heart rate sensor. 

There’s also a new ECG monitor, though due to regulatory issues, it will not be available in the EU until Q2 2025 and in the UK until Q3 2025. 

This year’s fitness-related features include a new 60-second Health Check-In. This essentially checks seven indicators (ECG, vascular health, heart rate, blood oxygen, mental wellness, sleep quality and wrist temperature) and delivers a report to both the watch and companion app. 

While it doesn’t do anything extraordinary with the data to provide actionable insights, it is a quick and easy way to measure various metrics simultaneously. I’d have liked to have seen Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis, like the Galaxy Watch 7, but maybe that will appear on its successor. 

There’s also a redesigned Stress app, now dubbed Wellness. This combines elements like physical activity and HRV to deliver a dynamic wellbeing score that updates every 30 minutes. 

It’s a good idea, but performance is hit-and-miss. In times when I’ve felt relatively relaxed, I’ve seen scores in the low 20s, whereas in times I’ve felt stressed, I’ve had scores in the high 70s. Then again, it’s exceedingly rare for a wearable to accurately measure stress, so I’m not too surprised. 

OnePlus takes sleep tracking particularly seriously. It provides the metrics you’d likely see elsewhere, including overall sleep duration, sleep stages, HRV, and respiratory rate, along with body movement, respiratory rate, and even breathing risk detection. The latter uses your connected phone’s microphone to monitor your snoring throughout the night. 

Like fitness tracking, I’ve found the OnePlus Watch 3 to deliver results similar to the Whoop 4, though OnePlus’ option does overcompensate for total time asleep by around 30-45 minutes. Either way, the additional metrics around snoring – as someone at risk of sleep apnea – are great to have on hand.  

Exercise Tracking

• Support for over 100 exercises
• New metrics for indoor and outdoor runs
• Way better multiband GPS tracking

General health tracking aside, the OnePlus Watch 3 can record over 100 exercises, with what the company calls “11 professional sports modes”. These are modes that provide more insightful metrics than standard time, calorie and HR measurements.

Take the running mode for example; on an outdoor run, you’ll be presented with exercise-specific metrics like cadence, pace and even exercise intensity. 

The latter is new and exclusive to running. It allows the watch to monitor and display fat and carbohydrate consumption based on heart rate zones. It uses this information to advise on the optimal range of exercise intensity to maximise performance without injuring yourself. 

As someone who doesn’t regularly exercise, it’s the kind of metric I respond to. I don’t really care about my pace when I’m not a regular runner; I’d rather know that I’m putting in the optimal amount of effort to boost my health and fitness – and that’s what the new feature offers.

You’ll also get even more information via a post-workout breakdown via the OHealth app, with additional metrics like gait and balance available. This is way more than you’ll get from the running mode on the Apple Watch Series 10 and Samsung Galaxy Watch 7, anyway. 

The big problem that we had with last year’s Watch 2 was GPS accuracy; despite dual-band GPS, we found that the OnePlus Watch 2 was as much as 4km out on one test run. 

Thankfully, the Watch 3 boasts upgraded multi-band GPS to fix this issue. It also has an upgraded design that utilises a circularly polarized antenna to better detect signals from multiple directions. This basically allows it to get a signal and stay locked on, even in cities and other challenging environments. 

That said, I’ve found the Watch 3 to be way more accurate than its predecessor in GPS-monitored walks and runs, with no real deviation on the GPS heatmap and accurate overall lengths compared to my Apple Watch Series 7. 

Battery Life

• Up to 120 hours in Wear OS mode
• Up to 16 days in RTOS mode
• Full charge in around 80 minutes

The OnePlus Watch 2 made waves in the wearable battery life department. It offered a whopping 100 hours of battery life in its full-fat Wear OS mode while switching to RTOS extended life to a whopping 12 days – but the OnePlus Watch 3 lasts even longer.

With a larger 631mAh cell within, the Watch 3 can apparently last a whopping 120 hours in Wear OS mode and 16 days in RTOS mode. I’ve only had the Watch a little over a week so I haven’t been able to test the latter, but the former is pretty much on the money – depending on what you’ve got active, of course.

That said, even when I enabled every optional tracking feature, I managed around four and a half days before needing a recharge. The always-on display takes a toll though, lasting around three days with the tech active. 

In either case, that’s way longer than practically any other Wear OS-enabled watch on the market, with the Galaxy Watch 7 and Pixel Watch 3 lasting a single day. Even the TicWatch Pro 5 and its 80-hour battery life pale in comparison to what OnePlus has done here. 

What’s more, unlike switching to the Apple Watch Series 10’s battery-saving mode, switching to RTOS doesn’t affect the tracking capabilities of the Watch 3 in any way whatsoever. There’s full heart rate tracking, blood oxygen monitoring, use of ECG and multi-band GPS, health and sleep tracking and more. 

This makes RTOS a great alternative to Wear OS when you know you’ll be away from a charger for extended periods of time. 

When that time comes, support for SuperVOOC contact charging means you can get a full day’s use (around 15-20%) in just 10 minutes, though a full charge takes a little longer. My charge speeds have varied with faster charging when plugged into my laptop than a regular USB wall brick, but at its most rapid, it’ll go from flat to full in a little over 80 minutes. 

Should you buy it?

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