Accessories & Gear, Reviews, Tech Essentials, Wearable / Fitness

Oppo Smartwatch Review – A Great WearOS Watch

December 2020

It’s been a while since I’ve checked out a WearOS watch. Oppo came out with one this year that looked promising but looks arent enough. What did I think after a few days with the Oppo WearOS watch? I was pleasantly surprised

Design and Build

While I am not a huge fan of the square watch design, I did like the build of the Oppo watch. I have the 46mm model It had a good weight to it and felt solid. There is no dial here, instead, you have two buttons on the right side. The top button is the home button, while the bottom button is reprogrammable. The left side of the watch houses the speaker. There’s a microphone on the watch as well.

The band was simple and nice. The clasp on the band was a bit annoying to get used to. It wasn’t always simple to get on. Yes, from a distance it does look like an Apple Watch, there’s no mistaking that.
The curved AMOLED display is gorgeous. It’s just pleasing to look at. It gets nice and bright. Oppo sent over the Glossy Gold 46mm model and it’s a beaut. Simply stunning!

Setup and Experience

Setting up is pretty straight forward. You need to download the WearOS app to set up the watch. It guides you through and gives you a tutorial on how to swipe and get access to the apps and features you need.

Overall the build was a bit heavy for me, but it’s the price for a larger display and larger battery. User Experience is good too. The Oppo watch is fluid. It never froze or lagged on me. The watch was also responsive when raising my wrist to see the time. It was smooth and worked nearly every time. WearOS user interface is still pretty clean and simple. You can see what apps are available to use with WearOS when you open the Google Play Store.

There’s a variety of things you can do on the Oppo Watch:

Fitness: Like with most watches, it can work as a fitness tracker. But the Oppo Watch can also be used for swimming. I didn’t try this feature since it’s wintertime and Covid. But there are 5-minute workouts and guided breathing exercises.
There’s another app to use for fitness tracking besides the native health app on WearOS, called HeyTap Health. The app is from Oppo and requires you to sign up to help track your fitness data.
Heartrate Monitor: Along with fitness tracker features you get a built-in heart rate monitor.
Sleep Tracker: Track sleep patterns. This watch is pretty heavy and bulky to sleep with. I tried the sleep tracker for a couple of nights and felt it wasn’t accurate.
Microphone: Rarely do I use Google Assistant when outside, but I gave it a shot with the watch and it worked most of the time. Still feels a little weird.
I use a smartwatch mostly for notifications, controlling music, and looking at the time. Nothing wrong there.

Battery Life

The 46mm version I have has a 430mAh battery. Oppo claims with it’s dual-chip technology, the Oppo Watch can last up to 21 days. I’d say that’s a bit of a stretch. It’s hard to test considering I am not going out as much on a daily basis. But it has lasted a day or a little more than that on days where I have all push notifications on was out of the house for several hours. Very impressive.

The watch takes a bit over an hour to charge so, dropping it on the charger for a few in the morning or even at night before bed is helpful and will have you set for the next day.

Unfortunately, the Oppo smartwatch isn’t available stateside. I think those still in the market for a WearOS watch would love the build and display of the Oppo watch. It’s just gorgeous!

Verdict

The Oppo Watch is great for Android lovers who want a gorgeous-looking smartwatch that’s smooth and sturdy. It checks most of the boxes for style, notifications, and some app usage. It’s not limited to Android but the compatibility with iOS isn’t great yet. It’s been a while since I’ve used WearOS and I enjoyed using it on the Oppo Watch!