Oppo Watch – One Of The Better WearOS Wearables To Buy In 2020

Now wearables have come a long way, from the LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live days. Android for wearables is now known as WearOS and the smartphone maker Oppo has recently marked their entry into the wearables market with the Oppo Watch. Oppo Watch takes a lot of inspiration from the best in the business – The Apple Watch. But it can not be discounted as a clone, The Oppo Smart Watch actually shines bright in the Android Smart Watches space.

My first android smartwatch was the LG G Watch – W100, a post that I have owned multiple smartwatches from Samsung’s to Huawei to Apple. So when Oppo sent me their Smart Watch, i was looking forward to experiencing their take on the wearables with WearOS.  Let's start with the packaging and the box contents

Unboxing

Well, like I said before the Oppo Watch is inspired by the Apple Watch design, the same holds true for the box as well. The box looks identical to an Apple Watch Series 5, opening the box you are greeted by the watch which distinctly premium and not like a cheap knock-off. Keeping the watch aside, you also get the charging dock along with user manuals and warranty literature.

Design

The design upfront looks like an Apple Watch but look carefully and there are subtle design elements that stand out like the curved screen in the 46mm variant that we got. The curved screen apart from being immersive gives a distinct premium feel to the watch. The OLED display is bright and punchy and comes with an Always-on display. The back is ceramic and features multiple sensors heart rate monitoring and pins for charging. The Straps are silicone, 22mm in size, and can be easily replaced, Amazon already has multi-color straps available for as low as Rs.500.  The left Side of the watch has two speaker grills, one would be a mic and one a speaker unit, while the right side of the watch house two buttons. The button at the bottom works as a power button on the long-press while the short press leads you to the workout menu. The button on the top leads to u the notifications and app shortcuts.

Performance

Now the Oppo Watch has the looks, but does it have the performance to go with the dashing looks? Well for starters It comes with Snapdragon Wear 3100 with 1GB of Ram, 8Gb of internal storage, and 430mAh of battery. Although the latest 4100 chipsets would have been awesome, this configuration is perfectly fine. The 1.91 inch AMOLED display with 402 x 476 pixels is powered by the Adreno 304 GPU. The Oppo watch also comes with multiple sensors - Accelerometer, gyro, heart rate, compass, barometer along with inbuilt GPS and Bluetooth 4.2 LE. Bluetooth 5.0 would have been nice here since most of the Oppo Smartphones today come with Bluetooth 5.0 anyway.

Performance overall has been very snappy and I didn’t find any lags what-so-over. The Oppo Watch boots up in under 30 seconds and connects to your paired Android device immediately. I have used the Oppo watch with Oppo F17Pro, Oneplus Nord, 8T, and Samsung S10plus & S20FE without facing any connection issue at all.

Watch Faces

Lately, we have been seeing a lot of round smartwatches and that has lead to a lot of watch faces being designed for circular displays. Round, Circular screens are good to have but a rectangular display can show more content and in a better way. If you are not able to find watch faces on the internet, fret not because Oppo has loaded the Oppo watch with many interesting watch faces. And if that’s not enough you could use Facer or Watchmaker apps on the play store to design your own watch faces.

Usage

While using the Oppo Watch with the Always On Display, I found a lot of people asking me if this was the latest Apple Watch Series 6. Apart from being cool, the AOD is really helpful and most of the built-in watch faces support AOD. With no gym action due to the COVID pandemic, I primarily used the watch for walking and running and the watch did not disappoint with accurate step and calorie counting. The app tray opens with a fluid springy animation which looks cool. The watch has been really smooth in operation and being water-resistant up to 5ATM meant sweaty workout sessions was no problem with the Oppo Watch. In Normal day to day usage, the vibration motor felt strong enough while the speaker on the watch was loud enough to be heard in crowded areas. It’s not the same as an Apple Watch but it's strong enough. I could also take calls directly through the Oppo Watch, albeit only when the watch is connected to the phone. I tried this once or twice to test the feature, apart from feeling like 007 speaking to his watch, the caller's voice was good and I could be heard clearly on the other side as well. The watch also alerts you if your heart rate goes above a certain level, and displays a message asking you to take a rest and calm down. For people working out from home or without a trainer, the oppo watch can display exercise videos and help you in workouts.

Battery and Charging

The Battery life here is amazing even with the 28nm SoC, with moderate usage the last easily lasted two days and while testing the watch with multiple heart rate readings and workout sessions I always ended the day with 30% and above battery life. With Oppo’s proprietary VOOC fast charging support, the Oppo watch took about an hour to charge from 0-100. Battery top-ups, when you have forgotten to charge are super quick as well. If you switch to power saving mode, The second SoC - Ambiq Micro (energy-efficient) Apollo3 SoC kicks in and can run the smartwatch with a full charge for a good 21 days with only time, heart rate sensor, and step counter working. Overall I’m very impressed with the battery life.

Oppo Watch With Apple Watch 

Dislikes

Mechanical interfaces – The Oppo Watch lacks a rotating crown or dial which makes scrolling through messages or content a touchscreen affair, this becomes a problem if you do get a lot of messages and emails. No E-Sim, 4G LTE support means the watch can never be an independent device.

Oppo Watch With Apple Watch

Should you buy it?

Oppo Watch has a lot of going for it, the Curved AMOLED screen is really amazing to look at with bright and punchy colors, the Always-on display, the battery life with super-fast charging is good too. The watch also feels very premium. The Oppo Watch priced at Rs 19,990 makes a solid case for itself for android users, meanwhile for android users who want traditional round face watches there is the Fossil Gen 5.