OnePlus Nord Watch Review – Buy For Looks, Keep For Battery!

The OnePlus Nord Watch comes at a price tag of Rs. 4,999 in India. The smartwatch is available in two colour options: Blue and Black.

The OnePlus Nord Watch packs the following items inside the box:

• Smartwatch
• Silicone band
• Magnetic charging cable
• Red Cable Club member card
• User manual

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Before we talk more about the OnePlus Nord Watch, let’s see what on-paper specs look like:

• Display: 1.78 Inch AMOLED
• Connectivity: Bluetooth v5.0
• Supported OS: Android, iOS
• Battery: 230 mAh
• Weight: 52 grams

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At first look, the OnePlus Nord Watch looks like any other smartwatch in the market but just a bit more premium. It has a shiny metallic body which is really sturdy and made to last, but let me tell you, it’s a big fingerprint magnet.

I had to clean the frame and display both every now and then. The watch comes with 22mm silicone bands that are comfortable to wear for long durations. I wore it continuously for about three days and there was no irritation on the skin. And yes, of course, you can swap it with any other 22mm strap you wish to.

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I have the black colour option with me for the review but it’s also available in blue colour. Both the colour opinions look really good. Yes, it’s a big watch with a rectangular face and rounded corners, so it might look weird if you have skinny hands. But at the same time, you get more area to interact with.

The watch weighs about 52 grams and does feel that you are wearing something solid in your hands but not to a level where it feels uncomfortable.

At the right edge, you will see a crown button which can be used for navigation. The backside has typical health tracking sensors and magnetic pins for charging. It also comes with an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance. So you can easily take it for an outdoor run in the park or road or even use it near a pool.

The OnePlus Nord Watch has a fantastic battery life. Like for real. It comes with a 230 mAh battery and OnePlus claims that it can last for 10 days on a single charge. But does it really last that long? Yes, it does.

I have been using the watch for straight 11 days now and today it finally died. The brightness was set to 50 per cent and 24/7 heart rate monitoring was on. I only used it once for tracking my gym session, so if you like to record your workout every day, you will notice some drop in battery life.

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However, unlike other smartwatches at this price, the OnePlus Nord Watch doesn’t feature any fast charging support. It’s a bit disappointing but not a deal breaker since you are getting an amazing battery life.

You can charge the watch using the bundled magnetic charging cable. It takes less than two hours to fully charge the watch from 0 to 100 per cent.

The first thing you’ll notice about the OnePlus Nord Watch is its big rectangular display. It features a 1.78 Inch AMOLED display with a 60Hz refresh rate and a peak brightness of 500 nits.

The watch gets bright enough for both indoor and outdoor use. I could easily see the notifications and navigate through the UI under direct sunlight. Moreover, the display quality is also good. The colours look vibrant, and the contents on the screen appear clear and crisp.

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Thanks to the big screen, I could read more notifications without scrolling much. The bezels are thin on all sides except for the chin, which is a bit thicker. I would recommend you to use a black watch face as it helps to overlook the bezels.

Talking about the watch face, there are a ton of watch faces to select in the app. We’ll get on it later in the review. You also get the raise-to-wake feature, but it didn’t work on my watch for some reason. Sadly there’s no always-on display mode.

The OnePlus Nord Watch comes with standard health and fitness tracking features. It can track 100+ fitness activities like Indoor Walking, Outdoor Walking, Cycling, Climbing, Hiking, Martial Arts and many more. I’m not much of a fitness freak, so I just used the normal step counter and Free Training mode.

The Free Training mode worked fine while I was working out in the gym.  On the other hand, the step tracking was a bit of a hit or miss. While most of the time it was recording my steps, there were times when I took a walk and it failed to record any steps at all.

I could see the details like Heart Rate and Calories Burnt directly on the watch as well as on the companion app.

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Keeping that aside, the watch also has regular health monitoring features like Heart Rate tracking, SpO2, Stress tracking and Sleep monitoring. All of these worked really well.

The Heart Rate Monitoring and Sleep tracking were especially on point. Sleep tracking gives you information about total sleep, deep sleep, light sleep and time awake duration. Sadly, it doesn’t track any REM duration.

The good thing is that you can see all these details within the watch itself, whereas the companion app gives a more detailed view.

The OnePlus Nord Watch comes with Bluetooth v5.0 connectivity and pairs up pretty quickly with the phone. It can be paired with both Android and iOS devices. You need to download the N Health App on your phone and access more features like changing the Watch Face, Firmware update and more.

The app UI is simple and straightforward. As you open the app, you will see the paired watch, its battery and daily activity information. Using the app, you get access to more than 100 watch faces and trust me, you will definitely like some of them.

You get to see an Apple Watch like menu, which is smooth and vibrant. The watch has tools like a full-fledged calculator, weather information, music control, camera control, stopwatch, calendar and a few more.

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You can see all the notifications of your phone on the watch but there’s no option to reply directly from the watch. Moreover, I can’t really tell if I got a notification since there is no vibration or ringtone. The Nord Watch lacks Bluetooth calling feature, so you can’t make a call from the watch. You only get the option to reject the call.

For some reason, I only got the call notification on the watch when I paired it initially. After the first day of use, this feature vanished as well. My watch was paired, but I was not getting incoming call notifications.