Last month, OnePlus introduced the Nord Watch, the company’s first watch in the Nord series, in India. It promises up to 10 days, has an AMOLED screen, 105+ sports modes, SpO2 monitoring, and more. Here is my review after using the most recent OnePlus smartwatch for a month.
Design:
The watch has a square design that is similar to that of most watches. The 1.78-inch screen is surrounded by bezels. It has dimensions of 45.2 x 37.2 x 10.4 mm and a strap weight of 52.4 grams, which may appear to be more, but it is still comfortable to wear.
Despite the absence of Bluetooth calling, the smartwatch has an IP68 water resistance but no 5ATM water resistance. Accelerometer, SpO2 sensor, and 24-hour heart rate monitor are included. It connects to Android and iOS devices via Bluetooth 5.2.
When it comes to the strap, it has a stainless steel buckle and a lightweight 22mm interchangeable strap made of skin-friendly material. The strap is of high quality.
The smartwatch has a plastic and zinc alloy case. On the right side, there is a button that lets you go back and open the menu. As can be seen in the image, the case’s glossy finish makes it susceptible to fingerprints. I did not, however, notice any scuffs.
When you use it to measure heart rate and blood oxygen, you can see the heart rate and SpO2 sensors on the back, which have glowing green and red LED lights.
Display:
The Nord Watch has a display that is comparable to and has a large 1.78-inch (368 x 448 pixels) 326 PPI AMOLED touch screen with 2.5D scratch-resistant glass. the realme Watch 3 Pro. To save power, you can set it to turn on when you raise your hand and then turn off after a few seconds. There is no option for an always-on display, despite the AMOLED screen.
Due to its brightness of up to 500 nits, outdoor visibility is excellent. Swiping up from the top or by going to Settings>Display>Brightness lets you change the brightness. The screen timeout can be increased to 30 minutes and the brightness can be adjusted using a slider rather than a percentage or value, but there is no auto adjustment of brightness due to the absence of an ambient light sensor. For inside, medium is great, and you want to set it to high for brilliant outside.
The quick settings are visible when you swipe from the top. The flashlight, DND, Theater mode, screen timeout settings, Calendar, Raise to wake toggle, “Find my phone,” brightness adjustment, and settings are all included in this. It has a decent screen-to-body ratio of 70.7%. The Nord Watch‘s screen is outstanding in general.
When the function button is pressed, the watch face, activity, heart rate, sleep, SpO2, one-tap measurement (which takes two minutes to measure stress, heart rate, and SpO2), workout records, stress, weather, information, breath, women’s health, calendar, calculator, timer, alarm, pomodoro timer, camera control, and settings are displayed.
By swiping to the right, activity, heart rate, stress, SpO2, and sleep are displayed. When you swipe from the bottom of the home screen, a simple notification shade appears. You can read them and ignore them, but you can’t respond.
Software:
Similar to the OnePlus Watch, the OnePlus Nord Watch employs a proprietary operating system based on RTOS. On both Android and iPhone, it uses the companion app for OnePlus N Health. In the Home tab, it displays all relevant information. The “Me” tab allows you to personalize the watch, and there is an exercise tab for workouts.
You can watch faces from the face gallery within the settings. According to the company, there are more than 100 online customizable Watch Faces.
Call alerts, preferred app notifications, health reminders like 24-hour HR monitoring and Night SpO2 Sedentary reminders are all available in the settings option. It offers the option of synchronizing your data with Google Fit, but for me, that didn’t work.
Monitoring of fitness and sleep:
There are more than 105 workout modes available on the Nord Watch, the most popular of which are outdoor walking, indoor walking, outdoor running, indoor running, outdoor cycling, climbing, hiking, trail running, elliptical machine, machine rowing, free training, and other workouts. Ball sports, dance sports, combat sports, and other sports with multiple subcategories are available under the More Activities option.
You get all the details, including distance, calories burned, average heart rate, average pace, and duration, for outdoor activities. Heart rate zones for outdoor activities like running can also be seen. You’ll need to connect it to your phone and use the N Health app to get GPS data for outdoor activities because there is no built-in GPS. The GPS lock takes some time, but when compared to Strava running on a mobile device, it is accurate. The workout data can be shared as an image.
Sleep tracking displays awake time as well as light and deep sleep. The tracking is accurate and good. A sleep score is also calculated based on how well you slept.
SpO2 and heart rate monitoring:
The smartwatch uses photodiodes and LED lights to briefly illuminate the blood vessels. It also monitors the heart rate by observing the variation in the amount of green light absorbed, and it uses red light to monitor SpO2, or blood oxygen, levels. You can’t guarantee this to be 100% correct. SpO2 readings and resting heart rate recordings are comparable to those from an oximeter. I was unable to locate any data for the watch’s stress monitoring, which includes an all-day monitoring option.
Battery capacity:
The Watch has a 230mAh battery, and the company says that it can last up to 30 days on standby and 10 days on typical use. With heart rate monitoring throughout the day and night and 24-hour heart rate tracking enabled, I was able to use the device for about a week during my month of use. Battery duration could change relying upon successive utilization of the presentation with expanded brilliance, utilization of the pulse screen during exercises, and every one of the notices turned on.
It has a magnetic charging dock, so you can use it in low-power mode or plug it into a USB port on a PC or laptop. The watch needs about two hours to fully charge from 0%. Since charging time lasts for a week, it doesn’t matter.
Verdict:
A decent smartwatch with an AMOLED display that does everything right is the OnePlus Nord. I wish it had Bluetooth calling and GPS support. Despite having a good build quality, it does not meet the 5ATM water resistance rating.
The price of the OnePlus Nord Watch is Rs. 4999, and it is available on Amazon.in and OnePlus.in. There are R. Amazon offers a 499 discount on select cards.
