You guys might find it hard to argue with the fact that the Apple Watch is the most powerful smartwatch ever made. But this may require a prerequisite that you are using an iPhone. Obviously, Apple is not bothering to make an effort to win over Android phone users. So do Android users have a similar option to the Apple Watch?
We’ve reviewed quite a lot of Smartwatches that support Android well, such as the Amazfit series and the Huawei Watch series. The Huawei Watch is especially impressive and we also believe that the latest HUAWEI Watches is probably the best choice for Android users. But when the OPPO Watch 3 series got released, we wondered if things had changed.
So today, let’s check whether the OPPO Watch 3 Pro is the most powerful smartwatch to go with an Android phone.
Design
The OPPO Watch 3 Pro has undergone a significant change in its appearance. Most notably, the Watch has a curved-top design that visually fits the curvature of the human wrist. But if you look closer, you will also notice that the bottom in contact with the skin doesn’t have a similar curved design.
Combined with the curved design of the top, the whole watch looks a bit bulky from the side. But from the front when we use it normally, it looks pretty refined and smooth. At the same time, the curved design also makes the watch look sportier and more stylish. On both sides of the dial, the watch comes with a speaker and a microphone for voice commands, playing music, and making phone calls.
The rectangular display is bright and legible, which gives the watch an advantage over round dials in showing text content. In addition to touch input, the smooth-scrolling digital crown allows users to zoom in and out, and scroll content with good precision.
Display
The curved LTPO display supports adaptive refresh rates, which can reach a minimum refresh rate of 1Hz. It’s a great feature for smartwatches but unfortunately, most new smartwatches do not yet support this feature. It can significantly extend the watch’s battery life with less power consumption for daily use. This is especially true for sports tracking. Thanks to the low-power LTPO display, the Watch also allows users to work out with the Always-on feature. And the 1.91-inch AMOLED display has a peak brightness of 1000 nits. So even under the bright sun, the display content can still be seen clearly.
Snapdragon W5 & Apollo 4 Plus
Battery life is probably the biggest headache for a full-function smartwatch. Well, the OPPO Watch 3 Pro offers pretty good solutions to this issue in both software and hardware departments, at least on paper. The watch adopts a dual-chip design for hardware, one of which is the latest 4nm Qualcomm wearable chip, the Snapdragon W5. It is ideal for high-load smart scenarios and brings a much smoother software experience than its predecessor, along with 40% lower power consumption as claimed. In addition, it also features another small core chip called Apollo 4 Plus to achieve low-power consumption for all-day standby.
Software
For software, there’s a Power-saver mode that can be fast activated by long-pressing the crown. In this mode, you will not be able to install and use third-party apps, and only limited features are available here. For example, there are only several sports tracking modes available in this mode with no AOD. The function menu can only be listed without any animation. And the experience will not be as smooth as in the Smart mode. However, you will significantly extend the battery life from 3 or 4 days to about 2 weeks. So under the Power-saver mode, it works almost the same as a smart band product.
Like the HUAWEI Watch we reviewed before, the OPPO Watch 3 Pro also supports multiple health tracking features, such as Blood oxygen, stress, heart rate, sleep, and step monitor. You can see the ECG app here and probably you’ve also noticed that we didn’t tell you anything about the touch button down below the crown on the side, which actually is an electrode for ECG detection. However, by far the ECG feature is not available yet, so there is nothing you can do with the ECG app, and for now, the electrode doesn’t have any other functions. (P.S. It seems that OPPO has recently pushed the ECG feature, but we’re not sure if it will work in non-Chinese regions.)
It’s almost the same experience as other smartwatches when it comes to these health tracking. But compared to the latest HUAWEI Watches, there’s no skin temperature detection.
As for sports tracking, there are over 100 tracking modes for options. On the OPPO Watch 3 Pro, it’s great to find my favorite basketball and soccer modes, which are still not available on HUAWEI watches. Apart from a few exercises like running and walking, it can only record limited data like exercise time, heart rate, and calories burned.
The companion app of the watch is called HeyTap Health, which is available for all Android phones. The app looks good but I still prefer the Huawei health app, which has a better breakdown and summary of data, and you can also get more life and exercise tips in the app and more training courses with Huawei’s wearables.
The OPPO Watch 3 Pro is undoubtedly the most versatile Android smartwatch on paper. It supports NFC, third-party app installation, voice assistant, and E-sim functions for independent calls. But some of these features only work well in China. For example, some third-party apps are only available in Chinese; the voice assistant couldn’t recognize languages other than Chinese, and the e-sim features only support Chinese carriers.
So if you are concerned about these features, I suggest you wait until the watch gets released in your region or globally. Then I believe OPPO will fix all these regional adaptation issues.
Or you can check out the latest Huawei watches we’ve reviewed. All of them actually got released globally, and they’ve done a better job of customizing features to different regions.
However, I still want to share with you the points that this watch does well in software. For example, It has the best AOD feature that I’ve ever experienced on an Android smartwatch. The system feels really smooth and the experience is close to Apple Watches. Especially for the main menu, instead of simply zooming the app bubbles in and out, it gets a more regular arrangement when zoomed in or out. And it also shows the apps’ names if the bubbles become big enough. Even though the experience of these third-party apps is not perfect, we could still find apps to have fun with, such as the FitBuddy app. I believe you would enjoy having a kitten on your watch.
Under the smart mode, the watch lasted for over 3 days as we turned almost all the features on. But when you switch to the Power-saver mode, the watch can work like a sports smart band with standby for around 2 weeks.
I’m happy to see that the watch gives the choice to the user… But wait, in that case, why don’t I buy a cheaper smart band instead of the bulky watch which claims to be all-powerful, right?
So that’s all the facts that we believe are important about the OPPO Watch 3 Pro. To be honest, we are a bit disappointed, but it’s not exactly the product problem. For those users who live in China, it certainly deserves the title of one of the best smartwatches. However, if not, I do not really recommend you guys to get it from an overseas retailer as you may have trouble with the language.
So what are your thoughts on the OPPO Watch 3 Pro? Let us know in the comments section down below.
