OnePlus Nord Watch Review: Get it Only for the Looks

Oct 20, 2022

OnePlus entered the wearable category in early 2021 with the launch of the OnePlus Band. The brand’s first fitness tracker was soon followed by OnePlus Watch a few months later.

It has been more than a year since their release, but they are yet to get successors. Instead, OnePlus recently released OnePlus Nord Watch. It is the first wearable product under the Nord brand.

The OnePlus Nord Watch sits between the OnePlus Band and the OnePlus Watch. It is priced at ₹4,999 in India. As of now, it is not known if and when the device will be made available in other markets.

OnePlus India loaned me a unit of the OnePlus Nord Watch to try it out. After using it for a week paired with a loaner OnePlus Nord 2T (Review), here are my thoughts on it.

Before we go through my experience with the product, I would like to say that the opinions stated here are mine alone. The brand had neither editorial input nor an early look.

OnePlus Nord Watch Review

A Rebranded Product

Before I share my actual experience with the wearable, I would like to reveal that the OnePlus Nord watch is nothing but a rebranded Haylou RS4 Plus.

The smartphone maker made little to no changes. The only difference I could find is the strap.

In fact, the companion app N Health is the same as Haylou Fun. I tore down the APKs of the two applications to find differences. The sole difference is that the original Haylou app offers support for Huawei Mobile Services (HMS), in addition to Google Mobile Services (GMS).

Haylou RS4 Plus Smartwatch — Haylou RS4 Plus: The Original OnePlus Nord Watch

For the uninitiated, the original OnePlus Watch was developed in-house by the brand. Whereas, the OnePlus Band is a rebranded Oppo Band (Oppo is the parent company of OnePlus).

In order to cut costs, OnePlus may have decided to go with a rebranded device for the OnePlus Nord Watch. Additionally, the original Haylou RS4 Plus is not sold in India. Hence, there’s no direct competition either.

I reached out to both OnePlus and Haylou regarding this matter. But unfortunately, neither of them got back to me as of writing this article.

Performance

The OnePlus Nord Watch is one of the smoothest smartwatches in this price segment. This is due to the fact that it runs on RTOS. It is as fast and smooth as a OnePlus smartphone.

I did not face stutter of any kind during my time with the watch. It responded to my touches as it should without any hiccups.

The chipset used in the device is a mystery but OnePlus says that it comes with 256 MB of storage. Anyway, you don’t get access to storage as it is limited to the system software.

Display

The best thing about the OnePlus Nord Watch is its display. It sports a 1.78-inch rectangular AMOLED display with a 70.7% screen-to-body ratio. The panel offers a resolution of 448 x 368 pixels, a 60Hz refresh rate, and up to 500 nits peak brightness.

The display feels premium for the asking price. It is colorful and is able to render content sharply. The 2.5D curved glass elevates the gesture experience and the lift to wake function works every time

The screen is bright enough for outdoor usage under direct sunlight. But unfortunately, you have to manually increase the brightness as there’s no ambient light sensor. Also, you are limited to 100+ default watch faces.

The absence of auto-brightness hampers the overall good display experience. This is the only letdown of the watch’s display as most users can let go of the lack of tap to wake feature and AOD (Always-on Display).

Build & Design

The design of any product is subjective. I am not a square-dial watch guy, so it took me time to get used to it.

Whereas, I am impressed with the build, which is IP68-rated for dust and water resistance. The rear side of the wearable is plastic, nonetheless, the casing is metal (zinc alloy). It comes in two colors, such as Deep Blue and Midnight Black. I have the former and both offer a glossy finish.

The build quality is better than most smartwatches in the price segment. Its universal 20 mm silicon strap with stainless steel buckle is comfortable for all-day use (even while sleeping). I had no skin irritation during my usage.

There’s only a single physical button on the right side, which seems like a crown but isn’t. It only registers press though you can spin it.

Pressing it on the watch face opens the apps view and on any other screen, it gets you back to the watch face. Unfortunately, it cannot be mapped to an action of your choice.

Fitness and Health

I am not more of a fitness guy. But still, I tried outdoor walking for the sake of testing the fitness aspect of the wearable. I also used a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 for reference.

As per Nord Watch, I walked 0.79 km with 1200 steps. Whereas, the Galaxy Watch says that I walked 0.85 km with 1172 steps and it even shows GPS data to prove it. Though the Nord Watch is capable of using GPS data from the paired smartphone, it doesn’t seem to be working as of now.

Though I don’t work out with smartwatches and fitness trackers, I do use them for sleep tracking. This feature works perfectly on the OnePlus Nord Watch. But sadly, it does not identify REM sleep currently.

Other health-related features like heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen level monitoring, and stress monitoring work well. There’s also support for menstrual cycle tracking.

The one thing that did not work well for me is idle alert. At times, the watch would notify me that I am idle even though I am moving.

Software

I have mixed feelings about the software on the OnePlus Nord Watch. OnePlus made no changes to it. It is the same as on the Haylou RS 4 Plus.

The UI doesn’t look like what you find on the brand’s smartphones. Thus, it does not feel like a OnePlus product to me. The same goes for the companion app N Health.

Though the UI is smooth across the board, the notification system is unpolished. I don’t receive notifications on time properly. For some reason, I receive notifications in bulk.

The watch can only show the recent 8 notifications from the smartphone and you cannot respond to them. There’s no support for icons for most apps, ergo it is difficult to grasp from which applications the notifications are from.

Further, you only get an option to decline calls. An option to silence should have been there. Above all, the vibration motor on the watch is not good enough to let you know of any incoming calls and notifications in the first place.

The worst thing about the software is that you cannot access quick controls from anywhere in the UI. You should be on the watch face to do it.

Since the wearable does not support auto-brightness, I frequently had to change the brightness level manually. During such instances, I had to return to the watch face from what I was doing earlier to just change the brightness.

Battery Life

The OnePlus Nord Watch is backed by a 230mAh battery. The brand claims that the device can last up to 10 days on a full charge.

I have been continuously using the wearable for 8 days now after charging it to 100%. I have enabled sleep tracking, notifications, and call alerts. It has been constantly paired with a OnePlus Nord 2T for the whole time with a couple of short-duration workouts. The battery is currently at 30%.

Therefore, if your usage is like mine, you should easily get 10 or more days of endurance out of the product. However, if you work out regularly, the battery life should be definitely less than 10 days.

Conclusion

The OnePlus Nord Watch is a good product if you consider it standalone. But when you compare it with the competition, it falls behind.

Its biggest competitor is Amazfit GTS 2 Mini New Version. This wearable is priced at ₹5,999. But it is being sold at ₹4,999 for a very long time as part of ongoing festive season sales. It was even available at ₹4,499 for some time.

The Amazfit model may not be as fancy as the OnePlus model in terms of looks, however, it offers better software, accurate fitness tracking, third-party support (watch faces & additional features), Alexa, and more.

With all that being said, a watch is something you would love to flaunt. In this regard, the OnePlus Nord Watch does better with a bigger sharper display, a better build quality, and a premium look.

Hence, I would recommend OnePlus Nord Watch to only those who want an affordable smartwatch with good looks. While others should consider the Amazfit GTS 2 Mini New Version instead.

OnePlus Nord Watch Review: Get it Only for the Looks