Smart Android And Trik-Commenting on Andorid indeed never endless, because smart devices this one is often updated every certain amount of time. So that the market can always be garapnya menerinya with pleasure. And it is not denied if this device has become the lifestyle of each society. To not wonder if the 6th business information and many are turning to mobail smartphone. With Android which thoroughly dominated the mobile industry, choosing the best Android smartphone is almost identical to choose the best smartphone, period. But while Android phones have few real opponents on other platforms, internal competition is intense.
Introduction
The Oppo Watch is a premium looking smartwatch that sticks out amidst the growing wearable crowd and might just be the closest a non-Apple product has come to Apple Watch's levels of refinement and premium nature to date.
The Apple Watch is a hugely influential landmark device for the entire wearable niche. According to some sources, Cupertino's wearable line has shipped so many units that it is not only the most popular smartwatch on the market, but it is the most popular singular watch model. As in, wearable timepiece, in general.
We are not saying that the Oppo Watch can ever rival the Apple Watch in popularity. We are not even saying that it is equally good as a product. But it's as close as an Android smartwatch has gotten to Apple's wearable. And it's by no coincidence. Oppo has clearly targeted anyone who may be tempted by the Apple wacth by creating a device with the same overall design.
Oppo Watch
- Body: 46.0x39.0x11.4mm, 40g (46mm model), 41.45x36.37x11.4mm, 30.1g (46mm model); Glass front, stainless steel frame or aluminum frame, ceramic/sapphire crystal back or plastic back; Fluororubber band; 5ATM water resistant (46mm model), 3ATM water resistant (41mm model); Colors: Black, Glossy Gold, Pink Gold, Silver Mist.
- Display: 1.91" AMOLED flexible, 402x476px resolution, 10.66:9 aspect ratio, 326ppi, Schott Glass (46mm model); 1.6" AMOLED, 320x360px, 326 ppi, Corning Gorilla Glass (41mm model).
- Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 (28 nm) - International, Qualcomm MSM8909W Snapdragon Wear 2500 (28nm) - China: Quad-core 1.09 GHz Cortex-A7; Adreno 304; Secondary Ambiq Micro Apollo3 Wireless SoC
- Memory: 8GB 1GB RAM; eMMC 4.5.
- OS/Software: Android Wear OS - International
ColorOS Watch OS - China. - Battery: 430mAh (46mm model), 300mAh (41mm model); Watch VOOC Flash Charging (5v@1.5A).
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi 2.4GHz, Bluetooth 4.1 (Snapdragon) + Bluetooth 5.0 LE (Apollo3 chipset); built-in GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS; LTE support (46mm LTE model only)
- Misc: Speaker, Microphone, tri-axial accelerometer, gyro, optical heart rate, compass, barometer, geomagnetic sensor, capacitance sensor, ambient light sensor; NFC.
There is an obvious visual similarity between the Apple watch and the Oppo Watch. Sure, you could say that the Oppo Watch takes after the traditional, rectangular wrist watch form factor but anyone can do their own comparisons.
At the end of the day, it's the kind of argument best left to legal teams to quarrel over. The important and exciting bit us consumers should focus on is that we have a shiny new Wear OS smartwatch to enjoy. A standout device, occupying what is a shrinking niche of Google-powered wearables. One that not only looks and feels the part, but also has a major secret weapon in its arsenal - a whole second chipset and OS, to power an extremely efficient alternate, battery-saving mode of operation. One that Oppo claims can squeeze up to 21 days of operation from a single battery charge, while still delivering a core set of smart features - notification, heart rate monitoring, and step counting.
That's one hell of a party trick. Attempted before in the wearable realm, but never at quite this level. If everything works well and as promised, the Oppo Watch could deliver the flexibility of a true smartwatch, with the endurance of a smart wearable/fitness tracker. The best of both worlds. Quite a tall order to fill. Join us on the following pages to see whether the Oppo Watch truly gets to keep its cake and eat it too. But before that, let's see the box first.
Unboxing
The Oppo Watch offers a premium experience from the get-go arriving in a high-quality product box. It is a two-piece design, made from thick cardboard and complete with a soft, rubbery finish and embossed graphics and text. On the inside, you get secure plastic cradles, holding everything in place.
Surprisingly, though, not a lot in terms of accessories. There are no extra bands. Just a single spare ring for keeping the band tucked-in. The charger for the Oppo Watch uses a magnetic cradle design, with a fairly long and thick USB-A cable. It is rated for 5V@1.5A - nothing too fancy, but still a bit of extra current than the standard USB 500 mAh. Since charging is actually done via pogo pins, instead of wirelessly, the Oppo Watch hardly wastes any of this juice.
Design and controls
The Oppo Watch comes in two distinct size variants - 41mm and 46mm. That is roughly similar to the 40mm and 44mm versions that the Apple Watch is available in. What we have here for review is the larger 46mm version of the Oppo Watch.
However, the two Oppo Watch models do differ by more than just display size. The smaller of the pair lacks the curved display side edges of its bigger sibling, instead of going with a flatter, more Apple Watch-style screen surface. A smaller overall body, also means a smaller (300 mAh) battery in the 41mm Oppo Watch. The smaller model also lacks ceramics on its back panel. It is also rated at 3ATM of water-resistance, instead of 5ATM. On the flip side, that also helps reduce its weight down to 30 grams, while the 46mm Oppo Watch is about 10 grams heavier.
Other than that, however, both internally and externally, there are no real important differences between the two size variants. Since the two models share all of their internals, the findings will be transferable. Sans for the battery ones, of course.
Speaking of battery and internals, the 46mm Oppo Watch can be had in either a Wi-Fi only configuration or an LTE one. We have the Wi-Fi only unit at our disposal. But, again, having LTE should only affect the experience slightly and mostly exhibit a small battery life hit.
Back to design, the Oppo Watch clearly draws a lot of inspiration from the Apple Watch line. However, it is far from a carbon copy. The curved display sides manage to instantly give it a distinctive look. The 1.91-inch diagonal panel on the 46mm model has a native resolution of 402 x 476 pixels, which might not sound like much, but at that diagonal amounts to a very sharp 326ppi. It looks gorgeous in person.
Along with rather thin display bezels, the Oppo Watch looks premium, even from a distance. That body shape, alone, is also enough to instantly separate it from any other, cheaper rectangular watches and bands, like the Realme Watch or the Amazfit Bip to name a couple.
Left: Oppo Watch * Right: Apple Watch
Speaking of the body on the Oppo Watch, it differs from Apple's design on a conceptual level. Where the Apple Watch uses a more "unibody" approach, molding the bottom shell up into the sides and then inserting the display on top and a round sensor inlay on the bottom, the Oppo Watch uses a sandwich design.
The large back piece of the case is ceramic on the 46mm model and plastic on the 41mm. Beyond that, both have an aluminum middle frame and the same "fluororubber" bands.
A special Oppo Watch Luxury Edition exists as well. Its frame is stainless steel, making for a slightly heavier product, overall, at 45.5 grams. It uses an entirely different, more-standard strap design too, making it a totally different beast, compared to both sizes of the vanilla Oppo Watch.
Oppo Watch luxury edition
The Oppo Watch has a solid bill of material, even if slightly less impressive than Apple's in terms of construction methods.
The official specs on the Oppo website do not list any info on the protection layer over the curved and extra-exposed display. With some digging around, we found out that the 46mm Oppo Watch uses Schott Glass, while its flat-screened, 41mm sibling, relies on an undisclosed version of Corning Gorilla Glass. Sounds reasonable to us.
On the flip side, Oppo has managed to seal the shell well enough to get a 5ATM rating for the 46mm model and 3ATM for the 41mm one. Ratings Oppo seems quite confident in, seeing how the Oppo Watch can track swimming performance.
Color options for the 46mm Oppo Watch include Black and Glossy Gold. Ours is the former, and it looks very slick. Under certain lighting, the middle shell almost has a blueish hue to it, making it more of deep blue-inky color in our mind.
The 41mm variant gets one extra color and slightly different shades overall - Black, Pink Gold and Silver Mist.
Comfort
Before we move on the buttons, we have to talk about the "fluororubber" band on the Oppo Watch. First, the positives - it strikes a great balance between being sturdy and also soft and comfortable. Its rubberized finish is almost silky to the touch and pleasant on the skin. All the while, it resists scratches quite well, from things like nails or clothes and sleeves.
Oppo has clearly wanted to get that naturally "flowing" look down, digging the attachment mechanism into the chassis of the watch. We can't sulk too much for it being non-standard, since it's a deliberate choice of looks over practicality.
That means it is not a standard strap. Instead, in latches into place with two small tabs on either side. These are released by pressing a well-hidden button on either side of the back of the wearable. The attachment works well, looks good, and feels secure.
What we can and absolutely will complain about is the outrageously poor clasp design. Seriously, it's so bad that it's almost unusable. Strapping on the Oppo Watch almost became an in-office meme after multiple people had to ask for assistance in the process. The problem is that there is no practical anchor point to insert one end of the band into the other easily and then adjust and fasten with one hand. The protruding clamp is always in the way, and even if it weren't, you'd still have to stuff the band into what is a very tight-gripping ring.
The default band design on the Apple Watch might look similar, but it isn't. Its extra-large "thread," for the lack of a better term, makes putting it on a breeze in comparison. And, mind you, neither of these uses a classic, mechanical watch clasp, in the traditional sense, which would instantly give it a neck up. Oppo desperately needs to re-think this design for a future revision.
The band attachment scheme is by far our biggest criticism regarding the overall ergonomic experience with the Oppo Watch, though.
Once on the wrist, the Oppo Watch feels very comfortable. At around 40 grams, it is neither too heavy nor too light and right around what the Apple Watch offers. Thanks to its relatively thin profile of just shy of 13mm, the Oppo Watch lies comfortably flat against the wrist. It's unlikely that you will bump it accidentally, and the fit is good enough to wear while sleeping. Something that this particular reviewer was uncomfortable doing with other devices, like the Samsung Gear S3 Frontier and the Huawei Watch 2.
A snug on-hand fit does is generally conducive to higher than usual sweating in the summer. Both the silky rubber band and ceramic back plate facilitate excessive sweating of the writs. The band remains perfectly comfortable and doesn't mind getting a bit wet. Neither does the ceramic back or the watch, as it's perfectly okay with swimming.
Controls
The main way of interaction with the Oppo Watch is going to be the touchscreen. It feels smooth to the touch and is perfectly responsive. Tap to wake is supported, but the raise gesture works pretty well, too. That being said, it is still not quite on par with the excellent raise detection on the Apple Watch. Pretty close, though.
Touch navigation is decently consistent across both Wear OS and the battery-saving UI. A swipe right goes Back out of almost any interface, with the notable exception of keyboard input screens, for things like quick reply. All four swipe gestures are utilized from the home screen and invoke quick toggles (top), notifications (bottom), Google pane (left), and customizable tiles (right). But, more on that in the software section.
In terms of physical controls, the Oppo Watch has a pair of buttons. The Top One is Home and either brings you back straight to the watch face from any menu of opens the app drawer if you are already on the home screen. Below it - the Multifunction button is also stable in its functionality across the main Wear OS UI. It always triggers a pre-defined, but still customizable feature or app, from anywhere in the UI. We appreciate that Oppo didn't assign these buttons contextually in different parts of the UI. It's just simpler this way.
In terms of actual feel, both bottoms are perfectly "clicky" and responsive. We like the color accent on the Multifunction button too.
The Oppo Watch has both a speaker and a microphone. They are mostly used to communicate with the Google assistant and perhaps, to take a call, if you don't have a more convenient way to do so. The speaker is also good for audio feedback during activity tracking. You could, technically, play music through it, as well, but it's not a particularly great speaker.
Voice comes out sounding quite articulate, from both calls and the Google assistant/activity tracking feedback. It's also impressive to see that Oppo managed to still pull-off water resistance with two rather sizeable speaker holes on the side.
The singular microphone on the Oppo Watch is also perfectly decent to give the Google assistant instructions and have a last-resort voice call. It sounds decent in a call, but there is no noise cancellation. Hence - last resort.
All things considered, we like what Oppo has done here in terms of controls. Even so, the digital crown on the Apple Watch is still in a league of its own. The same goes for Samsung's rotating watch bezel, for that matter. Oppo doesn't have anything to match either of these physical control methods.
Sensors and hardware
Still, some hardware aspects of the Oppo Watch are worth pointing out. First, the basics, in terms of sensors. The wearable has at its disposal a Tri-axial acceleration sensor, Gyroscope, Geomagnetic sensor, Barometric sensor and an Optical heartbeat sensor. The latter being the only visible one, on the bottom of the watch. Notably, no fancy ECG, like on the Apple Watch, but that's hardly going to be missed by most users.
Some more conventional sensors include a Capacitance sensor and Ambient light sensor. The latter is installed under the display itself and does a swell job of automatically regulating its brightness. All of these are shared among all Oppo Watch models.
Same goes for general connectivity options, including Wi-Fi 2.4Ghz, Bluetooth 4.2, with BLE and NFC. The Oppo Watch has a built-in GPU receiver, with GLONASS and BDS support, as well. However, like all wearable GPU receivers, it is a bit limited and relies heavily on fresh A-GPS data from a connected phone. The watch can also get positioning data from a connected phone for better accuracy.
Moving on to slightly more-interesting bits, the Oppo Watch actually has two separate chipsets. One is a "full-featured" Snapdragon Wear unit, that powers the Wear OS experience. The other - an Ambiq Micro Apollo3 Wireless SoC, which is specifically there to power the Oppo Watch battery-saver mode, while still retaining basic smart functionality, like step counting, heart rate measurement and notifications. The latter is the silicon behind the advertised 21-day battery life on the 46mm unit and 14 days on the 41mm one.
In yet another interesting twist, the international version of the Oppo Watch gets a Snapdragon Wear 3100 chipset, while the Chinese one has a Wear 2500 one. Despite the significant number difference, these two are actually very similar in hardware, both rocking four ARM Cortex-A7 cores, at up to 1.09Ghz and an Adreno 304 chipset. This chipset is paired with 1GB of LPDDR3 RAM and 8GB of eMMC 4.5 storage. The latter is non-expandable but is still good for storing your Wear OS apps and perhaps cashing some Spotify music, for use with a Bluetooth headset directly, without a phone.
Speaking of Wear OS, this is a good place to note that only the international Oppo Watch gets to run that. Units within China get ColorOS Watch OS as their smartwatch OS. The battery-saving OS is the same between the regional variants, and it is a proprietary affair. We'll get into it in the software section.
On the hardware side of things, it is interesting to note that switching from Wear OS to the battery-saving one and especially the other way around actually involves a reboot and takes a few seconds. This raises some interesting questions as to how separate the two chipsets are. Mainly since you don't really need to fully re-sync the Oppo Watch with your phone in both modes, so at least some part of the communication chain might be shared between the two environments. Fascinating stuff. For anyone interested in this further, we did dig-up a specs sheet for the Ambiq Micro Apollo3 SoC.
Specs table for Ambiq Micro Apollo3
Finishing-off the hardware section, we should note that the Oppo Watch LTE version does not use a removable SIM card. It relies on eSIM. Band support for it includes: WCDMA(B1, B8), FDD(B1, B3, B7, B20) and TD-LTE(B38).
Battery life and charging
The 46mm Oppo Watch, we tested, has a 430 mAh battery, while its smaller 41mm sibling drops that down to 300 mAh. True smartwatches, which have a proper OS to run apps off, typically sacrifice endurance for features, and the Oppo Watch is no exception. Oppo is advertising a 36-hour endurance for the 46mm unit (30-hours on the LTE one) and 24 hours on the smaller 41mm one.
We can confirm these numbers, almost to the minute. In full-featured smart mode, with quite a few (200+) notifications a day, always-on display off, and automatic heart-rate monitoring, our 46mm unit consistently lasts a day and a half. In other words, it is perfectly suited to go a full day, then monitor your sleep and then be comfortably charged the next morning to repeat the process. Leaving AOD on or using things like navigation or other apps during the day typically left us with just around 24 hours from a single charge.
Battery saver UI step count
On the other side of the endurance race we have devices like the popular Xiaomi Mi Band, or my current daily-driver - the Amazfit GTR. These are technically not smartwatches, since they don't support apps. They still have smart features, to a varying extent, and can relay the notifications from your phone. What they sacrifice in features, they gain in battery endurance, though, with my Amazfit GRT comfortably going a month on a single charge with the same notification use pattern.
So, Oppo's idea with the Oppo Watch was to create a hybrid device, the best of both worlds, so to speak. By running a secondary battery-saving OS environment off a low-powered chipset, they can offer a much longer battery life than a real smartwatch. In this mode, the Oppo Watch offers a choice of several watch faces, a step counter, a heart rate monitor and notification alerts.
Running in battery-saving mode didn't quite get us the advertised 21 days from the 46mm review unit, but still managed a little over two weeks on a single charge all while delivering a solid experience on the basic feature set, we described earlier. Not a half-bad tradeoff. Going from it back to Wear OS only requires holding down the function button, which is a much better experience. But it does involve a few seconds of waiting for the main OS to boot back up. Unlike the Ambiq Micro Apollo3 SoC, the Snapdragon Wear chip has measurable boot-up times.
Charging the Oppo Watch is quick and convenient. A full charge takes around 75 minutes. If you just need a quick top-up, 15 minutes on the charger can get the battery up to about 45%.
The pogo-pin-based charging set up doesn't waste much of the 5V@1.5A going into the charger. You just need to be a bit mindful of dirt and moisture on the pins and keep them clean. That's about the only drawback to this solution, as opposed to wireless charging. Well, that and the fact that you need to use the proprietary charger and can't just pull a reverse wireless charging stunt with a supported smartphone.
The charging base itself is a bit bulky compared to some competing solutions, but it does provide good stability for the watch once it is in. The base is attached through magnets, which is a typical approach. Plus, it looks and feels adequately premium to house the Oppo Watch. Which makes sense in our mind.
In case you were wondering, we did try to charge the Oppo Watch while in battery-saver mode, out of curiosity. That immediately forces a restart into Wear OS. Presumably, since Oppo has designed its faster-charging scheme, dubbed Watch VOOC Flash Charging with the use of the Snapdragon Wear chipset and its IC and that's the only, or at least preferred way for charging to take place.
Oppo Watch features
The software experience on the Oppo Watch is a bit of a mixed bag. It has certain nuances that we will get into, but the important bit is that using the Oppo Watch can be either a very straight-forward affair or an extra complicated one, depending on how in-depth you want to explore and use its features.
On the simplest possible level, once you power the Oppo Watch on and bring it near most current Android phones, an automatic pop-up to connect it, via the Google Wear app will pop-up. That's an incredibly simple, guided process, which will net you a perfectly functional Oppo Watch. That can mostly be attributed to the fact that it has Wear OS at its core.
Oppo has taken Google's Wear OS 2.19 and customized it in a few ways, to give it a ColorOS flavor similar in looks to the OS that the Chinese model gets. Changes mostly boil-down to some custom watch faces, a different style and layout for the app drawer, and various visual tweaks across the UI. For any existing Wear OS users, the migration should be fluent, since most core features are intact.
Home screen (watchface) • Quick toggles • Notifications • Google tab • Tiles • App drawer
Swiping down from the home screen lends you in a quick toggles interface. It also shows the currently active connection (Bluetooth or Wi-Fi) and the battery percentage. Swiping up gets you a list of notifications.
Notification handling on the Oppo Watch is excellent. Notifications arrive quickly and consistently, they are also well organized and sensibly stacked, not to mention color-coded, when the app supports it. Also, there is a constant 1:1 link between the notifications in your phone's notification shade and on the watch. That is to say that if you dismiss something on one device, it will be gone almost instantly from the other, as well. That's mostly achievable thanks to a proper, constant Bluetooth link, as opposed to Bluetooth LE. Which is the reason why many smart wearables can't match the level of intuitive notification handling. Those do save battery in the process, though.
Continuing the comparison with simpler, smart-wearable-style notification handling, Wear OS and the Oppo Watch also offer advanced functionality, like replying to IMs and, generally, all Android notifications that support quick reply. You can either dictate a message, draw an emoji and them pick from a list of suggestions or even touch or swipe-type on an extremely small, yet still passable keyboard.
Swiping right to left from the watch face cycles through a list of widgets, called Tiles. By default, a few are enabled, like Daily activity, Sleep statistics, live heart rate measurement and a shortcut to your last exercise type.
You can freely enable, disable, change and rearrange tiles. Certain third-party Wear OS apps even offer tiles of their own.
Daily activity • Sleep statistics • Heart rate • Tile management
That about covers the main part of the Wear OS UI - clean, simple and straight-forward. The Oppo Watch, in particular, has a pair of physical buttons to simplify navigation even further. The top one always takes you Home (to the watch face), while the bottom is a Multifunctional key that also consistently has one function, regardless of where you are inside the UI. That function can be customized to various actions, as well as app launching. Since certain Wear apps, like Google Fit have specific shortcuts for individual exercise types made available as selectable quick actions, the system is really flexible.
The Oppo Watch includes a few custom watch faces out of the box. Most of these have additional features and variants to choose from. The AI Outfit and Photo faces are especially interesting, since the former can be custom-crafted to match your current outfit, while the latter can cycle through photos or images. There need to be tweaked from the phone companion app, which we will get to in a bit.
For extra watch faces, beyond the default ones, you can always turn to the Google Play store and its selection of faces and face apps for Wear OS. The easiest way to end-up with a curated list of Wear apps from different categories is to open the Play Store on the watch itself. It even has a nifty menu with suggestions for Wear app counterparts to the apps currently installed on your phone, where available. It turns out my home automation apps were almost entirely supported, natively on Wear OS. Neat!
Play store on Wear OS
The connectivity menu will likely see some extra use, since this is where you can set-up a Wi-Fi connection, as a nifty backup, in case your phone and watch are outside of Bluetooth range. It also houses the NFC toggle and the optional location assistance one, which tells the watch to not only rely on its internal GPS receiver, but also get data from the connected phone, when available, for better performance.
If you really don't like the Oppo-customized three-column layout for the app drawer, you can go back to the default Wear OS carousel.
Oppo ColorOS-style app drawer vs standard Wear OS carousel
Unfortunately, there was no way for us to screenshot the battery-saving OS on the Oppo Watch. Its list of features is short and easy to retell, though. The main screen has a watchface, which is customizable, with a limited selection.
Battery saver UI
Swiping left and right from there, or pressing the top button cycles through the step counter and live heart rate monitor. Swiping up, again, brings-up a list of notifications. No support for replies or 1:1 linking with the phone's notification shade this time around, though.
Holding down the bottom button for a few seconds exits battery saver mode and reboots into Wear OS. That about covers it. Spartan, yet perfectly adequate.
Oppo Watch companion apps and connecting to your phone
Like we said, using the Oppo Watch is simple. You just add it in the Wear app and start using it. Pretty much all of its core functionality will be perfectly functional, including watch face selection, tile management, notification interaction and activity and sleep tracking.
The Oppo Watch will even be happy to sync the latter data automatically with Google health, so you get nifty breakdowns and statistics.
Oppo Watch inside Android Wear app
However, what you are getting at this point is not the entire feature set of the Oppo Watch. A detail we instantly noticed after booting into the Batter Saver OS and lacking any connection to the phone for notifications and activity data syncing.
Makes sense, since we are running an entirely different chipset, with its own Bluetooth radio. On that unlike the main Snapdragon Wear chip uses Bluetooth 5's low-energy profile. Hence, it should require some extra setup. Adding the newly available "LE" device from the Bluetooth menu did not help the situation though.
Turns out, there is a whole other companion app for the Oppo Watch, called HeyTap Health. The only mention we found of it anywhere on the Oppo Watch and its materials was a text, buried inside the empty notification list, within the Battery saver mode. So, not only are we now stuck with a complicated setup, involving two apps, but we had to snoop around to get there. Oppo desperately needs to make this process smoother, somehow.
Getting the HeyTap app also involved a lengthy registration process, with plenty of personal data volunteered to a service we barely know, which we didn't particularly appreciate. Once all set-up, an interesting prompt appeared in the HeyTap Health app, which redirected us back to the Wear app, which now managed to detect the Oppo Watch in its battery-saving "LE" connection mode, as well. Very, very odd behavior, but we did end up with two distinct devices in Wear. Even so, notification and data syncing for the Oppo Watch Battery Saver Mode still seem to pass entirely through the HeyTap Health app, so you can't just go and uninstall it. Why bother adding the watch twice in the Wear app then? Confusing, to say the least.
HeyTap Health app adding the Oppo Watch
HeyTap Health other settings
Even if you can live without ever using the Battery Saver mode on the Oppo Watch, there are more reasons to keep the HeyTap Health app around. For one, it does a more thorough job of syncing sleep, heartrate and activity data from the Oppo Watch and visualizing it in detail.
Getting complete tracking data from the Oppo Watch
If that is not enough to tickle your fancy, the HeyTap Health app is the only place to control both the custom Photos and AI Outfit watchfaces on the Oppo Watch. The former is a lot simpler. You just need to select an album or a bunch of images for it to cycle.
Photos watchface settings
AI Outfit is a lot cooler and has plenty of potential. The way it works is that you snap a photo of your outfit or anything you like color and pattern-wise, really, select a matching region and then wait for the app to give you a few different variations of custom patterns and colors, meant to match what you captured.
AI Outfit watchface
It's a killer feature, overall, but it still has its ups and downs. After playing around with it a bit, we can say that it generally nails pattern selection and generation. There is a surprising amount of variety there. However, colors are less impressive for a couple of reasons. The algorithm seems to be making quite a bit of approximation, and more often than not, the watch face colors are a different shade than the object. Also, it errs on the side of caution in terms of color variety. Don't expect amazingly colorful patterns.
AI Outfit watchface generation test
Activity tracking and performance
At first glance, the Oppo Watch is a bit light on activity tracking features. The main fitness app only has five modes: Fitness run, Fat burn run, Outdoor walk, Outdoor Cycling, and Swimming. Nothing too fancy, but all of the basics are well-covered. Plus, since this is Wear OS, there are plenty of third-party, specific activity-tracking apps you can download beyond that. Thinks like Strava, for biking.
Fitness tracking modes
To Oppo's credit, each mode comes with specifically-tailored options, indicating that some effort has been put into them. Fitness run has a selection between indoor and outdoor mode, the latter leveraging the GPS for additional data. You can also set goals, in distance, duration, and calories. A nifty meter tells you which part of the exercise you are in and whether you are on track, based on your heartrate.
Fitness run
The Fat burn run expands on that last functionality, by offering both visual and audio guides, through the built-in speaker or a connected Bluetooth device, for you to seep-up or slow-down, to keep heart rate in an optimal fat-burning window.
Fat burn run
Outdoor walk and Outdoor Cycling are both similar and straight-forward. These always use the GPS and support goals, set in distance, duration or calories. Swimming drops the GPS, but adds a lap-length setting.
Outdoor cycling, walking and swimming
Our Oppo Watch also came pre-loaded with a 5-minute workout app, with a few extra fitness modes. These only come with minimal data tracking from the heart rate sensor, though, and a calorie estimate. The spotlight feature here, though, is the animated instructions, guiding you through each exercise and its repetitions.
5-minute workouts
In terms of activity tracking accuracy, we have very few complaints from the Oppo Watch. The step counter is accurate to within a few hundred steps, over a day, cross-referenced with a few other devices.
The heart rate sensor is hard to throw-off and rarely gives obviously false reading, even during intense activities. The automatic sleep tracking works well, too, but is weirdly limited to only tracking sleep between 20:00 and 10:00 AM. Aside from that, we have no real complaints in the tracking department.
Alternatives
Exploring alternatives for the Oppo Watch is no easy task. Especially if you want to get a device, as close as possible to it, both visually and functionally. The dual-chipset and dual-OS functionality is sort of unique, in the particular way Oppo has done it - combining Google's Wear OS with a secondary, low-powered environment.
There are still similar solutions on the market, though, notably, the Amazfit Stratos 3, which has a smart version of its OS, rated at around 7 days of battery life and an ultra-endurance one, that offers basic functionality, just like the Oppo Watch and around two weeks on a single charge.
Another interesting bit in the Amazfit Stratos 3 arsenal is its transflective, round, 320x320-pixel TFT display, which sacrifices a rich color pallet for better battery efficiency and great visibility under sunlight. Aside from that, the Stratos 3 comes with a 5ATM rating, excellent PPG Bio-Tracking optical sensor for heartrate, as well as onboard GPS. It is a great alternative to the Oppo Watch.
Left: Oppo Watch * Right: Realme Watch
However, like so many other wearables out there, the Amazfit Stratos 3 is often misrepresented, mistakenly as a smartwatch. Since it lacks a third-party app ecosystem, like the one on Wear OS, it is technically a smart wearable. If you decide that you can live without third-party apps, as well as more-basic notification handling, a smart wearable has plenty of positives to outweigh those shortcomings. Mainly, the excellent battery life. But if that is the route you want to go down, our best pick would be either the excellent Amazfit GTR, which delivers all of the smarts and features of the Stratos 3, inside a slicker body, all while easily lasting a full month on a single charge.
If you want to save a few bucks, pretty-much all major manufacturers have compelling offers on cheaper smart bands. Some, like the Realme Watch or the Amazfit Bip S even look like a rectangular watch, rather than a band. The latter also comes with a built-in GPS for better tracking - a relatively rare sight in smart bands. And, of course, there are the really famous options, like the reliable Mi Band line, with Mi Band 5 and the cheaper 4C being good, current, options.
Left: Oppo Watch * Right: Apple Watch
Say you want something a bit more premium, though. Aside from the Amazfit GTR, which is our device of choice, there is the Huawei Watch line. Particularly, the current Huawei Watch GT 2 and Watch GT 2e. The former one also available as the Honor MagicWatch 2. There are subtle differences between these, but, generally, they are similar and offer fully-loaded smart wearable experiences. Like the Amazfit GTR - not technically smartwatches, but looking stylish, getting excellent battery life, rich in both hardware and software features and with vibrant user communities churning-out things like unofficial watch faces.
If you don't want to settle for anything short of a smartwatch, you are kind of limited in options, but there are some standout deals. Starting with Wear OS, Mobvoi has some excellent options in its TicWatch line. The TicWatch Pro, in particular, is kind of similar to the Oppo Watch, in the sense that it employs an unconventional method, alongside Wear OS, to save on battery. In this case, it is a whole secondary LCD layer. Intriguing stuff. The TicWatch E2 and TicWatch C2+ are also worth considering.
As a side note, shopping for Wear OS devices can have hidden pitfalls to avoid. For instance, the Xiaomi Mi Watch is an obvious alternative here, both design-wise and functionally since it is also based on a Snapdragon Wear chipset and runs Wear OS. However, it is still a China-only device, and just like the China version of the Oppo Watch, it runs on an OS, still based on Google's Wear OS, but it lacks most Google services and requiring a secondary Chinese app to connect to your phone. The Chinese version of the TicWatch Pro is in the same boat. And while workarounds allegedly exist, we can't recommend the hassle.
Left: Oppo Watch * Right: Apple Watch
Last, but not least, we have Samsung's Tizen-based wearables, which, alongside Wear OS and Apple's Watch OS offers, are the only other major entry in the true smartwatch realm. The Galaxy Watch3 is the current flagship offer, complete with compelling gadgets, like ECG. However, there is also the smaller, slicker and arguably more-elegant Galaxy Watch Active2 to consider. It offers pretty much all of the features of the Watch3 in a different and more affordable package. Even older models in Samsung's wearable line, like the Galaxy Watch are still perfectly competent and comparable to the latest generation devices and deliver an almost identical experience. If you can find one with a good price, don't hesitate.
Finally, we will mention the Apple Watch family of devices, but unfortunately, not as a viable alternative to the Oppo Watch, due to poor, if any Android compatibility. The Oppo Watch, like any Wear OS smartwatch, can, however, sync with an Apple iPhone, which is worth noting.
The verdict
The Oppo Watch has colloquially earned the nickname of "Apple Watch for Android" and for a good reason. It is, probably, the closest any true smartwatch, currently out there has managed to come to the overall experience of Cupertino's wearable. Refined all the way through, the Oppo Watch doesn't hide its Apple inspiration and aspirations, but rather embraces them fully.
On a hardware level, it is a superb gadget, with little to no flaws to point out. It delivers on every feature, as advertised - customizability, app support, notifications and calls, activity and health tracking - all work great, mostly thanks to Wear OS, with a little extra Oppo visual polish, on top.
If you stop there and don't dig into the software aspects of the Oppo Watch any further, it is even fair to say that it offers a straight-forward and user-friendly experience. Easy to both set-up and operate.
The only real issue we had with our Oppo Watch experience, as a whole, pertains to its secondary battery-saving mode of operation. Oppo has clearly put substantial effort into it, going as far as to implement a secondary chipset, for the benefit of battery endurance. A clever decision, which, in itself, definitely has potential going forward. Oppo just needs to add some extra software polish.
As things currently stand, setting-up and properly operating the Oppo Watch, in the entirety of its feature set, is confusing and cumbersome, requiring two different apps and extra steps during setup. If Oppo manages to optimize and smooth out that experience, the Oppo Watch would effectively be a fault-free product, perfectly achieving what it set out to do.
Whether or not it will manage to make any meaningful dent on the smartwatch market is another question.
Pros:
- Premium design and materials
- Great display
- Very comfortable to wear
- Water-resistant
- Decent speakers and microphone built-in
- Solid day-and-a-half battery life in Wear OS mode and two weeks in Battery saver mode
- Slick and fluid Wear OS interface, with Oppo styling on top
- Excellent notification handling and activity tracking performance
Cons:
- Minimal accessory package
- Horrible clasp design and non-standard strap attachment
- Complicated setup procedure, requires two separate apps
- Minimal feature set in Battery saver mode
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