OnePlus Watch 2R review

2024-07-21

The OnePlus Watch 2R is the latest model in the OnePlus wearable lineup and the cheaper variant of the OnePlus Watch 2. The OnePlus Watch 2 was launched to critical acclaim earlier this year, with many reviewers, including myself, praising the device for its design and build quality, performance, novel dual operating system design, and excellent battery life.

The OnePlus Watch 2R chooses not to mess with that winning formula. In fact, it chooses to change very little as this is largely the same watch barring a couple of changes. Are these changes meaningful enough to justify another variant? Let"s find out.

Design

The OnePlus Watch 2R design more than bears a passing resemblance to the Watch 2. The basic shape is largely the same with identical dimensions, a large circular watch face, and two side buttons. The buttons now look identical with a standard pusher mechanism while the Watch 2 had a crown and a flat button. The crown-like button on the Watch 2 was somewhat confusing as it spun like a crown but only worked as a button. The 2R buttons don"t rotate so no more confusion.

The watch body of the Watch 2R has two major differences from the Watch 2. First, the casing is made out of brushed aluminum instead of polished stainless steel. Second, the glass is now flat instead of curved around the edges.

The switch from steel to aluminum has a massive impact on the weight; while the Watch 2 weighed 49g without the strap, the Watch 2R weighs just 37g. This is exacerbated when coupled with the default straps; the Watch 2 weighs 80g whereas the Watch 2R weighs just 59g.

One of my issues with the Watch 2 was the size and weight. For a watch targeted at fitness users, it felt overly large and heavy, which made it a distraction while working out and especially when used in bed for sleep tracking. While the size remains the same, the weight is simply a non-issue on the new model. It"s easy to forget you are wearing this watch, which isn"t the case with the more expensive model. However, some may prefer the heft of the Watch 2, so your mileage may vary.

The one objective downside of the switch to aluminum is that the Watch 2R loses the MIL-STD-810H military-grade testing certification, which is fine as it still retains the IP68 and 5ATM ratings.

~~As for the glass, it"s still the same sapphire crystal material but with flat edges.~~ It might not feel as nice when swiping from the edges but again, you might just prefer the look of a flat glass. Moreover, the Watch 2R covers up the somewhat thick bezels on the Watch 2 with a two-tone chronometer dial that looks a lot nicer.

Update: OnePlus has clarified that the Watch 2R has a Panda Glass and not sapphire crystal as was mentioned in the reviewer"s guide.

The Watch 2R comes in two variants, Forest Green and Gunmetal Gray. The former (pictured here) features a silver case with a green strap while the latter has a dark gray case with a black strap. The straps are otherwise identical.

The Watch 2R straps feel a lot less plush than those on the Watch 2 with a more pronounced plasticky texture than the supple rubber of the more expensive model. They are not bad by any means, just less nice and premium feeling. They use a standard strap attachment mechanism so you can just replace them with straps from another watch.

Overall, the Watch 2R design is pretty much what you"d expect, a less premium version of the Watch 2. It lacks the luxurious feel of the polished stainless steel and soft straps of the more expensive model. On the flip side, many, including myself, would prefer the lighter overall feel of the Watch 2R, which makes it much more suitable for everyday use as well as for fitness tracking.

You still can"t get around the large dimensions, however, and one wishes OnePlus would consider making these in a smaller size.

Display

The OnePlus Watch 2R has the same basic display as the Watch 2. It"s a 1.43-inch AMOLED panel with 60Hz refresh rate and 466 x 466 resolution.

The display looks and functions nearly identically to that on the Watch 2. Our Watch 2R display was slightly brighter and had a different color tone to our Watch 2 display, but this could just be down to unit variation. They are both good displays but could use a touch more brightness under bright sunlight.

Software and Performance

The OnePlus Watch 2R has identical software and hardware to the Watch 2. You get the same combination of Wear OS by Google and RTOS running on a combination of Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 and BES2700 chipsets. It"s a genius design that lets you have the best of both worlds — full smartwatch functionality and long battery life.

We already discussed all of these aspects in detail in our OnePlus Watch 2 review and since nothing has changed on that front, it remains relevant for the Watch 2R. You can check that review here.

Overall, the software experience on the Watch 2R remains largely positive. The Wear OS side of things is what we have come to expect from other Android smartwatches and the OnePlus RTOS complements it seamlessly without looking worlds apart.

However, there are things OnePlus could have done to make things better. The fake crown on the Watch 2 could have been turned into an actual crown to navigate the UI as it would have made some UI interactions a lot nicer than just scrolling.

The Watch 2R includes a hundred watch faces in the OHealth app, a handful of which are pre-installed on the device. Some of these are new and exclusive to the Watch 2R as they aren"t available on the Watch 2. However, the Watch 2 also has some watch faces that aren"t available for the 2R.

The process of transferring these watch faces is rather slow. It takes about 60 to 90 seconds for the watch face to appear on the device from the moment you set it in the app. What"s worse is that this time seems to vary quite a bit. The above time was measured with the watch paired to a OnePlus Open but pairing the same watch to a Xiaomi 14 Civi caused the time to nearly triple by taking about 2 minutes and 45 seconds to change the watch face.

And finally, like clockwork, OnePlus has left out women"s health features — such as ovulation, fertility, and cycle tracking — from its watch, despite its focus on health and fitness. This has been missing on nearly every OnePlus wearable, except the ill-fated Nord Watch, which probably only had this feature because it was made by another company and then rebranded by OnePlus. It"s not clear why such a basic and necessary feature for half of the world"s population does not at all seem to be a priority for the company, even though it is present on nearly every competitor"s device.

Battery

The OnePlus Watch 2R features, you guessed it, the same 500mAh battery as the Watch 2. OnePlus even claims the exact same battery life figures, which are up to 48 hours in Smart mode with heavy use and 100 hours with light use, and up to 12 days in power-saving mode where Wear OS and the W5 chip are disabled.

I tested the watch with always-on display enabled with the display manually set to 3/5 brightness bars. The SpO2 tracking was enabled for sleep with constant heart rate tracking. GPS was used for about 40 minutes every day while tracking an outdoor walk. The display was disabled while sleeping with the Sleep mode, which also disables raise to wake.

With these conditions, I managed to get about three days of battery life, with two nights of sleep tracking, on a single charge. This falls somewhere between the light and heavy usage claims OnePlus makes. I ran out of time to test the insane 12-day power-saving mode figure for this review.

As before, the watch takes about an hour for a full charge, so you can easily charge it while getting ready for work in the morning. The charging puck remains unchanged from Watch 2, meaning it"s still small, easy to lose, and sometimes easy to detach from the weight of the cable attached to it.

As with the Watch 2, these figures are very impressive considering they are with a full-blown Android smartwatch, and not just a mere fitness tracker. You can have all sorts of apps running on this device as it"s essentially a mini Android phone, and still get about two full days of use. Or have lighter usage and get about 4-5 days. Or almost two weeks if you don"t care about apps, at all. Outside of a handful of other devices, this is largely still unheard of in the smartwatch world.

Pricing

The OnePlus Watch 2R is priced at £249 / €279 / $229.99 / ₹17,999. For reference, the Watch 2 was priced at £299 / €329 / $299.99 / ₹24,999 at launch. Meanwhile, the newly launched Samsung Galaxy Watch7 starts at $329.99 for the similarly-sized 44mm version, with a more expensive variant with LTE. Unfortunately, like the Watch 2, the Watch 2R has no LTE version.

Conclusion

OnePlus makes a strong impression with the new Watch 2R. The original Watch 2 was already a highly competent, likable product that was perhaps a touch too heavy and a touch too expensive. The Watch 2R fixes both issues in one fell swoop while being otherwise identical, making it the default option for most people between the two, and a great smartwatch in general.