Oneplus Watch

Wearable, maybe not bearable

After launching with a bunch of features missing, Oneplus’s debut smartwatch is still maddeningly

flaky despite frantic efforts to fix its software

£149 / stuff.tv/onepluswatch

■ Oneplus’s Watch isn’t ambitious. It’s an inoffensive mix of glass, stainless steel and plastic, with a proprietary semi-smart OS and widgety screens showing music, sleep data and heart rate. You can add step count, weather and your stress level, while the 1.39in OLED is sharp and alters its brightness to suit ambient conditions.

■ There’s no digital assistant, you can’t download extra apps, and even ones like Connect TV only work with a Oneplus telly that’s not available in the UK. Still, it’ll take blood oxygen readings, including at night.

■ At the start of every workout, GPS mapping takes a small age to kick in. We’re talking eight minutes to start recording your location, so run 5km and it’ll tell you you’ve only run 3.5km. Triffic.

■ Well, it could use its motion sensors to estimate distance then switch to GPS… but no, it spreads the distance over the total time so every kilometre is registered as ultra-slow, not just the first one or two. How the stats end up in this state boggles the mind.

■ This has knock-on effects for the watch’s more hardcore fitness measurement, VO2 Max. We usually score a 51; the Oneplus Watch gave us 24, suggesting we spent lockdowns one, two and three eating crisps in a cellar.

Tech specs

Screen 1.39in 454x454 OLED Processor Oneplus (undisclosed) Storage 4GB OS Oneplus OS

Battery life Up to 14 days Sensors Accelerometer, gyro, barometer, compass, heart rate, SPO2

Water/dust-resistance IP68 Dimensions 46x46x10.9mm, 45g