The OnePlus Watch 2R exceeded my low fitness expectations

Marketing for the new OnePlus Watch 2R pitches it as a sporty, durable Wear OS watch to “inspire an active lifestyle,” with a lighter design for “those who value all-day fitness tracking.” I love watches that cater directly to my needs, but my colleagues who tested the OnePlus Watch 2 criticized its health data as its Achilles’ heel. So I decided to test the Watch 2R’s accuracy for myself.

With the original OnePlus Watch 2Our reviewer Harish complained that it “just isn’t reliable at counting daily steps or tracking activity,” that it miscalculated calories burned after workouts, and that its stress data was artificially inflated.

Meanwhile, my colleague Nick made a Testing the OnePlus Watch 2 for a week and had similar complaints about underestimated steps and significantly lower heart rate figures during anaerobic workouts. Both Nick and Harish suspected that the watch was using its low-power RTOS coprocessor to handle health and fitness sampling and that it wasn’t fast or consistent enough to get adequate readings.

This made me hesitant to try the OnePlus Watch 2R, a fitness watch that, in theory, couldn’t handle physical activity all that well. So, just like my Galaxy Watch Ultra Fitness Test Last week, I put on two smartwatches to see how the Watch 2R could compete with my Garmin Forerunner 965 when it came to heart rate and dual-band GPS accuracy.

My fitness test with the OnePlus Watch 2R

OnePlus’ OHealth companion app doesn’t let you export TCX/GPX files like Samsung Health does, and I had some trouble getting it to work. Health Connection to submit my data correctly, so I couldn’t make my usual HR or GPS graphs for direct comparison – I’ll use tables as a fallback for now.

On my first run, the OnePlus Watch 2R was pretty much on par with the Garmin Forerunner 965. I checked heart rate at ten different time stamps, and the 2R matched the 965 four times and was 1 bpm below six times, which matches the average of 1 bpm below.

GPS accuracy remained mostly in the sweet spot. It’s hard to say whether the OnePlus’ dual-band accuracy is more or less reliable than the Garmin’s, as both maps had me running off the sidewalk at odd times, but I appreciated that they both generally agreed on a run with some signal-blocking foliage.

In terms of running dynamics, the OnePlus Watch 2R synced up pretty well for stride length and average vertical ratio, but measured my vertical oscillation as 1cm shorter and average ground contact time as 18ms longer.

I ran eight 400m laps in my second track run, and as expected, Garmin stayed on point because it uses saved track maps to determine your likely location. OnePlus had more trouble: the Watch 2R kept vibrating my wrist with lap or mile times at the 350m mark, consistently. It was as if the starting point was completely wrong, but then the GPS was millimetre accurate when I got to that incorrect spot. Still, it was off my calculated pace by a decent margin.

I figured heart rate for a hard-paced track workout would be the sticking point, but its heart rate average was more accurate than the Galaxy Watch Ultra during my track workout last week. It certainly didn’t quite hit Garmin’s results (typically 1 to 3 bpm lower at any given time), but it typically settled into the right number given enough time. The Watch 2R certainly fared better than the Watch 2 in this area.

Again, OnePlus’ running dynamics data differs from Garmin’s in small details. I don’t quite understand how OnePlus said I took more steps per minute while keeping my feet on the ground for longer. However, I did notice after my run that OHealth had my height listed as 5’7 (I’m 6’1), so maybe that skewed the results for things like vertical oscillation. Anyway, It’s not worth obsessing over running form datain my opinion.

Overall impressions of the OnePlus Watch 2R fitness tracker

This may simply be a case of low expectations skewing my impressions, but the OnePlus Watch 2R looks like a solid budget device. fitness watchIt has a comfortable weight for its screen size, a three-day battery life with Wear OS 4, the Google Assistant, and a $229 price tag you’d expect from an Amazfit watch, not something with proper app support.

OHealth provides detailed and surprisingly accessible running data, offering detailed context for certain stats like training effect, running dynamics, VO2 max, and recovery time, even though Garmin wants me to rest one more day and has my VO2 max. slightly smaller.

That said, it’s still pretty basic compared to other fitness apps out there. OHealth provides a lot of individual run data, but its long-term training load and workout summary data is pretty simplistic. If I were to use the Watch 2R long-term, I’d most likely auto-sync data to Strava and rely on that.

Returning to my colleagues’ complaints about the original OnePlus Watch 2, my final step count on both runs was 11,670 for the Forerunner 965 and 11,560 for the Watch 2R.

Garmin watches outperform all other brands in my opinion. first and Second step counting testsso I’ll treat the first number as an accurate control group. About 100 steps difference in 11,000 steps is almost a rounding error and significantly better than the OnePlus Watch 2 compared to the Pixel Watch 2 over the same distance (1,860 fewer steps). The same is true for my recent test of the Galaxy Watch Ultra against the Forerunner 965 after 10,000 steps (348 fewer steps).

OnePlus did not report calories burned compared to Garmin, but to be honest, I have… never I’ve seen two watch brands agree on the number of calories burned. I don’t know what’s behind that algorithm or how to tell which ones are in your favor or disappointing you. So I’m not too worried that OnePlus seems to be on the lower end, as it’s just an estimate.

Really, my biggest complaint with the OnePlus Watch 2R is the same one I have with the Galaxy Watch Ultra: the lack of crownOnePlus gave the Watch 2 an inactive crown that spins around and does nothing, while the Watch 2 has two simple buttons, one of which opens workouts by default unless you change the shortcut. I appreciate that, but the sweat-stained screens in the images above should show why I don’t like relying on swiping during workouts. I’ll take up/down buttons or a crown any day.

I need more time for a full review of the OnePlus Watch 2R that goes into the health and sleep aspect of it. But I’m much more optimistic about its chances of being worthwhile for casual athletes than I was a week ago, and that it compares to the The best cheap Android watches for the quality.