Oppo Watch X3 review – slick style, excellent features and battery life other brands can only dream of

Oppo has already impressed customers with their impressive smartphones but it also has a lot to be proud of with the Oppo Watch X3 which can stand shoulder to shoulder with the Apple Watch and Samsung’s Galaxy Watch in terms of features and design.

But one area the Oppo Watch X3 dominates is battery life.

We’re talking more than two week between charges.

Try doing that with the Apple Watch and Galaxy Watch.

The Oppo Watch X3 is made of aerospace-grade titanium alloy and covered in sapphire glass so it is not only attractive but also durable.

But it is still light and comfortable to wear all day and night.

Oppo has used an optimised internal structure to give the Watch X3 a slimmer and lighter profile at just 11mm thickness and weighing just 43g.

That makes it 13.4 per cent lighter and 6.3 per cent thinner than the Watch X2.

The device is running Wear OS by Google and is compatible with both iPhones and Android smartphones.

It is powered by dual chips including the Snapdragon W5 Gen 1.

The 1.5-inch AMOLED display has a pixel density of 310 ppi with up to 3000 nits brightness.

It is bright and sharp and easy to read at any time of the day or night.

There is a huge selection of watch faces that Oppo offers which suits any style and any function.

Some days we preferred to go for style and chose a face with a hands and a nice face while other days we wanted all the information within easy reach so we switched to a different digital face.

And you can edit the complications to suit what you want.

For example, we made one complication to show Sydney time, so when we were travelling, we could easily tell what time it was back home.

There is a decent range of watch faces but being Wear OS there’s also plenty of others you can buy and download from the Google Play Store.

But these watch faces come with a warning because they are not designed by Oppo and could potentially impact your battery performance.

We tried a couple of these faces and we didn’t notice any adverse effect on the battery.

The Oppo Watch X3 has Google Gemini on board, which puts a highly credentialed assistant right there on your wrist.

It allows users to send messages and complete tasks and answer questions and find important details while your phone is still tucked away in your bag or pocket.
And it’s certainly smart in every sense of the word.

It shares notifications from your phone and allows you to even answer calls on your wrist via Bluetooth.

It also does a great job tracking your health and fitness.

The Oppo Watch X3 has an optimised professional running mode to give you in-depth analysis.

In outdoor running mode you’re getting also real-time feedback on ground contact time, vertical oscillation and left and right balance.

It also has a built-in pacer to get the most out of your run and is equipped with dual-band GPS so you get precise positioning to help you reach your fitness goals.

For swimmers the Oppo Watch X3 is equally useful.

Naturally it is waterproof and can capture your swimming strokes whether you’re in a pool or in open water and provide data including swimming pace, stroke type, and GPS trajectory.

In fact there are more than 100 workout modes available, including walking, cycling, and even for sports like tennis and badminton.

If you’re in the gym, it has additional modes for the elliptical trainer and rowing machine so you’re getting credit for all your workouts.

On the wellness side Oppo has a new Sense algorithm and a new three-stage sensor window along with an updated heart rate module and an eight-channel optical heart rate sensor that works along with 16-channel optical blood oxygen sensor for all-day health monitoring and alerts.

One favourite feature was the 60-second wellness overview, which involves you placing your finger on the electrode on the side of the watch.

From here it can perform an ECG, check your heart rate and resting heart rate and your blood oxygen level.

And if you have worn the watch to bed, you’ll even get three sleep health indicators, including baseline heart rate, wrist temperature and an overall sleep score.

The 2atch connects to the Oppo OHealth app, which is available free on both iOS and Android, and offers insights enhanced with machine learning and big data models to give you an excellent overview of your health and behavioural data.

Users can enable more features within the app to include tracking your sleep and your workouts and viewing all your health data on a dashboard.

This means you’re not only seeing the numbers but also getting help to plan daily routines and build healthier habits.

The Oppo Watch X3 also has fall detection. If a user has a fall and remains still for longer than a minute afterwards, the watch will automatically activate the emergency SOS feature and call an ambulance.

You can also add your cards to Google Pay and pay with a flick of your wrist.

But the biggest and best feature is the incredible battery life.

With regular use you are looking at around a week before you need to recharge and that includes using all the other features and exercising.

There is also a power saver mode to stretch the battery life up to 16 days and this is still with all the essential features enabled.

That’s one advantage the Oppo Watch X3 has over its competition – it doesn’t need to be charged every day.

One thing we didn’t like was not being able to tell if the watch was unlocked.

Every time you take it off, you need to enter a four-digit passcode but that doesn’t show up unless you are trying to do something.

It will display the time like normal and most of the time we assumed it was unlocked.

But then when it came to wondering why we can’t see notifications we realised that we had to punch in the four-digit code.

The Apple Watch has the same sort of security but it displays the keypad on your wrist and nothing else until you’ve entered your PIN code.

If the Oppo Watch X3 did the same thing, it would save us from going hours at a time without realising the watch is locked.

The Oppo Watch X3 is available now and is priced at $699. It comes in two colours – obsidian black and misty titanium.

VERDICT

The Oppo Watch X3 is an impressive device that can be used by iPhone and Android users. It has a stylish and sleek design and a range of essential features and assistance right there on your wrist and a battery life that other brands can only dream about.