Review: Oppo Watch 46mm

I get it, Apple is very successful and everyone wants a piece of that pie, but damn, Oppo are pulling no punches here with their “Oppo Watch“. The box, the design, the materials and basically everything except the operating system are heavily inspired by the Apple Watch. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, I guess?

The 46mm wi-fi unit sent to me retails for $529, but you can get it various sizes and colours, with or without LTE, off Oppo’s Amazon AU store. It runs Google’s Wear OS, which is good as Wear OS is great. This isn’t a review of Wear OS, so I’ll leave the details out comparing watchOS and Wear OS.

Setup is a piece of cake and all your Google crap carries over nicely without having to re-enter passwords.

Fit and finish wise, the Oppo Watch is really nice. No complaints at all in that department. Screen is bright, touches are responsive. The UI is slick and the the band is as good as a legit Apple Watch. I was surprised at the speed considering it is using a kinda old Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 SoC. This thing with the Snapdragon 4100 would be a treat.

I found battery life to be a bit shy of the Series 6 Apple Watch. I can usually get 3 days out of the Apple Watch before it needs to charge, but the Oppo Watch needed topping up after 2 days on my wrist instead of the Apple Watch. Charging is super quick though – just takes 15 minutes to add in about half the battery. Great if you wear it 24/7 and just take it off to shower.

There’s loads of fitness crap on there I don’t use – just like an Apple Watch. There’s an NFC chip so you can use Google Pay on it like you would Apple Pay. It’s amazing how similar everything is on this thing to an Apple Watch. The only thing missing is the Digital Crown. It’s way nicer to scroll through things with the crown than swiping.

Look, I’ll be honest – this is clearly a knockoff Apple Watch and Wear OS pales compared to watchOS. The only thing I liked better on the Oppo Watch compared to my Apple Watch is Google Assistant due to the fact it ties into way more smart home stuff and is way more advanced at understanding questions than Siri.

That said, if you’re an Android fan, the Oppo Watch is cut above most Wear OS smart watches and should be on your shopping list.