OnePlus has officially pulled back the curtain on the Watch 2R – an aluminum variant of the regular Watch 2 that arrived earlier this year.
The Wear OS smartwatch has been slowly tiptoeing into the spotlight since the brand launched it in its native China last month. And now, it’s going global with a price tag that’s a decent chunk less than its sibling – $229.99/ £249 / €279.
Largely, though, this is the same watch we’ve already thoroughly tested – and also got our hands on again with the Nordic Blue Edition that arrived in April.
It has a 100-hour battery life (in the power-saving ‘Smart Mode’), Wear OS 4 and everything still runs through the Snapdragon W5 chip.
The only key difference, aside from a slight redesign of the case’s right edge, is the weight.
It’s not explicitly mentioned by the brand – only that the Watch 2R is 25% lighter – but this would put the case weight around 35-40g, down from the original’s near-50g heft.
This would mean it’s still not ultra-light, but, considering weight on the wrist was one of our big complaints when reviewing the Watch 2, we’re pleased to see an aluminum option offered here to support the solid sports tracking (which still includes dual-frequency GNSS).
OnePlus also notes that the 2R arrives with improvements to its health platform, OHealth, though this mostly appears to be a UI facelift to make things like sleep tracking easier to digest.
So, again, that’s about it for the Watch 2R. At first glance, it appears to be very similar to the mid-cycle Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 Enduro – a smartwatch that addresses a couple of complaints but perhaps doesn’t go far enough.
The price is lower, but it’s still double that of budget Wear OS watches like the Xiaomi Watch 2, and, ultimately, the weight concern could have also been addressed by reducing the case size and broadening the appeal to women and those with smaller wrists.
We’ll reserve our full judgment for testing, but our first impressions are that we wish OnePlus went slightly bolder here.
