The Oppo Watch X is the Chinese company’s latest and greatest smartwatch. The headline feature of the flagship wearable is its longevity: it promises up to 100 hours of use (that’s about four days) on a single charge, which is really quite impressive and achievable.
I’ve used the Watch X for a couple of weeks now as my daily driver, and while it is certainly a long-lasting smartwatch, there are also some aspects of the wearable that could be improved upon. Nonetheless, for RM1,399, it’s a high-end smartwatch with reasonably good value for money.
What It Is
The Oppo Watch X runs on a “dual engine architecture,” as Oppo puts it. Basically, the watch is powered by two chips: there’s the Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 SoC for more demanding tasks, and a BES2700 MCU chip for power efficiency.
It is this unique hardware configuration – along with a hybrid version of Wear OS 4 – that allows the Watch X to deliver up to 100 hours of use in the full-featured Smart Mode or up to 12 days in Power Saver Mode. Other specifications of the smartwatch include a 1.43-inch 466 x 466 circular AMOLED screen protected by a sapphire crystal cover, a stainless steel case, a 500mAh battery, as well as an IP68 rating and 5ATM water resistance.
Priced at RM1,399 in Malaysia, the Watch X is offered in two colours. The model pictured here is the Platinum Black colour option, while the other colourway is Mars Brown with a brown strap and silver case.
The Good Stuff
Battery life of the Oppo Watch X is really its biggest appeal, especially for a full-fledged smartwatch. With the always-on display (AOD) enabled, I can easily get three days of use out of the watch’s 500mAh battery. I reckon with AOD disabled, Oppo’s 100 hours of quoted battery life for the Watch X is achievable.
That being said, in order to get this level of battery life, the “dual engine architecture” of the Watch X does have its fair share of shortcomings. I’ll elaborate more on this in the next section of the review.
Another noteworthy feature of the Watch X is its sports tracking capabilities, especially when it comes to racquet sports. In tennis, for example, the watch can track the amount of serves I did while also keeping track of how many shots I took in total. This is quite a sophisticated level of tracking, and of course, the watch also collects the usual heart rate data.
Let’s come back around to the AOD of the Watch X, which I am quite a fan of. Not only is it bright enough to be visible in all kinds of lighting conditions, the watch face also looks great. At certain angles, it even looks like a traditional wristwatch – with solid build quality to boot – which is a good thing in my book.
Running on a hybrid version of Wear OS 4 to best make use of the Watch X’s two chips, the user experience is…good, for the most part. Once the phone is “fully awoken” and running on the faster Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 SoC, the watch feels fast and responsive with no hints of slowdown; just like what you’d expect from a flagship smartwatch.
However, whenever the Watch X is switching between the two chips, that’s when issues start cropping up. Alas, I digress – I will circle back to this in the next section as I’ve mentioned earlier on.
Beyond that, replying to notifications on the Watch X is a pleasant, seamless experience. Whether I want to dictate a reply or write my own message – with a full-size keyboard that supports swipe typing! – the watch can do it all without fuss. Honestly, I’m really impressed with how accurate the compact on-screen keyboard is.
Now, let’s switch gears and finally talk about the not-so-great aspects of the Watch X in the following section.
The Bad Stuff
My major qualm with the Oppo Watch X is the fact that it is not as responsive as it should be; this is especially evident when I receive notifications. Once I get a notification on my phone, for example, it takes the watch a few moments to vibrate to let me know that I have…well, a notification.
And even after the Watch X has vibrated, there is still a noticeable delay before it actually shows me the notification. I reckon this delay is caused by the so-called dual engine architecture of the watch as it switches between the lower-powered BES2700 MCU chip to the faster Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 SoC.
Aside from that, there’s the fact that the Watch X is quite a big and heavy smartwatch, making it feel rather unwieldy on my wrist. This isn’t much of a negative to me when I’m just wearing the watch as I go about my day, but when I’m doing more fast-paced sports like badminton, the extra weight and size of the watch does feel a tad cumbersome. It doesn’t help that I need to wear the watch on my dominant wrist for more accurate tracking too.
Is It Worth It?
Despite its drawbacks, the Oppo Watch X is still an excellent smartwatch running on Google’s Wear OS 4 software with very long battery life, solid build quality, robust sports tracking, and a rather reasonable RM1,399 asking price. On top of that, you can even get a RM100 discount on the watch if you purchase it by 21 April. An additional strap can also be purchased for only RM1 instead of its full RM129 price tag during the promotion period.
Even though I’m not thrilled by the delayed notification of the Watch X and its large, heavy design, I do think it’s one of the better premium smartwatches for Android in the market now. Hopefully, Oppo will further refine the software experience of its flagship smartwatch moving forward.