OPPO Watch Free it looks like a watch but we would rather define it as a hybrid. The dimensions in fact place it halfway between a smartband and a smartwatch.
From a construction point of view, the watch is made of plastic with a proprietary 19 mm rubber strap. It is 11.4 millimeters thick and has a weight (without the strap) of 20.9 grams. It is therefore a product that once worn you will probably forget. The attachment of the strap is then firm and it is almost impossible for it to be released by mistake. On the lower part there is space for the heartbeat sensor and for oxygenation of the blood. The watch withstands immersion up to 5 atmospheres.
From a hardware point of view, however, it is a very simple product. We have Bluetooth, but GPS, NFC, Wi-Fi and also a microphone and speaker are missing. This obviously limits the possibilities of this product enough, which in any case certainly does not want to position itself as a high-end product. The display is a 1.64-inch panel in tech AMOLED. It has a resolution of 280 x 456 pixels. The screen has a good brightness and this also adapts automatically according to the environmental conditions, making sure that there is never a need for human interaction for its adjustment.
From a software point of view this watch has what one would expect, starting from the tracking of over 100 sports. The tracking of physical activity is discreet, even if the data shown in the app are actually not many and as mentioned for the GPS track you will necessarily have to rely on your smartphone. Among other functions we have inactivity notifications, the calculation of blood oxygenation (automatically at night), the calculation of the heartbeat 24 hours a day and a daily summary of the activity carried out during the day.
Other tools include the timer, alarm clock, stopwatch and even an app to keep track of how much we drink. We then have control of the music, lo remote shooting with the camera and the phone finder, to make it ring if we have lost it and it is within Bluetooth range.
The software is fluid overall, but also very simple. Notifications can be read but without emojis and without the ability to reply to messages. Then there is no possibility to set a always-on displaybut at least we have a good number of dials (some even with various information shown at the same time) and the reactivation to the movement of the wrist works as it should.
From the application it is possible to decide which applications should send notifications to the smartwatch and also various health settings, such as the heart rate update rate or if we want heart rate warnings too high. A curiosity: the smartwatch can track sleep and also tell us how much we snored, but to do this you will have to leave the smartphone on with the app open and the function started. A little cumbersome.
OPPO Watch Free has a cost of € 99 and is currently not available on Amazon, but you can find it on other stores, such as for example Unieuro. That’s a bit steep when you consider the number of features available and what the competition offers.
