Today, OnePlus unveiled five new products, including the Nord 5 mid-range phone and a smaller version of the Watch 3. The 43mm version of the Watch 3 and the new Buds 4 headphones are the only new products to hit the US market, with the rest coming to Europe and India.
The 43mm Watch 3 is exactly what it sounds like: a more compact version of the existing OnePlus watch, which was only available in a single 47mm version. My colleague Victoria Song called this a “big design problem” with the original Watch 3, so the fix is certainly welcome. Not only is the new version much smaller, but it also does away with the angular elements around the rotating crown and button in favor of a simpler, round design that’s less distinctive, but which I certainly like.
The compact design comes at a price for the battery. OnePlus claims the new Watch 3 is 7% thinner and 28% lighter than the original, but its battery lasts only 50% longer. That’s still 60 hours on typical settings, but a far cry from the 120 hours of battery life that was a key selling point the first time around. And this is despite using a much less bright display with a peak brightness of 1000 nits, compared to 2200 for the 47mm model.
As before, it runs the Wear OS operating system and is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 chipset with a second low-power chip that helps to increase battery life. There are also some new features, including reproductive cycle tracking and an updated version of the “Wellness” feature, which uses the watch’s barometer to measure fatigue levels and shows a corresponding emoji. The Watch 3 43 mm is available on the OnePlus website starting today for $299.99 – $100 less than the larger model – and will be available on Amazon and Best Buy in August. In Europe, it will cost 299 euros / 269 pounds.
Another release in the US is the Buds 4, a new pair of affordable headphones. Available in green or gray, they support both Hi-Res and spatial sound, and feature two 11mm and 6mm drivers in each earbud. They are priced at $129.99 in the US and €119/£119 in Europe.
The Nord 5 is the star of the other launches, although it won’t be coming to the US. This mid-range phone will launch in Europe for €449 / £399 based on the Snapdragon 8S Gen 3. It is clearly focused on gaming, has an OLED display with a 144Hz refresh rate, and an unexpectedly powerful 50-megapixel selfie camera.
It’s a big phone with a 6.83-inch display, but it’s relatively thin and light, so it didn’t feel too bulky during my testing. It also follows the OnePlus 13S (known as the 13T in China), which is only sold in Asia, and has ditched the company’s classic notification slider in favor of a new button, the Plus Key. It’s fully customizable, but by default, it triggers (you guessed it!) artificial intelligence.
It’s joined by the Nord CE 5, a €349/£299 phone that looks similar but has compromises in every aspect. It’s slightly smaller, with a 6.77-inch screen and a slower MediaTek Dimensity 8350 Apex chipset. The screen has a lower resolution, refresh rate, and peak brightness, and the camera specs are also less impressive, although at least it has the same 5,200 mAh battery and 80W charging speed as the Nord 5, and the same promise of four years of OS updates.
Finally, the Pad Lite is a cheaper version of the OnePlus tablet lineup. It uses the ugly round camera design of the older Pads (since it was changed on the recent Pad 3), but otherwise it has a lot going for it for the price. It has an 11-inch 2K display (albeit only at 90 Hz) and a decent 9,340 mAh battery. It costs only €229 / £199, but for an additional €30 / £30 you get more RAM, twice the storage space, and LTE support, which sounds like a good deal.
