When I received my OnePlus Watch 3 review unit, part of me wondered, “What’s gonna be wrong with this one?” Now, I know. On the backplate, permanently engraved in stainless steel, is a typo. Instead of reading “Made in China,” it reads “Meda in China.”
To be fair, this is a minuscule error. I didn’t even notice it on my review unit until I spied an Android Police article in my feed pointing it out. But, in the history of OnePlus’ many smartwatch sins, this unfixable typo both makes complete sense — and is a major relief.
To understand why, you have to remember that the original OnePlus Watch was an unmitigated disaster. An abomination of a smartwatch, riddled with software errors and personally, the worst product I have ever tested in my career. In my review, I wrote that it’s health and fitness tracking was so inaccurate, it deserved the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The only smartwatch that could be conceivably worse is will.i.am’s Puls smartwatch, but I was fortunate enough to dodge that bullet. So traumatized was I by the OnePlus Watch, I was wary of the OnePlus Watch 2 when it launched last year.
But aside from that one cardinal sin and a sike of a delivery snafu, the OnePlus Watch 2 ended up being a redemption story. Not only was it a smartwatch that worked, it ended up becoming an excellent alternative to Google and Samsung smartwatches for Android users. I’m still testing the OnePlus Watch 3, but so far I have little to complain about, especially since the company finally introduced a proper rotating crown. And, if anything, I’m heartened to see that OnePlus’ signature oops this time around is a minor typo that most users will never really see. One could also argue that the misprint makes this first edition batch a collector’s item. That’s progress.
Besides, as far as typos go, it could’ve been far worse. At least OnePlus didn’t do a Mattel and accidentally misprint a link to a porn site on the product packaging. Compared to that, a “Meda in China” typo is actually kind of adorable.
