Realme Watch review: I’m using the Realme Watch for about 10 days now and here’s what I think about it.
For a fitness enthusiast like me, tracking daily activities and steps is crucial and hence I rely a lot on a fitness band. With nearly three months locked inside home amid the pandemic, the Realme Band helped me a lot in keeping track of daily steps and also reminded me to drink water on time. About 10 days ago, I switched to the Realme Watch which has been launched in India at an aggressive price of Rs 3,999.
Founded around two years ago, Realme is among the fastest-growing smartphone brands in the country. After becoming one of the top players in the Indian smartphone market Realme now eyes to become the industry leader in the smartwatch, wireless audio, and smartTV space. Ahead of the launch of the Realme TV and Realme Watch, the company’s India head Madhav Sheth had said the company has very different goals for 2020.
The last two years have been all about smartphones — from budget to flagship — but this year will be equally about smart home and lifestyle products, Sheth had said. The company will launch more TVs, more wireless audio products, and other smart home devices in the months to come. I used the Realme Band as well as the Buds Air and both offered pretty good value for the money.
After almost 10 days of use, here’s what I think about the Realme Watch.
What’s good and not so good
The Watch feels sturdy and fits pretty well in my hand — which is one of the first things one checks before buying a watch, be it smart or not. I’m using the black strap but if you want to try out different colour straps — there are options available in blue, green, and red.
The 1.4-inch coloured touch display offers screen resolution of 320×320 pixels and gets pretty bright under the scorching sun even in 20 per cent brightness level. Indoors, 10 per cent brightness worked pretty well for me. I could read messages, emails clearly. Outdoors I had to increase the brightness level by 10 per cent and that was more than enough. You can adjust the brightness from the watch itself and don’t have to switch to your phone to the Realme Link app every time.
However, I do feel that the bezels on this one could have been slightly slimmer to make it look much better and offer a better viewing experience.
A bright screen helped in offering extended battery life. In my 10 days of usage, the Realme Watch charge dropped from 100 to 12 per cent which is pretty good given I used the watch 24×7. The watch comes with a separate charger in the box, you will just need to connect the charger to an adapter and place the watch on top of it.
It offers various exercise modes including Indoor and Outdoor run, Walk, Outdoor and Indoor cycling, Aerobic Capacity, Strength training, Football, Basketball, Table Tennis, Badminton, Cricket and many more. I could only test the Walk and Outdoor run modes given it isn’t very safe to step out without right now. The step tracking appears to be pretty accurate. The watch also offers an option for meditation which is extremely important for mental peace right now.
Setting up the watch is simple and takes only a few minutes. First power up the watch by clicking on the right side button and then open the Realme Link app on your smartphone. Turn on Bluetooth of the phone and select Realme Watch from the list displayed on the app. Realme Link will then pair with Realme Watch. To set up the watch you can use the Realme Link app.
There are also features such as sleep monitoring, heart rate monitoring, drinking water, and SpO2. For the hydration reminder, you can set the time gap in which you want the watch to remind you to drink water. The sleep and heart monitoring also seemed pretty accurate, but for this, you will need to wear the watch at all times.
Similar to all other smartwatches, the Realme Watch also comes with several smart features such as smart notifications, unlock phone, and take photos. The watch can receive almost all app notifications and show some corresponding icons and can be paired with smartphones and supports the display of calls, SMS and third-party app messages including Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram.
It can automatically unlock the phone, play or pause music on phone, and operate our phone camera remotely. To capture photos using the Realme Watch just connect the watch to your phone first open the camera app on the phone and ‘Take photo’ option on watch and click on the button on the watch when ready for a picture.
At this aggressive pricing, Realme Watch comes with IP68 water-resistant. I had the watch on while washing utensils and doing other household chores and the watch works perfectly fine. Another thing I like about the Realme Watch is its weight. The watch is extremely light and you will be able to wear it all through the day very easily.
What you must know before buying Realme Watch
The Realme Watch comes with 12 in-built watch faces that can display six key data points – time, date, weather, steps, heart rate, and calories. You will be able to download additional watch faces from the Realme Link app. The company has confirmed that Realme will provide more than 100 new watch faces via OTA update very soon.
The watch can be controlled using the Realme Link app which is just available for Android right now. However, the company has confirmed to bring the application to the Apple App store very soon. So, to use the Realme Watch I had to connect it to my Redmi Note 9 Pro Max as there’s no way to connect to my iPhone.
As far as the notifications are concerned, the Watch shows only the latest message or email that you receive but to read them you will need to switch to your smartphone. For calls too, the watch notifies you but doesn’t let you answer it which I feel is extremely important for a smartwatch.
Despite a few drawbacks, overall I feel the Realme Band is worth Rs 3,999. So, if you have a low budget and use an Android phone go for it.
