Personally, I’ve been using a fitness tracker or smartwatch of some sort for over 6 years. My initial experience with a fitness tracker was with an Alcatel Fitness band which came with the Alcatel Idol X+, about two years later I moved to a smartwatch and treated myself to the LG Watch Urbane which was my first time with a SmartWatch. For a fitness enthusiast like me, tracking daily activity is crucial and hence I rely on my fitness band and smartwatch a lot. Being locked inside my gated community for about three months during the coronavirus pandemic, the Realme Band and Xiaomi Band helped a lot in keeping track of daily steps and also kept reminding me to have a regular water intake. When the Realme Watch was announced in India for an aggressive price of Rs 3,999.
Realme was founded about two years ago and is one of the fastest-growing smartphone brands in the country. After taking control over the smartphone market in India, Realme is now looking at other smart appliances including a smartwatch, wireless audio, and the TV markets.
After completely focusing on the smartphone market for two years, Realme is now looking to launch their new TV and Watch into the market. According to a statement by Madhav Seth, the company is launching more TVs, wireless audio devices, and other smart home devices. After using the Realme Watch for a couple of days and understanding the features being offered for the price, here’s our opinion on the same.
The Realme Watch feels sturdy and fits pretty well in the hand, this is extremely important and one of the first things that are important before you decide on buying a smartwatch or even a regular watch. The watch comes in multiple strap options including blue, green, red, and black. The display on the smartwatch is a 1.4-inch color touch panel with a resolution of 320 x 320. While this feels like extremely low resolution for most people used to QuadHD+ displays on the smartphones, the 320 x 320 display on the Smartwatch is crisp enough and surely ahead of the competition.
We had the brightness set pretty low at just 20-percent and the display seemed pretty bright even under direct sunlight. We were able to read messages, run through the navigations, and other features in the outdoors without having to bump up the brightness way too high. The software interface on the watch comes with the basic functions and allows you to perform most actions without having to open the Realme Link app each time.
While the display feels good overall with decent size and resolution, however, the bezels on the smartwatch could have been a little slimmer to make it look a lot better and offer a much better viewing experience. The bright display is extremely useful and in about 10 days of our usage, we saw the battery drop from 100 to 15 which is pretty good given the fact that we used it on a daily basis for the most part. The watch comes with a dedicated charger in the box and will need to be connected to an adapter with the watch placed on top of it.
The Realme Watch comes with multiple exercise modes including indoor and outdoor run, walk, and more. There is even indoor and outdoor cycling, strength training, aerobic capacity, basketball, table tennis, and badminton along with other activities. We tested out Walk and Run modes both indoor on a treadmill and outdoor. We even tested the Cycling mode indoor on our B’Twin trainer with mixed results. The step tracking on the Realme Watch was pretty accurate and the watch also comes with a meditate option which is extremely important to ensure mental peace.
Setting up the Realme Watch is simple and was fulfilled in just a few minutes, you can turn on the watch by using the power button to the right side and then open the Realme Link app on the smartphone. You will now have to turn on Bluetooth of the phone and then select the Realme Watch from the list displayed on the app. The Realme Link app will then pair with the Realme Watch that you have, you will need the Realme Link app to setup the smartwatch on your smartphone.
The watch also comes with features such as sleep monitoring, heart rate monitoring, SpO2, and drinking water tracking. For the hydration reminder, you have an option to set the time gap in which you want to be reminded to drink the water. The sleep and heart rate monitoring were pretty accurate for the most part but for it to work, you will need to have the watch on you all the time to ensure continuous and accurate results.
Realme Watch is similar to a lot of other smartwatches and comes with several smart features such as notifications, taking photos, and unlocking phones. The watch can also receive app notifications and show the corresponding icons when it is paired with a smartphone. It displays the calls, SMS, and even third-party app notifications including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
You can use the unlock the phone feature, control playback of music on the smartphone, and operate the camera of the smartphone remotely. You can capture photos using the watch after you connect the watch to your smartphone, then open the camera app on the phone and click on the Take Photo option on the watch when you are ready to take the picture.
The watch comes with IP68 water-resistance and this can be vouched for as we got drenched in heavy rainfall, washed utensils, and at a point even took a shower with the watch on. The watch is also extremely light, and you will be able to wear it all thought he day without giving much notice towards the watch or its weight on your hand.
The Realme Watch comes with 12 watch faces that can display different data points including time, date, weather, heart rate, steps, and more. You can also download additional watch faces from the Realme Link app and the company has confirmed that they will provide over 100 new watch faces through OTA updates. The android app is already available, and the company has assured that they will bring an iOS version of the app very soon making the app compatible with iPhones. Despite a few drawbacks, we feel that this might be one of the best smartwatch options at the given price.
