I was searching for a smartwatch for a long time. For years. But wherever I looked, all models offered a) good performance but a small battery or b) poor performance but a battery that lasts several days. The only reasonable watch seemed to be the Apple Watch.. but.. yeah.. not a real option for an Android user. There was not a single other model that could satisfy my needs: performance, a heartbeat sensor, reasonable design as well as a battery that is capable of lasting for more than a day. And I didn’t want to spend 400€ on that thing. While some models seemed to fulfill all needs, many got bad reviews because of a poor build quality.
Stage enter: Ticwatch Pro
While I do not remember where I found the Ticwatch Pro, I was instantly surprised by the offered watch: modern components, good battery, neat design and the price tag of about 250€ was also pretty pleasing. But one feature that really got me is the second monochrome display on top of the AMOLED display. This seconds display is active while the regular watch face if powered off, and shows only little but useful information: time, steps and the date. This allows the watch to be usable while saving a lot of battery life.
Other Specs:
- 512MB RAM, 4GB Storage
- Processor: Snapdragon Wear 2100
- 415mAH battery capacity
- Main Display: 1.39-Zoll AMOLED 400×400 pixels
- Bluetooth 4.2
- 2.4GHz WiFi
- OS: Wear OS by Google
- Payments via Google Pay and NFC
- GPS, heart rate sensor
- IP68 rating: dust and splash water resistant, water resistant up to 1m for a short amount of time
First impressions of the Ticwatch
The watch is a solid product. It’s fast and loads all apps within a reasonable amount of time. The RAM of 512 MB seems to be enough to handle the every-day usage including notifications, heart rate measurement, step counting, music controls via Spotify and regular updates of the weather. In the past days of trying the watch I used between 40-70% of the battery, depending on how much I used the watch. That means that even if I forget to load the watch in the night I can still use it the next day. The essential mode that turns off the regular watch face and shows the monochromatic display all time is enabled automatically if the battery load reaches a certain percentage.
I will test the watch over the course of the next week under special conditions: maybe hard weather including rain, doing some fitness with the watch and continuing the every-day usage including high usage while being out on the weekends. So far there’s nothing to complain about and I am pretty happy about the watch.
Ticwatch Pro + Ticband
Mobvoi, the manufacturer, currently offers a special bundle that contains both the Ticwatch as well as the Ticband. The Ticband is a small fitness tracker more similar to the older Fitbit and Jawbone trackers. It features the usual step counting, a heart rate sensor with 25/7 monitoring and time displaying. It’s a very basic tracker, yet a perfect addition to the Ticwatch. While the Ticwatch is loading over night you can still track your heart rate and your sleep using the Ticband. I also prefer to wear the Ticband at home because it’s much lighter and I rarely use notification support or other smartwatch features at home.
The Ticband itself seems to be no regular product any more and is either being sold until stocks are empty or just offered as a special bundle with the watches, at least you can’t find any information about the band on the Mobvoi website.
Both devices sync with the phone via Bluetooth. The statistics are synced with the Mobvoi app which can pass the data to Google Fit or other providers like Strava. That way all health related stats are always up to date on the phone and you do not lose a single step while you can’t or don’t want to wear the heavy watch.
