Amia DalveyOctober 7, 2022, 20:21:56 IST
Rating: 3.5 / 5
Price: 4,999 rupees
Realme recently launched its third generation fitness watch in India. The successor to the Watch 2 Pro is now on your wrist. For the exact same price as its predecessor at launch, the Realme Watch 3 Pro features a larger AMOLED display, Bluetooth connectivity, and better GPS connectivity. .
Image credits: Tech2 | Ameya Darvi
What I liked about the Realme Watch 3 Pro:
Lightweight and comfortable to wear
It’s a standard rectangular design that’s neither special nor bad, but the screen is a bit larger than before. It is mostly made of plastic, but the build quality is very good. Despite the slight increase in size, we were able to keep the weight close to 40 grams with the help of the straps. this is good. The silicone strap fits comfortably on my wrist and I wore the watch all day without any skin irritation.
Bigger, clearer AMOLED display with vibrant colors
As I mentioned earlier, the screen size has increased slightly from 1.75 inches to 1.78 inches, and the screen resolution has similarly increased to 368 x 448 pixels. This equates to a pixel density of 325 pixels per inch, which is quite impressive. The biggest change here is that you can now use AMOLED screens instead of regular LCD screens. Vibrant color reproduction, as well as sharpness. You can choose from 5 levels of brightness. Level 3 or 60% is bright enough without the sun, but should be increased for readability in bright sunlight.
Image credits: Tech2 | Ameya Darvi
To turn on the screen, you have to move your wrist or press a single physical button on the right side. Wake by flick works well in most cases. You have the option to turn this feature off to prevent your screen from unintentionally glowing when you go to bed or in a dark room. This time, Realme opted for a scratch-resistant coating on the screen, but did not specify any details. No scratches after two weeks of use.
easy to use
The user interface of the clock is simple even for beginners. Swipe down for quick settings, swipe up for notifications, and swipe left or right to switch between widgets like daily activity progress, heart rate, sleep information, weather, and more. Swipe right in the list to go to the previous screen. The physical button can also be used as a back button outside of the home screen. Tap it on the home screen to reveal the app drawer. All the features of the watch are neatly listed and scrolling is very smooth.
Image credits: Tech2 | Ameya Darvi
The user interface and transition effects are lag-free. Of course, you cannot install additional applications on this watch. This is the case for all watches in this price range. The companion app offers several customization options such as watch faces and enabling or disabling certain features. However, as I will touch on later in this article, I would have liked a little more.
Full of useful functions
Realme Watch 3 Pro has a lot of useful features for a budget fitness watch. Without moving your hand, it provides accurate readings within 30 minutes. The readings were at most 1 point lower than normal commercial oximeters. This is acceptable because it serves as a broad guideline and does not replace clinical equipment.
Another feature that the Realme Watch 3 Pro is proud of is the Bluetooth connectivity, which has become very popular recently. I can do that. It’s like a phone speaker. However, you need your mobile phone to route calls to your watch.
Plus, if you stay still for a long time, you’ll receive a reminder to drink water or get up and move around. This watch has some useful features like menstrual cycle tracking, music control, remote camera shutter, and stopwatch. Notifications from selected apps are pushed to the watch, messages are perfectly readable on the watch screen, but you can’t reply to them.
Overall health and fitness tracking works well, and the GPS is accurate
Realme Watch 3 Pro claims to monitor more than 110 different fitness activities, from walking, running and cycling to specific sports like strength training, cricket, table tennis, badminton and soccer. Pro Sports algorithms for smarter tracking of your sports activities. It also enables all-day heart rate monitoring and oxygen level monitoring.
Image credits: Tech2 | Ameya Darvi
The watch is equipped with a multi-system GPS chip, which is great for tracking outdoor activities. Few of the watches in this segment offer this feature. Thanks to it, you don’t need to hold your phone to keep track of your walking or running paths. It gets GPS locked in less than 30 seconds outside and maintains a stable connection until you get back inside. Distance tracking was spot on while walking and jogging, and battery drain was also manageable, with the watch losing about 8-9% of its reserve after an hour of GPS use.
Sleep tracking on this watch comes at a price. It tracks your sleep patterns and provides a breakdown of deep sleep, light sleep, rapid eye movement, wake time, and more. It would have been nice to have more analytics, but at least it seems to track bedtime accurately, there’s one thing the Watch 2 Pro available here lacks – stress monitoring, it’s a burden. Details of your fitness activities can be found in the Realme Link app, which requires you to sync this watch before you can start using it.
What I didn’t like about the Realme Watch 3 Pro:
Insufficient spare battery
This was a surprise and definitely not fun. Its predecessor lasted two weeks with a similar workload, which is what I expected at least when Realme touted the Watch 3 Pro for 10 days. I could only manage 4-5 days on it. For example, when I started testing this watch, it was raining heavily in Mumbai and I couldn’t go outside for four days. By the end of the fourth day, the battery was close to zero.
In the second round, after turning off all-day stress monitoring and not making a GPS call for 1 hour (in total), it lasted 5 days and was still unimpressive. During testing, screen brightness was set to 3, notifications were limited to SMS, and two days of 45-minute fitness activity plus a 30-minute walk with GPS and heart rate monitoring turned on. Three nights of daily sleep and tracked sleep. Some fitness hours can easily exceed two weeks, but a week is minimal these days.
crowded companion app
The company has chosen to make the Realme Link app a single point of contact for all Realme AIoT products, from sync to configuration to purchase. The result is a sense of clutter that can be confusing for new users looking for something specific. At the same time, we welcome a more detailed analysis of the fitness data. For now, it seems too simple and may not take full advantage of the watch’s features.
Image credits: Tech2 | Ameya Darvi
Don’t swim resistance
The Realme Watch 3 Pro’s water resistance is rated IP68, which is excellent. But that doesn’t make it swim-proof, as the ingress protection rating protects the watch from dust and keeps it from being immersed in water to a depth of approximately 1.5 meters for up to 30 minutes. So you can wear it while walking in the rain. It can easily withstand more than a few splashes, but it can’t dive in the pool. 5ATM rating (water resistance to 50 metres) makes the watch ideal for swimming.
Minor operational problems here and there
These aren’t exactly a deal breaker, but they are some minor issues that the company can fix in the future. You can only save 1. So, there are only 4 slots for specific watch faces. A few more could have been nice. A few other customization options would have been nice too, like picking a few widgets of your choice instead of sticking with pre-installed ones.
One small bug is that the “flick to wake” option has no effect even after sleep mode is enabled. In fact, activating sleep mode not only turns off notifications, but the watch also says it disables the “tap to wake” gesture. In practice, the former does not. I have to disable and enable it manually each time. Finally, when you hit a daily milestone, it’s easy to miss because the achievement flashes on your watch screen for only 2 seconds and then disappears. Come to Realme and enjoy the moment a bit after putting it in the tough yard.
Image credits: Tech2 | Ameya Darvi
Price and Verdict:
Realme Watch 3 Pro retails for Rs 4,999 with a one-year warranty. You get a feature-rich watch. You can give up on the fact that it doesn’t hold up to swimming, but you can’t overlook the spare battery sub. If not, this watch isn’t a bad buy at all.
As an alternative in this price range, the Amazfit Bip 3 Pro is a great option under 1,000 rupees with built-in GPS. You’ll have to replace the AMOLED screen with a lower-resolution LCD, but in return you’ll get much better battery life, a great companion app, and a swim-proof watch. Another possible option is the newly launched OnePlus Nord Watch, which looks very promising in early testing. Stay tuned for that detailed review.