Mobvoi, popular for its wearables, launched TicWatch GTH, the company’s latest smartwatch in India last month. It has a large 1.55-inch LCD screen, SpO2 or blood oxygen monitoring, in addition to heart rate monitoring, and also has the ability to monitor skin temperature which is the main highlight of the smartwatch. Is it worth the price? Let us find out.
Box Contents
- TicWatch GTH in Black colour
- Charging dock
- User manual
Design and Build
The TicWatch GTH has the square design that is similar to most watches. It measures 43.2 x 35.2 x 10.5mm and weighs 59.4 grams with the strap since it has a metal casing that offers a premium look. The smartwatch has 5ATM water resistance, so you can even wear when swimming, and this is available only in few fitness trackers in the price range. There is Accelerometer, Heart Rate Monitor, SpO2 Sensor, Low Latency Off-Body Sensor, Skin Temperature Sensor, Respiration Sensor, again a rare thing to see in a watch in the price range. It uses Bluetooth 5.1 to connect to Android and iOS devices.
Coming to the strap, it is a 20mm interchangeable strap made of skin-friendly thermoplastic polyurethane. There is a single function button on the right side with a metal finish that lets you wake up the watch and also use the features.
On the back, you can see the heart rate and SpO2 sensors that have glowing green and Red LED lights when you are using it to measure heart rate and blood oxygen. There is also a large sensor for skin temperature monitoring.
Display and features
Coming to the display, the TicWatch GTH has a large 1.55-inch (360×320 pixels) LCD glass colour touch screen with 2.5D glass. You can set it to turn on when you lift your hand, and the screen turns off in a few seconds to save power. It still attracts fingerprints and is not completely scratch resistant. Touch screen is smooth to use. Since the screen is bright, outdoor visibility is good. You can adjust the brightness from more→Settings→Adjust Brightness. You can adjust it from level 1 till level 5, and increase the screen time out till 15 seconds, but there is no auto brightness adjustment since it lacks an ambient light sensor. For indoors, level 2 is good, and level 5 is need for bright outdoors.
There is also an easy notification shade option when you swipe from the top. This has DND, Power saver, ‘Find my phone’, flashlight option that brightens up the screen, brightness adjustment and settings.
It also has music controls that lets you play, pause, skip tracks and also adjust volume when you play any music or any kind of content like videos or music when the watch is connected to the phone. It doesn’t have camera controls. You can read or clear the notification you receive from the smartphone, but you can’t reply to them.
Swiping to the left shows weather, but I couldn’t get it to work even with the app. Swiping further shows heart rate with a graph, and an option that shows respiration rate, skin temperature and TicOxygen, which is the SpO2 or blood oxygen level. There is also work out modes, sleep data, and activity data. Pressing the function button opens up the menu that shows all the options available on the smartwatch. This includes notifications, TicExercise that has all the 14 workout modes. There is also TicSleep, Timer, Shopwatch, Weather and Music control and Settings.
Software
The Watch uses Mobvoi companion app on Android and iOS. The app has Home, Device, Explore and Account sections. The Home section has a weekly goal on the top with a minute goal, and the batch centre shows the badges collected. Then there is Activity status, Exercise, Sleep data, Heart rate, SpO2 and skin temperature data.
The device section shows the battery percentage and the watch center that has a lot of watch faces. It takes a few minutes to download and push the watch face to the watch, but only few of them are impressive, and only a few watch faces have complication that show activity, steps, heart rate and other data. You can also use a customized watch face with an image and your own color scheme.
The smart mode lets you enable or disable automatic, heart rate, blood oxygen, skin temperature, and respiration rate detection, but these will drain the battery quickly. You can also toggle DND, Tilt to wake and add an alarm. The smart reminder feature lets you enable or disable call notification, SMS alerts, vibration alert, custom app notification selection, and sedentary reminder.
In the more features tab, there is find watch feature, screen light up duration, 24-hour clock, option to change the language and select temperature unit. The settings option lets you pair a new watch and update the firmware. The workout option lets you directly start a workout from the app, but these are limited to run, talk and ride. The company says that this feature is still in beta.
The explore tab has details from the Mobvoi community and new products. Finally, the account tab lets you add third party accounts such as Runkeeper, Strava and Google Fit. You also have an option to upload your data to the server, so that it gets synced when you switch to a new phone.
Fitness and sleep tracking
The TicWatch GTH has 14 workout modes that includes Outdoor Run, Outdoor Cycling, Rope Skipping, Swimming, Walking, Rowing, Free Style, Mountain Climbing, Indoor Run, Gymnastics, Soccer, Basketball, Indoor Cycling, and Yoga. There is also TicMotion (Auto-Workout
Detection) for outdoor activities like walking, running, and cycling.
For outdoor activities, you get all the details such as distance, calories burnt, average heart rate, duration and average pace. Since this doesn’t have GPS, you don’t get a map, but the distance tracking for outdoor running is perfect when compared to other GPS watches like the Redmi Watch and Mi Watch revolve Active as well as GPS from tracking apps on the phone. It doesn’t even lock the GPS from the phone, but the accuracy is surprisingly good. Steps tracking is also accurate.
Sleep tracking shows light and deep sleep as well as awake time as usual, and heart rate during sleep, but it doesn’t track REM sleep. Tracking is decent, but it is not as accurate as the Mi Band 5. It shows monthly sleep data.
Heart rate, SpO2 and Skin Temperature monitoring
The smartwatch uses LED lights and photo-diodes to illuminate the blood vessel for a while and monitors the heart rate via the change of green light absorbed, and it uses red light for SpO2 or blood oxygen monitoring. You can’t say this is 100% accurate, but heart rate recordings — both resting and active and SpO2 readings are decent compared to oximeter.
It also takes your skin temperature, and it takes few minutes to show the result. Compared to readings from a temperature gun, this is slightly different. This change could be due to the sensor taking the measurement directly from the skin. The skin temperature feature is not intended to diagnose or treat any medical condition or for any other medical purpose, says the company. It added that significant changes in ambient temperature may affect the accuracy of the measurement. Nevertheless, this is a useful feature.
Battery life
It has a 260mAh battery, and the company promises 7 to 10 days of battery life, which varies depending on the use. I have been using it for over two weeks on and off now, and I have charged it only once. Now I have 40% charge left. Battery life might vary depending on frequent use of the display with increased brightness, use of heart rate monitor, SpO2 during workouts and all the notifications turned on.
It has a magnetic charging dock that you can even plug it in a USB port of a PC or a laptop or use power bank in low-power mode. It takes about 2 hours to charge the watch fully from 0%. Since the battery last for over a week, long charging time doesn’t matter.
Conclusion
Overall, the TicWatch GTH is a good entry-level smartwatch at a price of Rs. 4999. It has a large colour touch screen, comes with a lot of sensors, including skin temperature monitoring, has 5ATM water resistance and offers a good battery life. Even though it doesn’t have GPS support, outdoor activity tracking is almost accurate compared to other watches with GPS. Hope the company updates the watch faces and improves sleep tracking. The watch is available from Amazon.in.
Pros
- Good build quality
- SpO2 and Skin temperature monitoring
- Water resistant (5ATM)
- Long battery life
Cons
- Watch faces are not attractive
- No auto brightness adjustment
- Sleep tracking is not accurate