realme launched the realme Watch 2 Pro, the company’s latest budget smartwatch, in India. It has a large 1.75-inch color LCD full-touch display, has built-in with Dual-Satellite GPS support, 90sports modes, music and camera controls and more features. I have been using the latest smartwatch from realme for a few weeks now, and here is the review.
Box Contents
- realme Watch 2 Pro in Space Grey colour
- Charging dock
- User manual
Design and Build
The realme Watch 2 Pro has the square design that is similar to most watches. It measures 255.2×38.9×12.65mm and weighs 40 grams with the strap. The smartwatch has IP68 water resistance. There is Accelerometer, 24h Heart Rate Monitor and SpO2 Sensor. It uses Bluetooth 5.0 to connect to Android and iOS devices.
Coming to the strap, it has a lightweight 22mm interchangeable strap that is made of skin-friendly material. There is a single function button on the right side with a metal finish that lets you wake up the watch and also go back, but it doesn’t open any function.
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.
Display and features
Coming to the display, the realme Watch 2 Pro has a large 1.75-inch (320×385 pixels) 286 PPI LCD glass colour touch screen with 2.5D scratch resistant 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. Touch screen is smooth to use. Since the screen is bright, outdoor visibility is good since it has up to 600 nits brightness. You can adjust the brightness by swiping to the left or from Settings→Adjust Brightness. You can adjust it from level 20% till 100%, 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 left. This has DND, Brightness adjustment, Power saver, raise to wake, flashlight option that brightens up the screen and settings.
Swiping from the bottom shows activity, heart rate monitoring, SpO2 monitoring, Sleep details, sports mode, activity records, alarm, weather, stopwatch, timer, 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. There is also camera control option, but you need to enable it first from the app. When you swipe from the top, you can read or clear the notification you receive from the smartphone, but you can’t reply to them.
Swiping to the left shows activity data, weather, sleep, heart rate, and music controls.
Software
The Watch uses realme Link companion app on Android and iPhone. It doesn’t have separate sections, but you get to see all the details in the home page itself. On the top there is battery status. The face gallery shows different types of watch faces. There are a lot of watch faces to choose from, but only a few options show a lot of data such as steps, heart rate, calories burnt, weather and other details.
It has an option to sync your data to Google Fit, but this needs to be enabled directly from the app inside Me→Settings→Sync data to a third-party service, and select the realme Watch 2 Pro. Inside the Watch 2 Pro settings you can select call reminders, notifications from the preferred apps, health reminders such as 24-hour HR monitoring, stand up reminders, Water reminders, Meditation reminder and goal-reached reminder. Even though there are 90 workout mode, you can only choose up to 15 workout modes to show in the watch. You can enable or disable music playback and camera control. There is also Find my phone feature.
Fitness and sleep tracking
The realme Watch 2 Pro has 90 workout modes with the main workouts being, Outdoor Run, Outdoor Walk, Outdoor Cycle, Indoor Run, Strength Training, Football, Basketball, Cricket, Badminton, Jump Rope, Rowing Machine, Elliptical, Yoga, Free Training, VO2max Test, etc. You can see other workout types in the image above.
For outdoor activities, you get all the details such as distance, calories burnt, average heart rate, average speed, average pace, cadence and duration. Since it has built-in GPS support, you don’t need to take your phone for outdoor activities such as running or cycling, but it takes some time to lock the GPS, so you have to wait till it’s locked before you start the workout. You can press and hold the side button to pause a workout in the middle, and resume it or stop it.
Compared to tracking apps like Strava running on mobile, or other GPS watches like OPPO Watch, there is a very minor difference in GPS tracking of few meters. This is common in budget watches since the GPS is not powerful compared to high-end watches or mobile phones. You can share the workout data as an image, and there is also Google Fit integration. Hope the company adds option to sync to Strava, Runkeeper and other apps.
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.
Sleep tracking shows light and deep sleep as well as awake time and REM sleep as well, and the tracking is as accurate as the Mi Band 5. But it doesn’t have the option to track daytime naps that is available on the Mi Band 5 or Mi Band 6.
Battery life
It has a 390mAh battery, and the company promises up to 14 days of battery life. During my use of a couple of weeks, I charged it only once with use of GPS a few days with call and app notifications enabled. GPS use for outdoor runs for half an hour drains 3 to 5% battery. Battery life might vary depending on frequent use of the display with increased brightness, use of heart rate monitor 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 lasts for close to two weeks, long charging time doesn’t matter.
Conclusion
The realme Watch 2 Pro is a good smartwatch under Rs. 5000. It has a large colour touch screen with a lot of watch faces, comes with built-in GPS support for tracking outdoor activities accurately, has both heart rate and SpO2 monitoring and offers a good battery life. Wish it had 5ATM water resistance for better water protection instead of just IP68. Hope we can expect workout data sync with more services in the future. The realme Watch 2 Pro is available from Amazon.in, realme.com and offline stores.
Alternatives
The Amazfit Bip U Pro which is a direct competitor at almost similar price tag has a better companion app Zepp which has option to share workout data to Strava and other third-party apps. There is Redmi Watch that has auto brightness adjustment with ambient light sensor and Barometric Press sensor, but it lacks SpO2 monitoring. There are lots more options from local players, but it is not clear how reliable those will be since some even offer BP monitoring in the price range.
Pros
- Large 1.75-inch touch display
- Activity tracking with GPS is good
- Sleep tracking is accurate
- Good battery life
Cons
- No auto brightness adjustment
- No 5ATM water resistance