realme’s TechLife brand launched the DIZO Watch, the company’s first watch in India, last month. It was similar specs as the realme Watch 2 that includes 1.4-inch display, 90 sports modes, SpO2 monitoring and the price is also the same. I have been using the latest smartwatch from realme for a few weeks now, and here is the review.
Box Contents
- DIZO watch in Carbon Grey colour
- Charging dock
- User manual
Design and Build
The watch has the square design that is similar to most watches, but this has huge bezels around the tiny 1.4-inch screen. It measures 257.6×35.7×12.2mm and weighs 38 grams with the strap. The smartwatch has IP68 water resistance, but there is no 5ATM water resistance. There is Accelerometer, 24h Heart Rate Monitor and SpO2 Sensor. It uses Bluetooth 5.0 to connect to Android and iOS devices.
It has a lightweight 22mm interchangeable strap that is made of skin-friendly material. There is a single function button on the right side 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 levels.
Coming to the display, the DIZO Watch has a 1.4-inch (320×320 pixels) 323 PPI LCD glass colour touch screen with 2.5D scratch resistant glass. The pixel density of the screen is better than the realme Watch 2 Pro, but the bezels are huge for a watch with a small screen, as you can see in the image above. You can set it to turn on the screen 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, thanks 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 and settings. This misses the flashlight option that brightens up the screen.
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.
Since there is no speaker or microphone, you can’t attend calls, and can only mute or cancel them. Similar to most budget smartwatches, you can only read the notifications, but can’t reply to them.
Software
The DIZO 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 DIZO Watch. Inside the DIZO Watch settings you can select call reminders, notifications from the preferred apps, health reminders such as 24-hour HR monitoring, stand up reminders and Water reminders, but it misses Meditation reminder and goal-reached reminder that were available in the realme Watch 2 Pro. Even though there are 90 workout modes, 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 DIZO Watch 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.
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 lacks GPS, it needs to get the GPS lock from the phone for outdoor activities such as running or cycling, and 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 Redmi Watch, there is a very minor difference in GPS tracking of few meters. You can share the workout data as an image, and there is also Google Fit integration. Hope we can expect sync to Strava, Runkeeper and other apps in the future.
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, but it doesn’t show REM sleep. However, tracking is as accurate as the Mi Band 5 and the realme Watch 2 Pro. 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 315mAh battery, a huge battery for a watch with a small 1.4-inch screen. The company promises up to 12 days of battery life. During my use of over a couple of weeks, I charged it only once. 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 DIZO Watch is a decent smartwatch under Rs. 3500. It has a bright touch screen with a lot of watch faces, has both heart rate and SpO2 monitoring and offers a good battery life. Wish it had smaller bezels, and auto brightness adjustment. It is available from Flipkart.
Alternatives
The Amazfit Bip U which is a direct competitor at a slightly higher price tag has smaller bezels and a better companion app Zepp which has option to share workout data to Strava and other third-party app. The Redmi Watch is a good option if you need GPS support for outdoor workouts. It also has auto brightness adjustment and Barometric Press sensor, but it lacks SpO2 monitoring. There are lots more options from local players, but reliability is a concern.
Pros
- 1.4-inch LCD screen is bright
- Lightweight body
- Good battery life
Cons
- No auto brightness adjustment
- Huge bezels around the display