Boult Crown R and Crown R Pro Review

When I was given these two Boult smartwatches to be reviewed, I was quite puzzled that these supposedly ‘smart’ watches cost less than three thousand rupees and include hardware features that were once deemed costly. So, throughout my review period, I kept reminding myself of their price whenever I felt that things could have been better/different. So, with that in mind, let’s start?

Let’s get the technical specifications out of the way first. The Crown R (the one on the right), the more affordable of the two, has the following specifications:

• 1.52″ 360×360 Screen with up to 600 nits brightness
• 100+ Sports Monitoring
• Bluetooth Calling
• 150+ Watch faces
• IP67 Water Resistance
• Find My Phone
• AI Voice Assistant
• Phone Notifications Sync

As for the Rs.700 costlier Crown R Pro, it has very similar specifications except for the following:

• 1.46” AMOLED Screen with up to 500 nits brightness
• 20+ Additional Sports Monitoring
• Always on Display

Unboxing Experience

Both the watches have very similar unboxing experiences, except the Crown R had a chain link adjusting tool in the box because it came with a Coal Black stainless steel chain strap. The Crown R Pro, on the other hand, came with (ahem!) a “new” kind of strap in Volcanic Orange that I quite liked. Here are some pictures of the unboxing for you to enjoy.

Initial Impressions

I started using the Crown R Pro first because I was intrigued by a watch costing Rs.2899 (at the time of writing this review!) having an AMOLED display in it and to be candid, I didn’t have a lot of hope for it. Boy, was I surprised! Long term quality still remains to be seen, but this display is quite nice. Very readable even under direct sunlight, and gets adequately dim so that the AOD doesn’t burn your eyes at night. The AOD though, is very limited and no matter which watch face you otherwise have, in the AOD you only get one watch face with an analogue dial (pictured below).

Curious to see how the Crown R fared against it, I then decided to use them both simultaneously and when I checked the website for specs, I understood that there are very few differences between the two of them and that’s when this became a unified review.

So, the Crown R is like the more affordable version of the flagship phones that we get these days with an LCD screen and not as appealing of a design (hardware & software) but that is about it. There is no limiting of the software features between the two of them (unless you are one of the people that play one of the 20 additional sports that only the Crown R Pro supports) and honestly, I admire that.

Whenever you are outside under direct sunlight, you will need to remember to crank the brightness up manually, but I haven’t yet had to crank it past the half mark, so I believe that they are both very bright.

General User Experience

The Watches are quite nice to look at and wear on your wrist and go with a lot of different outfits to be honest. Since the Crown R has more of a casual look, I would wear it as such. I got the Copper dial for my review unit, but I would prefer to buy the Silver dial and change the straps on it, as it is easier to blend it with different outfits. Speaking of, when I got the watches for review, there were no alternate options for first party straps available. Since then, Boult has graciously made first party straps available on their website, and they are very affordable!

Currently, they sell straps for 22 mm dials on their website, and you can check them out here. I requested for the Groovy Silicone Strap and the Black Leather Strap for testing (check the header image above!) and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of them. Definitely recommended for consideration!

Even though the Crown R and the Crown R Pro both have two clickable buttons on their right, only the Crown R Pro has a scrollable crown that you can use to navigate through the watch and I have to say, I loved using it.  The Crown R doesn’t get the scrollable crown though. The build quality overall seems really good! In fact, I dropped the Crown R Pro face down on concrete, and it survived with no issues. The header image was taken after that, but you really have to try to see it. That stands testament to how good the build quality is.

Speaking of the watch face, one particular aspect of the UX that stood out in both the watches is the ability or the lack thereof of watch face customization. No, they do definitely have seven customizable watch faces. However, you can only change one at a time from the app. Why? is exactly what I asked the Product Team at Boult, and they said that it’s just not there now, but they can take it as feedback. So, if you try to match the watch face based on the occasion or something, add 15 additional minutes for the time to get ready to find the right watch face and change it.

I have never used a smartwatch before this, so I didn’t think that the Bluetooth calling was important, but I got the serendipitous opportunity to use it once. I was standing on a busy shopping street with both my hands holding something, granted, it did look ridiculous shouting at my watch in public, but the person on the other end heard me clearly and I them; so, yes, it is definitely handy (pun intended!).

Workout Tracking Experience

I, unfortunately, don’t have an active lifestyle so if you were expecting a review with abundance of data thrown at you, sorry to disappoint you. Anecdotally, I believe that a majority of fellow Indians workout sporadically, so I am moving ahead with the confidence that this will resonate with them. The fact that the two watches have different softwares doesn’t lack affect features outright on either of them.

As I had mentioned earlier, the Crown R supports tracking 100+ workouts and the Crown R Pro supports 120+ workouts as per the website, and that is indeed true. There are quite a big range of workouts covered including obscure ones like ATV, Parkour, and Equestrian Sports, etc., but the Crown R has all these available on the watch itself while you will need to push it to the Crown R Pro manually from its companion app. The Crown R Pro only has the popular ones, which would be enough for most people, but this stood out to me as quite odd that the costlier of the two needed more work from the user to get the most out of it.

I tested these watches only for walking and running and for me, I liked the metrics that I got from the Crown R more than the Crown R Pro because it simply had more of them. For example, while I am walking, on the Crown R I can see Time since I started the workout, total number of steps, Average Heart Rate, Heart Rate Zones, Calories Burned, and Distance Covered in almost real time and I can pause the workout if I need to.

The Crown R Pro, only shows you the time, Time since I started the workout, total number of steps, and Average Heart Rate. It also doesn’t support pausing the workout as well. Puzzled by this, I contacted Boult who informed me that it currently doesn’t support that, but they are planning to push out an update in the future for that feature.

As for the accuracy of the data points, I compared them with the Fitness app on my iPhone and the steps were always within a ±30 steps mark, so do what you will with that comparison. The watches themselves have a few false triggers, for sure. If you shake your hands vigorously, they do count that as steps, typically four to five shakes will get you two steps, but if you are feeling the need to falsify workouts by shaking your hands, you have bigger problems in your life.

The biggest complaint that I have with these two watches though, the disparity in the software experience. Just optimize a single software for all your watches and use, no? Gotta be less work for everyone involved. As for the Companion apps, they are also different for the watches as noted earlier. “Android Jellybean called; it wants its design language back” is what I thought of saying when I first looked at the apps to be used with the watches. Supposedly, there is a unified App experience coming in Q1 2024, but I would still keep this in mind if you’re planning to buy one of these any time soon.

Battery Life

While we are still at least 5 years away from ‘proper’ smartwatches having week-long battery life, the more restricted smartwatches like these two don’t have that annoyance. Both of them actually lasted for a whole month (no, seriously, I counted) between charges. Because of that, them taking around three hours to charge fully from dead didn’t bother me as much. If you are someone that works out five days a week with one or two workouts daily, I still expect these watches to last for at least a week or maximum ten days, which is great.

Do note that the watches will refuse to track any workout once they reach 10% battery, so if you have an active lifestyle, that last 10% is where they will only act as watches and not as smartwatches.

Miscellaneous Features

Apart from workouts, the watches do have other health tracking features like Sleep, SpO₂, Heart Rate, Breath Training, and Menstrual Tracking on them. Obviously, I couldn’t test the last one, but I tested the rest of them and they… work. If you are someone that needs to keep a watch (pun intended!) over their blood oxygen levels, I would still recommend a dedicated pulse oximeter, as none of the smartwatches currently available on the market are cleared for medical usage to represent these important factors.

Sleep data too is rudimentary at best. Once again, the Crown R has more metrics like REM Sleep, Light Sleep, and Deep Sleep whereas the Crown R Pro only shows you the data for the past seven days. You will have to open the app for the Crown R Pro to see the same metrics as the Crown R.

Honestly, they don’t appear to be very accurate in the first place and don’t suggest anything to you from the data they do collect. Heart Rate and Breath Training are very basic as well and don’t do a lot to actively help you moderate it any better, and just show you numbers.

As a first time smartwatch wearer, I honestly didn’t feel comfortable sleeping either of them on my wrist, though. I, personally, would prefer a band style wearable instead.

Important Notice for Crown R Pro Users

During my testing, my Crown R Pro died out of nowhere one day, and after I put it to charge, it was ready to use but died again two weeks later despite having plenty of battery left. I contacted Boult again and apparently, the initial lot of the watches had an issue that caused them to turn off with around 40% battery left in them, but it has been fixed in the newer lots. So, if you own a Crown R Pro that has been doing this, take an invoice copy and visit a Boult service center near you, and they will ship you a replacement model within 72 hours after verifying if it is from the affected lot.

Both the watches come with a year of manufacturer’s warranty and the list of service centers can be found here. Mandatory disclaimer that I didn’t personally visit any of the service centers myself, and the above-mentioned information was communicated to me directly from Boult. The service center quality in reality may be different, so do leave comments if you have experienced less than good service along with the service center location.

Summary and Conclusion

 

 

So, to sum it all up, these are very compelling options for the price and for the expectations that one will have for this price, they mostly deliver. However, this level of hardware warrants better software for sure and Boult needs to take that seriously into consideration. Between the two, I, personally, will pick the Crown R Pro despite all of its current limitations because I am a sucker for that AMOLED display and that scrollable crown, but I won’t be sad with the Crown R either.

Currently, there are a myriad of options available in the market and most of them are outright not worth buying, which has left this segment very underdeveloped. When Fitbit was founded, all the other smartwatches at the time were ridiculously expensive, and Fitbit succeeded by focussing more on releasing affordable options with good software. In India, we don’t have a player like that yet. I believe that Boult most certainly has potential to be the go-to brand in this category, but whether they will pursue that sincerely or not is up to them. I hope that they do.

Pros

• • Great Build Quality
  • Solid BT Calling
  • Long-lasting Battery life

Cons

• • Software Experience is a mess
  • Hardware Reliability remains to be seen
  • Inconsistent workout tracking

The Crown R and the Crown R Pro can be purchased from Boult website directly, or from other online retailers like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Nykaa, or Tata Cliq.