Molife, an Indian mobile and lifestyle accessories brand, launched its Sense 510 as the ‘Made in India’ Bluetooth calling watch last month. In addition to built-in calling support, which is the main highlight of the smartwatch, thanks to speaker and microphone. It also has heart rate, SpO2 and even BP monitoring. Is it any good? Let us find out in the complete review.
Box Contents
- Molife Sense 510 in Black colour with a matching strap
- Additional strap in Orange colour
- Charging connector
- User manual
Design and Build
The watch has the circular design with a bezel around it. The smartwatch has IP68 ratings for dust and water resistance. There is Accelerometer, 24h Heart Rate Monitor, SpO2 and even BP monitoring. It uses Bluetooth 5.0 to connect to Android and iOS devices.
It weighs 60 grams with the strap since it has a metal zinc alloy case that you rarely see in smartwatches in the price range. The watch comes with a 22mm interchangeable strap that has a leather-like finish. The additional strap also has the same finish, but the orange colour doesn’t suit the black case. There is a function button on the right side that lets you go back or wake up the screen, but it doesn’t open anything. The other button is to launch workout modes.
On the back, you can see the rate sensor that uses glowing green LED light when you are using it to measure the heart rate, but it uses the same sensor for blood oxygen monitoring unlike other smartwatches that use a red LED. This is the same even for BP monitoring. You can see the speaker on the right side and the microphone is present on the bottom edge.
Coming to the display, the watch has a 1.3-inch (240×240 pixels) 261 PPI LCD glass colour touch screen. The company doesn’t say if it uses any kind of scratch resistant glass. The pixel density of the screen is less compared to some watch models, so you can see the pixels when you look closely. 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, but there is no option to extend the screen timeout limit. The touch screen is smooth to use, but the brightness is less even when you set it to full, so the sunlight legibility is less.
You can adjust the brightness by swiping from the top or from Settings→Adjust Brightness. You can adjust it from level 1 till 5, but there is no auto brightness adjustment since it lacks an ambient light sensor. During night, level 2 is good, and level 5 is needed for daytime or outdoors. There is also an easy notification shade option when you swipe from the bottom. You can’t clear individual notification, and the only way is to clear all. You can read the notifications, but can’t reply to them. Swiping from the top opens a quick settings shade, which has ‘Theater mode’ that turns off vibration and turns the brightness down. There is also brightness adjustment, vibration toggle, weather and settings. It also shows the date, day, Bluetooth connectivity status and the battery.
Swiping from the left shows all the features that includes weather, heart rate, SpO2 and BP monitoring, stop watch, music controls, steps, camera controls, calling, notifications and flashlight. There is no way to change this to list option.
Bluetooth Calling
The main highlight of the smartwatch is the built-in calling feature, since it has a microphone and a speaker. It shows call log, and there is even a dial pad, in addition to contacts option, but you can only store 8 contacts in the watch. Calling experience is good indoors, and the microphone is able to pick up the voice well, but the speaker output is low since it is present on the back of the watch. You hardly hear the person on the other side when you are making a call when you are outdoors.
Software
The Sense 510 is compatible with both Android and iOS running Android 4.4/iOS 9.0. Pairing the device with your mobile phone is pretty much easy where you need to install “Da Fit” app from Google Play Store or App Store. Unlike other apps, Da Fit doesn’t ask you to register an account instead, you need to fill your physical details, such as height, weight, gender and birth year. Once the process is over, the app gives you a series of fitness tracking options as well as the device settings. Since it doesn’t sync to the cloud, you lose the data if you change to a new phone.
It has separate sections. The first one shows steps, sleep, heart rate, continuous heart rate tracking, BP, Blood oxygen, outdoor running and outdoor cycling. The second section shows the battery, watch faces which are not that attractive, notifications, alarms, camera shutter, favorite contacts and more.
You can add up to 8 favorite contacts that are pushed to the phone, so that you can make a call directly from the watch when it is connected to the phone, but you can only select one number from the contact. Others option has a lot of options including weather, drink water reminder, quick view and more. The app is feature rich, but there is no option to sync to the cloud or even to third-party services like Google Fit.
Fitness and sleep tracking
The watch has 7 workout modes that includes walking, running, cycling, skipping, badminton, basketball and football. You can open the workout mode just with a press of the dedicated button.
Steps tracking is decent, but it is a bit off when compared to DIZO Watch or the Mi Band 5. When you launch the running mode from the watch directly, it doesn’t get the GPS data from the app, instead it uses the steps to track, so the data is way off compared to other smartwatches which use dedicated GPS or get the GPS data from the app. There is a separate outdoor running mode that uses GPS, but this is only present in the app and doesn’t show the data in the way. Overall, the smartwatch is not recommended if you are looking for a watch for workout tracking.
Sleep tracking works most of the time and shows restful, light, REM and awake data, but sometimes it is totally wrong. For example, when I open the app after an hour when I wake up, it considers that I woke up at that time.
Heart rate, SpO2 and BP 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. Heart rate data is fine when compared to other models, but the SpO2 or blood oxygen data always shows 96 or 97 when the other smartwatches and Oximeter shows 99. This is the same even with the BP monitoring since it uses the same green LED to show the data.
Battery life
It has a 220mAh battery, a small battery for a watch that has a built-in calling feature. The company promises 3 to 4 days of battery life with calling and up to 7 days with it disabled on a single charge and 25-30 days standby time. With mixed use of calling enabled for a couple of days and off for reset of the days, I got about 5 days of battery life, which is decent. This might vary depending on frequent use of the display with increased brightness, use of the heart rate monitor and all the notifications turned on.
Conclusion
The Molife Sense 510 is a good watch for calling with a good build quality priced under Rs. 5000, but it is not impressive when it comes to activity and sleep tracking and SpO2 monitoring. It is available from Amazon.in for Rs. 4499, but you can get it for as low as Rs. 3899 from the molife site.
Alternatives
There are Zebronics Zeb-FIT4220CH, Gionee’s latest STYLFIT models and several Fire-Boltt smartwatch models with calling feature priced under Rs. 5000. I have not used them personally, so I can vouch for the reliability.
Pros
- Good build quality
- Bluetooth calling is good
- Decent battery life
Cons
- Display is not bright
- BP monitoring is useless
- Outdoor activity tracking is not accurate