introduction
Little has been in the smartphone game for a few years and has now set its sights on building a larger ecosystem of products. We’ve already reviewed the company’s first pair of wireless earbuds and now turn our attention to the Poco Watch.
A compact and lightweight device more like a smart band than a real smartwatch, Poco Watch offers the usual mix of health monitoring, dual-band GPS, and AMOLED display. All topped off with claims of up to two weeks of battery life and a price tag of $ 79. How good is Poco’s first smartwatch and where is it in the sea of inexpensive fitness trackers and smartwatches?
Design
The first thing you notice about the Poco Watch is its weight. At 31 grams, the Poco Watch is around 18 grams heavier than a Mi Band 5 even though it’s still very light on the wrist. I personally forgot that I even tied it up after a few minutes of use which is a bonus point in our book. The watch is just under 10mm thick, making it one of the thinnest smartwatches on the market and even thinner than most smart bands. The casing is made of plastic which has a matte finish on the back where the optical sensor and the displeasure port are located.
You get a large 1.6-inch AMOLED touch display with a resolution of 320 x 360 pixels with AOD (always-on display) functionality. While it’s large enough for most use cases, the display doesn’t take up much space and even looks tiny compared to other smartwatches. The small size is actually an advantage if you prefer ergonomics. Our review unit is available in black, but you can also get the Poco Watch in blue and ivory with matching straps. It would have been nice to see a yellow option as it is the de facto color of the Poco brand.
Poco offers a non-standard 125–205mm soft silicone watch strap with buckle and clasp for a secure fit. The strap material is quite soft to the touch even though the attachment points are proprietary, so you won’t be able to easily swap the straps on the go. Poco Watch is water resistant up to 50m (5ATM) and can monitor your swims without any problems.
The retail package consists of the watch and a proprietary two-pin magnetic charger that ends in a USB-A port.
Features
The Poco Watch’s hardware is identical to last year’s Redmi Watch 2 down to size and proprietary operating system. Get SpO2 measurements, 24/7 heart rate monitoring, sleep and stress monitoring. Little also added a female health monitoring option and an integrated breathing training app. You can track over 100 fitness modes with 17 professional modes and 100 extended fitness modes.
There’s standalone dual-band location tracking with support for GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and BeiDou satellite positioning. The watch can also send app notifications to your wrist even if you can’t interact with them and you can reject calls. There is no way to answer calls on the watch as it lacks speakers and microphone. On the upside, the vibration motor here is exceptionally powerful which ensures you get your notifications.
The AMOLED screen of the watch has an automatic brightness feature. Alternatively, you can select one of five manual brightness levels to use at all times. The Poco Watch’s vibration motor is quite powerful at the default setting, and you can even crank it up to an even higher level from the settings menu.
Poco Watch pairs via Bluetooth and you need the Mi Fitness app, available on both iOS and Android to pair the watch and do anything. The watch supports customizable watch faces (you can store up to 14 styles at a time) and AOD watch faces which you can download from the watch face shop. Alternatively, you can create your own custom watch face with an image of your choice.
Xiaomi’s Mi Fitness app provides well-structured metrics for activity and health tracking. Get daily, weekly and monthly charts for heart rate, blood oxygen and sleep levels. In addition, daily summaries and graphs are available with breakdowns for each category. Step tracking, calories burned and exercise data are also recorded in chronological order, and you can sync your stats with Strava. Poco Watch also supports automatic workout detection, and you can link your watch reading to your phone’s native health app or Strava.
Performance
Poco Watch runs a fairly minimalist proprietary operating system and not that far removed from the operating systems seen on smart bands. There’s no third-party app support, so you’re stuck with twenty built-in apps. Upon awakening the watch reveals the face of the watch with all its different complications. You can double tap the screen to wake it up or press the button located on the right side or alternatively activate the wrist rotation gesture. The AOD display is a good option to have as you can check the time and date at a glance without
By swiping left or right you access the widgets and you can scroll through them or interact directly. You can only have a total of seven widgets at once despite there are nine optional widgets in the Mi Fitness app. Swiping from the top brings you to notifications as you go in the opposite direction, quick settings and battery life indicator are revealed.
There is an apparent delay when scrolling through notifications which becomes quite noticeable the more messages pile up in the notifications. However, the watch handles all kinds of notifications and languages and syncs instantly from the paired phone.
Health monitoring is on par with other smart wearable devices in the class, which means that the measurements are useful as a personal reference but are by no means of medical diagnosis grade. In a direct comparison with a dedicated pulse oximeter, Poco Watch’s values varied by just 1% for both SpO2 and heart rate measurements.
The sleep tracking results are only displayed for the previous night on the watch and you cannot get a detailed comparison unless you log into the Mi Fitness app on your phone. The general sleep and wake times were on time even though the watch failed to capture some of my midnight water runs. The watch also performs faulty rapid eye movement (REM) detection
Fitness tracking is fine even if it doesn’t offer much compared to a smart band. The only area for improvement over a Mi Band here is that you can have more detailed workout readings on the watch itself without having to log into the companion app on your phone. Having GPS on board is another perk if you’re tracking your runs.
Little Look at the health and activity tracking data
GPS accuracy was generally on point even though my smartphone’s sensor offered superior accuracy in most cases. The watch also managed swimming sessions with detailed SWOLF metrics and swimming style recognition, all available on the watch itself after training.
Battery life
Poco Watch offers a 225mAh battery capacity rated at 14 days of mixed use. In my tests, the watch would last three to four days of heavy use. This included constant notifications, 24-hour heart rate, blood oxygen, sleep and stress monitoring. With constant notifications, heart rate and SpO2 monitoring enabled, the watch can last three full days.
With the more advanced and power-hungry options off, the Poco Watch lives up to its two-week battery demands, even if it’s just checking the time and maybe squeezing in a few workouts during the week.
The Poco Watch charges magnetically via a proprietary two-pin charger. In my test, charging from 0 to 50% took 35 minutes while a full charge to 100% took 75 minutes.
Verdict
Poco Watch is a well-built compact watch that more closely resembles a smart strap than a true smartwatch in terms of functionality. It features a bright 1.6-inch AMOLED display that’s crisp enough for everyday use and offers comfortable AOD dials. The software experience isn’t the best around and you can definitely notice the slow system animations, especially when it comes to notifications.
Health and activity tracking is on par with fitness bands, though you get the added benefit of having your workout records stored on the watch. Battery life is by no means class-leading and can last anywhere from three to four days with notifications along with active health and activity tracking.
At 79 € the Poco Watch is a bit expensive for what it offers. If you want fitness tracker functionality and long-lasting battery life in a slightly larger form factor with a large, bright AMOLED screen, the Poco Watch is worth checking out. If you want to do smartwatch tasks like taking calls and responding to notifications from your wrist, you’ll need to increase your budget and look elsewhere.
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