Poco Watch review: one of the best and most affordable smart watches

The Poco Watch is a lightweight smart watch that resembles a fitness bracelet. We get a large rectangular AMOLED display, health tracking and dual-band GPS.

Poco is a big player in the smartphone market, not surprisingly the company is expanding its product lineup. The first wireless headphones came out not too long ago, and now there’s a smart watch. The wearable gadget is inexpensive and has a battery life of up to two weeks.

Will the Poco Watch be able to compete with other smart watches and fitness trackers on the market?

Design and construction.

The first time you take the Poco Watch in your hands, you will immediately feel how lightweight this wearable gadget is.

The watch weighs only 31 grams, so you’ll forget it’s on your wrist in just a few minutes. Plus, the device is only 10mm thick – it’s one of the thinnest, smart watches on the market. Even some fitness bracelets have thicker cases.

The case is made of plastic, and the coating of the back surface with the optical sensor and charging connector is matte. There are three colors available: black, blue and ivory, with the same straps included.

The device is protected against water and immersion to a depth of 50 meters. The kit includes a charging cable with a USB-A connector on one end and magnetic connectors on the other. Otherwise, it is a familiar and familiar rectangular design.

Screen and strap

The front panel of the Poco Watch has a large rectangular AMOLED touchscreen measuring 1.6 inches diagonally.

There is support for always-on mode, when the screen resolution is 360×320 pixels. Automatic brightness mode is available, or you can choose one of five levels, manually.

The silicone strap is non-standard – its length is adjustable from 125 to 205 mm. The material is soft and pleasant to the skin of the wrist, as the strap is attached using proprietary clasps, you can not change this solution for another.

Connection and app

The Poco Watch connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth, and to work you need to install the Mi Fitness app, available for Android and iOS.

The device supports customizable watch faces – up to 14 styles can be stored simultaneously in the watch’s memory. You can also create your own watch face with any image. The Mi Fitness app stores information about your workouts and your body’s health indicators, in a convenient form.

You can see information in the form of graphs by day, week or month, heart rate, blood oxygen saturation or sleep data. It also keeps track of steps taken, calories burned and workouts performed and synchronizes the statistics with Strava.

Poco Watch functions

The Poco Watch’s body measurement sensors are the same as last year’s Redmi Watch 2 Lite.

You can measure: SpO2, sleep, stress levels, and 24/7 heart rate monitoring. There are also breathing workouts and several features for women. As for sports, there are more than 100 workout modes available, 17 of which are aimed at professional athletes.

Dual-band navigation with GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou satellite systems has been added.

The Watch can show notifications from your smartphone although you can’t interact with it, but you can reject calls. Alas, you will not be able to talk to someone, because there is no speaker or microphone. But thanks to the powerful vibrator, you are unlikely to miss incoming messages.

Software

Poco Watch runs on a proprietary operating system with a minimalistic interface.

The system is not much different from the OS on most Chinese fitness bracelets. There is no support for third-party applications – you will have to be satisfied with 20 built-in. You can unlock the watch by double clicking on the display, with the right key or with a gesture “wake up”.

After unlocking the watch, the home screen opens with various information. You can also activate always-on mode, which allows you to see the time and date instantly.

Swipes to the left and right switch between seven widgets that are easy to interact with. A swipe on the top side of the display shows notifications and a swipe on the bottom side shows battery level and quick settings.

There are sometimes lags when scrolling through notifications on the Poco Watch, and the more messages you get, the harder they are. On the other hand, synchronization with your smartphone is instant, and many supported languages and apps are available.

Health and workout monitoring

The Poco Watch has many features to track your body’s health, but you shouldn’t give yourself a medical diagnosis based on these results.

Nevertheless, the accuracy of the measurement is high and almost the same even as more expensive similar devices.

Detailed information about sleep should be looked for in the Mi Fitness app on the smartphone, not on the watch. Moments of falling asleep and rising in the morning are registered quite accurately, but Poco Watch can miss night awakenings. But the user can track REM sleep phases.

The workout tracking features also work well, although there are no more of them here than on a regular fitness bracelet. The only difference with the Mi Band is that you can see more detailed information on the smart Watch without having to reach for your smartphone.

Another benefit is the built-in GPS sensor for running workouts. While the GPS on your phone is more accurate, swimmers will be pleased to have a measurable SWOLF.

Smart Features

Before you can use the Poco Watch as a smart watch, you have to go into Mi Fitness (iOS and Android) and turn on notifications from certain apps.

You’ll also be able to receive incoming messages, get access to music controls, and a surprisingly rich collection of watch faces that look great on the AMOLED screen.

Notification support works seamlessly on the Poco. The weather forecast and music control functions, are well optimized for the small display and the watch software.

Alas, Poco does not report on the processor used here, but it is not the best.

There are also a few useful additions, like the ability to use the watch as a smartphone camera shutter, set timers or alarms by default. Don’t expect smartwatch features such as payments or external apps, but the ones that are available work fine.

The battery capacity inside the Poco Watch is 225 mAh, which could be enough for 14 days of continuous use if you want.

However, if you track your heart rate around the clock, receive notifications, measure sleep, stress level and SpO2, the battery will run out in three to four days. To make the gadget last two weeks, you will have to turn off most of the functions.

Poco Watch is charged magnetically through two connectors on the back of the case. A full charge takes 1 hour and 15 minutes, and will take approximately 35 minutes to fully charge the battery.

Bottom line

The Poco Watch is a compact smart watch that resembles a fitness bracelet in terms of functionality.

It has a bright 1.6-inch AMOLED display with high detail and convenient always-on mode, built-in GPS and many health monitoring sensors. Unfortunately, it is not possible to install third-party applications, and the feature set is somewhat limited.

With active use, battery life is only three to four days, which is inferior to many competitive devices.

 

Worth Buying

The Poco Watch is a great combination of fitness tracker and smart watch for active exercise enthusiasts. It’s a good and inexpensive wearable gadget for those who can’t get enough of the Mi Band.