realme launched the realme Watch 3, the company’s latest budget smartwatch, and the successor to last year’s Watch 2 in India this week. It has a large 1.8-inch color LCD full-touch display, has built-in microphone and speaker for voice calling capabilities, has 110+ sports modes, up to 7 days battery life and more features. I have been using the latest smartwatch from realme for a week now, and here is the review.
Box Contents
- realme Watch 3 in Grey colour
- Charging dock
- User manual
Design and Build
The realme Watch 3 has the square design that is similar to most watches. It measures 254.1×37×11.5mm and weighs 40 grams with the strap. The smartwatch has IP68 water resistance. There is Accelerometer, 24h Heart Rate Monitor and SpO2 Sensor. It uses Bluetooth 5.3 to connect to Android and iOS devices.
Coming to the strap, it has a lightweight 22mm interchangeable strap that is made of skin-friendly material, and the quality of the strap is good.
There is a single function button on the right side with a metal finish that lets you wake up the watch, go back, open the menu and also pause workouts. You can also see the microphone below it. On the other side, there is a speaker grill. The watch has a glossy metal frame. The build quality is good, but it is prone to fingerprints.
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.
Display and features
Coming to the display, the realme Watch 3 has a large 1.8-inch (240 x 286 pixels) 207 PPI LCD colour touch screen with 2.5D scratch resistant glass. You can set it to turn on when you lift your hand, and the screen turns off in a few seconds to save power. Touch screen is smooth to use.
Outdoor visibility is good since it has up to 500 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.
When you swipe from the top, you can see quick settings. This has DND, Brightness adjustment, Power saver, flashlight option that brightens up the screen, raise to wake toggle and settings.
It has 67.5% screen-to-body ratio, which is 35% better than the previous generation, but the Watch 2 has a 323 PPI pixel density and up to 600 nits brightness, better than the Watch 3.
There is also an easy notification shade when you swipe from the bottom. You can read them and dismiss, but can’t reply.
Pressing the function button, shows activity, phone, workout, heart rate monitoring, SpO2 monitoring, stress monitoring, Sleep details, activity records, breathe, alarm, weather, events, mensural cycle tracking, tools which has stop watch, timer, music controls that let 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. You can also view find my phone option.
Swiping to the right shows activity data, sleep, heart rate data and tracking, weather and music controls.
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 which you can add from the app.
Calling experience is good indoors, and the microphone is able to pick up the voice well, and the the speaker output is loud enough. There is AI ENC for calls, which cuts out noise in most condition. However, it is not that clear, if you are in noisy traffic.
Software
The 3 Watch uses realme Link companion app on Android and iPhone. It shows all the important details on the health tab. Inside the Watch 3 settings you can select call reminders, notifications from the preferred apps, health reminders such as 24-hour HR monitoring, stand up reminders, Water reminders and goal-reached reminder.
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 watch 3. Even though there are 110+ workout modes, you can only choose up to 15 workout modes to show in the watch.
Fitness and Sleep tracking
The realme Watch 3 has 110+ workout modes with the main workouts being, Outdoor Walking, Indoor Walking, Outdoor Running, Indoor Running, Dynamic Cycling, Hiking, Cricket, Yoga, Rowing, Strength Training, Basketball, Elliptical Machine, Free training etc.
For outdoor activities, you get all the details such as distance, calories burnt, average heart rate, average speed, average pace, cadence and duration. You can also see VO2 Max, recovery period and heart rate zones for outdoor activities such as running.
It has assisted GPS support from the phone, so you need to carry the phone with you for outdoor activities, if you need the GPS data. Gathering GPS data from the phone takes a few seconds. It got cut off at times during my run, but most of the time, I didn’t have any issue. You can press the side button to pause a workout in the middle.
Compared to tracking apps like Strava running on mobile, or other GPS watches like OPPO Watch, there is a very minor difference in GPS tracking of few meters. This is common in budget watches without GPS. You can share the workout data as an image, and there is also Google Fit integration. Hope the company adds option to sync to Strava, Runkeeper and other apps.
Sleep tracking shows light and deep sleep, awake time, as well as REM sleep. Tracking is good and accurate compared to realme TechLife Watch R100. It also shows the breathing quality.
Heart rate, SpO2 and stress 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, and it uses red light for SpO2 or blood oxygen monitoring. You can’t say this is 100% accurate. Heart rate recordings — both resting and active, and SpO2 readings are decent compared to oximeter. It also shows stress data.
Battery life
The Watch has a 340mAh battery, and the company promises up to 7 days of battery life with 24h heart rate tracking on. During my use for a week, I have 5% charge left with minimal use. I used it for daily run tracking for about 40 minutes, set brightness to 4 during day and 2 during night, and take one or two calls over Bluetooth. Battery life might vary depending on frequent use of the display with increased brightness, use of heart rate monitor during workouts, calling 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%.
Conclusion
The realme Watch 3 is a good upgrade to last year’s Watch 2 that add several features including voice calling for the same price of Rs. 3499. It has a large colour touch screen with a lot of watch faces, comes with voice calling capabilities and offers a good battery life.
The realme Watch 3 is priced at Rs. 3499, but it will be available at an introductory price of Rs. 2999, when it goes on sale for the first time on August 2nd through realme.com, Flipkart and offline stores.
Pros
- Large 1.8″ touch display
- Good activity and sleep tracking
- Bluetooth calling
- Good battery life
Cons
- Glossy body attracts fingerprints