realme launched the realme Watch 3 Pro, the company’s latest budget smartwatch, and the successor to last year’s Watch 2 Pro in India this week. It has a large 1.78-inch AMOLED screen, has built-in microphone and speaker for voice calling capabilities, has 110+ sports modes, GPS support and up to 10 days battery life. I have been using the latest smartwatch from realme for almost a week now, and here is the review.
Box Contents
- realme Watch 3 Pro in Grey colour
- Charging dock
- User manual
Design and Build
The realme Watch 3 Pro has the square design that is similar to most watches. It measures 253.8×36.8×11.7mm and weighs 40.7 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 above 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 Pro has a large 1.78-inch ((368 x 448 pixels) 325 PPI AMOLED r 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. You can also use always on display, but this will drain the battery.
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 68.7% screen-to-body ratio, which is better than the previous generation. Overall, the Watch 3 Pro has a brilliant screen compared to the Watch 2 Pro.
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. There is also an easy notification shade when you swipe from the bottom on the home screen. You can read them and dismiss, but can’t reply.
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 speaker output is loud enough. There is AI ENC for calls, which cuts out noise in most condition. However, it is not the best outdoors, especially in noisy traffic.
Software
The realme 3 Watch Pro uses realme Link companion app on Android and iPhone. It shows all the important details on the health tab. Inside the Watch 3 Pro 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 Pro. 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 Pro 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. It uses Cywee professional sports algorithm that can intelligently identify walking, running, cycling, elliptical and rowing machine, but this will drain the battery quickly.
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 built-in GPS support, so you need not carry the phone with you for outdoor activities. Since it uses 5 GNSS Systems, the GPS lock is quick, and it did not get cut off during my run. 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, it is almost accurate in GPS tracking. You can share the workout data as an image, and there is also Google Fit integration. It doesn’t have support for Strava and Runkeeper.
Sleep tracking shows light and deep sleep, awake time, as well as REM sleep. Tracking is good and accurate. 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, but you need to enable this manually.
Battery life
The Watch has a 345mAh battery, and the company promises up to 10 days of battery life with normal use with GPS and Bluetooth calling. Without calling, it can last for 13 days, says the company. During my use for a week, I have 33% charge left 24h heart rate tracking, GPS use of 30 minutes for 4 days and 2 to 3 calls over Bluetooth. The company promises 20+ hours under continuous GPS use on a single charge.
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%. Charging time doesn’t matter since it lasts for over a week.
Conclusion
The realme Watch 3 Pro is an excellent upgrade to last year’s Watch 2 Pro since this adds the AMOLED display and voice calling capabilities for the same price of Rs. 4999. Even the battery life is good, and GPS is useful for outdoor activities.
If you are looking for a smartwatch with an AMOLED screen, GPS and voice calling capabilities, this is a good option since you rarely find a watch with all these features in the price range.
The realme Watch 3 Pro is priced at Rs. 4999, but it will be available at an introductory price of Rs. 4499, when it goes on sale for the first time on September 9th through realme.com, Flipkart and offline stores.
Pros
- 1.78″ AMOLED display is crisp
- GPS support for accurate outdoor activity tracking
- Sleep tracking is accurate
- Bluetooth calling
- Good battery life
Cons
- No ambient light sensor
- Glossy body attracts fingerprints