I can already see the comments in advance about whether the Canyon Semifreddo SW-61 is a smartwatch or just an elegant, stylish and autonomous fitness bracelet for a modern active person. And the funny thing is that each of the positions has its own set of arguments.
Let’s start with the price, which is about $70. You know, it’s a long way from a full-fledged flagship smartwatch, but all kinds of Smart Bands are almost always cheaper.
The package includes the watch itself, as well as an instruction manual and a charging platform – unfortunately, it’s proprietary. But it is magnetic, and thank you for that.
The watch looks great, I think there are no questions here. Obviously, you can’t even call them unisex models, some design elements here are absolutely feminine… and feminine. Especially the Pink-Cherry colour. By the way, there is also turquoise Mint and purple Silver-Lavander.
The colours in the case of Cherry and Lavander are twofold. The colour, the central part of the strap and the hardware are of the same shade – although Cherry’s is more golden than cherry, and Lavander’s is completely silver. In Mint, turquoise dominates the silver accents.
All models have a control wheel on the right side and a noticeable black bezel around the screen. The strap itself is classic hypoallergenic silicone, 261 mm long, 18 mm wide and proprietary, albeit quick-release.
Below are sensors and contacts for magnetic charging. The dimensions of the watch itself are 42.5 mm in diameter and 11.4 mm in height, weighing just under 38 g. A separate plus is the IP68 moisture protection, that is, complete. And before I forget, the warranty for the watch is 1 year.
The display is round, 1.19 inches, with a resolution of 390×390 pixels. And it’s absolutely gorgeous because it’s AMOLED. It’s bright, juicy, with an oleophobic coating, and almost does not suffer from a nuance that I will talk about at the end. Spoiler alert – it’s related to the interface.
Thanks to the display technology, the battery life is also a plus, with up to 45 days of standby time promised. That is, in the mode of just a watch, without smart features. With the latter, we get up to 6 days with the sensors turned off and up to 3 days with all the sensors working all the time. Which is still cool, considering the 190 mAh lithium-ion battery. Canyon Semifreddo SW-61 is charged at a speed of no more than 5 W in 3.5 hours.
Everything is interesting with a system-on-a-chip. This is not a no-name model, but a Realtek 8762DT, a super-energy-efficient and up-to-date platform based on ARM Cortex-M4 with a frequency of up to 90 MHz, 192 KB of RAM, and Bluetooth 5.1 Low Energy support. It doesn’t sound impressive, and plays into the argument for a fitness bracelet rather than a smartwatch.
However, this is enough to get the hang of the interface. The watch does not support a memory card, so it cannot be used as an independent media accessory. It can be used as an accessory in general, but not as a player or GPS navigator.
Again, the argument is in favour of fitness bracelets, although even some GPS bracelets support it. On the other hand, Canyon Semifreddo SW-61 has enough sensors – even without taking into account synchronisation with Apple Fitness and Google Fit. Heart rate monitoring, blood pressure monitoring, blood oxygen saturation level – everything is in place.
Vibration is also supported, don’t worry. And here we smoothly move on to the software. Which, in fact, is the decisive factor. And you will understand why.
I’ll start with the good stuff. The shell is absolutely easy to use. There are no double-taps, there is a press on the side button and swipes, and pressing on the screen. I was wildly surprised that turning the control button does absolutely nothing. Although the button does rotate, God help us. But it’s not necessary – the swipes work perfectly.
Swipe down to access notifications, swipe up to quick settings, where you can change the brightness, set the Cinema mode, check the weather, battery status, switch to Always on Display and power saving.
Swipe to the right to open information tabs and quick access to measure all sorts of vital statistics and most of the interesting features described below. Swipe left to open the menu, which can be configured as a circle or a list.
In addition to the standard and expected features such as a timer, stopwatch, step counter, blood pressure, blood saturation, heart rate, there is an exercise mode (there are about 30 types in total), a weather display and a sleep monitor. There is even a women’s calendar.
But this is all expected, give or take. There are also two games – Flappy Bird and 2048. There are player controls, and they are universal. There is a deep breathing mode. There’s even a very basic, but still a mode that works as a camera shutter within the proprietary Canyon Life app.
The latter is downloaded via a QR code right in the watch’s interface, and there is support for both Android and iOS. After setting up the body and gender parameters, we get access to a relatively good set of functions, and most of them are available only through the app. And I’m not talking about, say, updating the firmware or changing the screen saver, including to one created by yourself.
Canyon Semifreddo SW-61 will not show the weather or the correct time without synchronisation with a smartphone. You can also turn on reminders to drink water, go for a walk, there is a Do Not Disturb mode, alarms, synchronisation with Google Fit and notification settings. And there is also a change of measurement units.
As for the user experience. The first thing you need to know is that Semifreddo does not disconnect from a previously connected device automatically. That is, if you tested this watch before presenting it to a woman, I do not recommend staying up at night and switching the player on your smartphone. Because the watch will vibrate. On a woman’s hand. On a woman who is sleeping.
Further, the battery life of the watch is actually about 3-4 days maximum. You can get more only if you disable ALL the smart features of the device. And here I could say that in this case you just need to buy a regular watch – but a regular watch won’t be smart when you need it, and Semifreddo will.
I also promised to tell you why I think the shell is something that can disappoint you. And it is the design. The design of the system is on the verge of being high-quality and “Chinese improvised”. This is most evident in Cyrillic fonts.
Yes, the watch supports the display of text messages – and don’t be alarmed, Canyon Life has a separate item on where the messages will come from. It doesn’t matter that there’s only Viber as standard – the list will be updated with anything that tries to send a message.
But in English, the messages look good.
As for the argument about whether this is a smartwatch… Given that I have not seen the ability to play games on any fitness bracelet, you can see where I’m going with this. Of course, Semifreddo is no substitute for a premium watch with GPS and SIM cards. But the price is appropriate. So let’s move on to the results.
Considering the average price, absolutely luxurious design, excellent functionality and adequate shell, Canyon Semifreddo SW-61 is obviously worthy of attention. I expected better battery life, and I would have removed features like games or the camera shutter release. But this is a very small number of disadvantages compared to the number of advantages. So yes, I recommend it.
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