Not so long ago, Dmitry Koval told us what the basic Realme Watch S is like. Today it’s time to talk about its “senior” version, the Realme Watch S Pro. Despite the fact that both models of the Watch S series are visually similar, there are enough differences between them. So what are they?
Read also: Realme Watch S Review: The Brand’s First Smartwatch with Round Display
So, there are two models in the line and the difference in price between them is significant: the Watch S Pro will cost twice as much. At the time of writing the ordinary Watch S is priced at $73, and the Realme Watch S Pro with a discount costs ~ $138, when usually it’s $146. How does the manufacturer justify such a price difference?
The Realme Watch S Pro doesn’t surprise. The device comes in an elongated yellow box, which has become the brand’s trademark. Inside there is a watch, a charging cradle with a standard USB cable and a manual with a warranty card.
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The Watch S Pro’s capabilities are built on a standard set of features found in any wearable device, from a fitness tracker to a smartwatch. The Realme watch provides tracking of daily activities (number of steps, distance traveled, calories burned), constant heart rate measurement, phone finder, sleep monitoring, weather display, timer, stopwatch, alarm and music controls. And, of course, the Watch S Pro has not forgotten the measurement of blood saturation, which is a must-have feature today. But, like many watches and trackers, the Watch S Pro cannot be used as a medical device. Therefore, the accuracy of the measurement is not as good as one might hope.
There are 15 training modes: indoor/outdoor running, indoor walking/walking/hiking, cycling/stationary bike, pool swimming, basketball, yoga, rowing machine, elliptical trainer, cricket, strength and free training. There’s no automatic training recognition mode. And, since GPS appeared in the Pro version, you don’t need to use your smartphone outdoors, the watch copes with geolocation on its own.
In addition to the reminder that it’s time to warm up, a reminder was added to pause and drink water. A great thing for those who want to train themselves to drink more water, but constantly forget about it, and the reminder of breaks can also be useful. Breathing exercises have also been added, with no stress measurement provided. There’s also a compass and camera control on a smartphone.
During testing, I noticed that the pedometer is counting fewer steps than my watch usually shows in a day. I found the answer in the manual – it turns out that Watch S Pro does not take into account small transitions up to 10 steps. Therefore, in order to stomp the daily rate of steps, you will have to move more.
With design, there are practically no differences between the standard Watch S and the Pro version. This is the same round smart watch with a pair of buttons to the right of the display and a decorative bezel around it, only the base of the case is made not of aluminum, but of stainless steel. This is one of the points that explains the difference in weight between the two models: the Watch S is 48 g with the strap, and the Watch S Pro is 63.5 g. However, the feature set is different here. For example, a GPS tracker, which the Watch S does not have, must also weigh something, so the difference in weight categories is determined by both materials and hardware. There is also a difference in waterproofing: the Watch S supports IP68, but the S Pro supports 5 ATMs. This means that the Watch S does not allow for training in the pool.
With a diameter of 46 mm and a thickness of just over 1 cm, I cannot classify the Watch S Pro as a smartwatch for everyone. In my opinion, this is more a man’s watch than a woman’s, as it looks too massive on a woman’s wrist. However, this is a matter of taste – if brutal-looking watches are consistent with your style, then why not?
On the global market you can find a device with multi-colored silicone, stainless steel or vegan leather bands. Leather and steel, of course, look better. A standard band (22 mm) is replaceable, and you can swap it with any other strap, even from ordinary wristwatches. Therefore, you can choose a more interesting option than the one that comes in a box. Although the bundled band is also quite good – the silicone is soft and pleasant to the touch, and the design is complemented by a pair of longitudinal lines along the bracelet. The clasp here is plastic, there is a clip for additional fixation. The only drawback of this material is that dust loves it.
The bezels around the screen are decorated with notches and numbers. But the screen has no special protection (apart from 2.5D glass) from mechanical damage. Most likely, over time micro-scratches will present themselves. The bezel here is just a design element. A nice bonus compared to the Watch S: in the S Pro, the bezels around the screen are slightly smaller.
There are two physical buttons: the upper one is responsible for waking up the screen, it performs the Go Back function and, when pressed for a long time, calls up the shutdown/reboot menu, and the lower one is for quick access to the training menu. The movement of the buttons is clear, not very deep, but the sound of of the buttons themselves is quite loud and, how to put it, plasticky. It reminds me of inexpensive electronic watches (with a backlight and an alarm, you remember those) or cheap radios. In wearable electronics, I don’t pay attention to the sound of button clicking at all, but in the case of the Watch S Pro, it’s hard to ignore.
The lower part of the case is made of ordinary matte plastic. There is nothing remarkable here: in the center there is an optical heart rate sensor, a sensor for measuring the level of oxygen in the blood, a pair of terminals for charging, as well as some markings.
The design of the Watch S Pro is close to the classics, but with a certain sporty twist. This means that you can wear it with anything and anywhere, both at the office and at the gym. When it comes to ergonomics, the watch, despite the considerable size, is quite comfortable to use. You can feel it on your wrist, but that changes nothing: I’ve been using it for a whole day with no issues.
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The screen of the Realme Watch S Pro is much more interesting than that of the Watch S. It is slightly larger (1.3″ versus 1.39″), and an AMOLED matrix is used here instead of TFT. The pixel density is 326 ppi (in the basic version it’s 278 ppi), and the resolution is 454×454 (versus 360×360). The AMOLED screen provides maximum viewing angles, excellent contrast and clarity (the text is more than legible) and, of course, Always-On mode is supported.
If we talk about brightness, then there is plenty of it in the Watch S Pro. The maximum brightness is at 450 nits, there are no issues with legibility on the street. The watch has 5 brightness levels, as well as an auto brightness mode. The watch already has several pre-installed watchfaces, and in the app there are more than a hundred of them, so there is plenty to choose from. Here you will find informative watchfaces with a bunch of data, as well as “stylish” ones, and just plain silly ones as well. You also can set any image from a smartphone as a background and choose in which position (top or bottom) the time and date will be placed. So yes, you can play around with the design as you like, and the screen itself is very solid and high-quality.
The watch is controlled using a touchscreen display and the very pair of buttons mentioned above. The notification panel is called up by swiping from top to bottom. Here you can see the last 10 notifications, including calls, texts and messages from apps. Unfortunately, you cannot respond to notifications. When reading a message, only two functions are available – delete and go back. A call can also only be declined.
Swiping from bottom to top brings up the main menu. There are as many as 15 icons here: alarm clock, settings, compass, workouts, weather, heart rate monitor, breathing exercise, music control, blood oxygen level measurement, sleep monitoring, stopwatch, timer, Phone Finder, smartphone camera control and exercise recording.
There are pre-installed widgets for daily activity, weather, sleep monitoring, heart rate, music control on a smartphone, as well as a quick additional settings widget, where you can adjust brightness, enable battery saving mode, do not disturb mode and flashlight. It also displays the date, the remaining charge in percentages, as well as the connection status.
The watchfaces change in the usual way for smart watches – a touch and hold action opens a menu with preinstalled skins. If the existing watch faces are not to your liking, you can install additional ones using the app.
All animations and switching between widgets and menus are smooth, the UI is pretty nice and easy to use. The only pity is that you cannot customize the functions of the buttons and swap or add/remove widgets.
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The Realme Link app can be found both in Goggle Play and, more recently, in the AppStore. The Watch S Pro connects to smartphones running Android 5.0 and higher and iOS 9.0 and higher. The main advantage of the companion app is the collection of statistics and access to additional settings that are not found on the watch itself.
On the main screen of the app you can see the connection status, the remaining charge on the watch and blocks with basic data and statistics: daily activity, pulse oximeter and heart rate sensor data, sleep monitoring and training.
To get to the additional settings, you need to tap on the gear-shaped icon, which is located in the upper right corner. The first point here is the watchface gallery, where you can find both pre-installed skins and create your own. In this case, the location of the time can be chosen.
This is followed by a slider with the inclusion of call notifications, and below is the setting of notifications from different apps. The next block is devoted to reminders and alarms: here you can turn on a reminder to move a little and drink some water, set the time and interval of the reminder, and an alarm. However, the alarm can be set on the watch itself.
The 24-hour heart rate measurement allows you to set the heart rate measurement interval, as well as set the minimum and maximum heart rate threshold; the watch will notify you if the heart rate is too low or high. By the way, if you turn off the round-the-clock measurement function, the heart rate monitor will not work on the watch until you activate it. Not very convenient.
Next, there is music and camera control, as well as a the phone finder function. Below are the weather settings (for which you need to enable geolocation) and your steps goal. At the very bottom there is a user manual, software updates, MAC address, legal information (user agreement, privacy policy, data sharing) and a button to delete the device.
The Watch S Pro is charged in the included cradle. The stand has a rather long cable (about 1 m) with a USB output at the other end. The cradle itself looks like a small plastic pancake with a pair of charging terminals on the front side and a stylized letter “R” in the center. On the reverse side there’s rubberized ring which acts as legs and prevents sliding along the surface. It will take about an hour to replenish the charge from 30% to 100%.
With a 420 mAh battery (the Watch S has a little less: 390 mAh), the manufacturer promises up to 14 days of work. In fact, depending on the working functions and the intensity of use, on average I lost from 7% to 15% per day. The lowest (7%) was on the days when continuous heart rate monitoring was turned off. In all other respects, the interaction was regular: checking notifications, viewing the weather and controlling music, reminders, navigating the UI at maximum screen brightness and Always-On. A twofold increase in charge consumption was noticed after turning on the round-the-clock heart rate measurement with an interval of 10 minutes – the average consumption per day was 15%. This is not the limit, and if we were to add GPS for training outdoors, the charge would melt even faster.
So yes, 14 days of battery can really be achieved if you turn off automatic heart rate measurement and do not use GPS. Nevertheless, even with constant heart rate tracking, the Watch S Pro can last a little less than a week, which is not so bad.
The Realme Watch S Pro is a pretty good men’s smartwatch with extensive functionality. It is characterized by a laconic and moderately strict design, protection from water according to the 5 ATM standard and the ability to replace the band with any compatible one. Separately, I would like to praise the display: after all, AMOLED is AMOLED, and the variety of watchfaces is also pleasing. The watch supports quite popular training modes, for outdoor activities there is a GPS, you can control music on your smartphone and receive reminders. The UI is quite pleasant.
I did not like only a couple of points: you cannot configure widgets and functions for physical buttons, you cannot respond to notifications, except when you delete them, and the heart rate monitor does not work without 24/7 heart rate monitoring enabled.
And what do we get in the end? Although the Watch S Pro can be called a successful model, there’s nothing special about it. And the competition in the segment of smartwatches from $100 to $ 200 is just the fiercest. Despite the merits of the Watch S Pro, in my opinion, it lacks something unique or at least eye-catching to ensure its greater success on the wearable electronics market.
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thank you for all the info,quite informative
Just one question how do I save the app download as I only have a non Mac phone and am having trouble adjusting the time if you could help me out with a few hints I would really love that
thanks so much
thank you for all the info,quite informative
Eugenia.