TicWatch Pro 5: A winning Wear OS smartwatch with an impressive battery
Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5. Picture: Mobvoi.
Wear OS has had a mixture of successes and failures, but thankfully, Google has stuck with the platform, and we are now seeing a more mature OS. Big players like Samsung use Wear OS in their smartwatches, including their latest Watch 6 and Google themselves in the Pixel watch. Another smartwatch using Wear OS is the TicWatch Pro 5, and I’ve been testing it for the last few months for this long-term review.
The TicWatch Pro 5 sports a circular face and a black silicone band. It is available in black. On the right, there is a rotating crown with a red ring, and directly above it is a long button with small groves that create a texture on its flat surface.
The circular watch case has a raised bezel with a textured finish that slopes to the bevelled edges with a shiny finish. The rest of the body is a stylish matte black, and I have to admit that although the styling is subdued and not overly striking, I’ve never gotten tired of how it looks. The included black silicon band is rather bland, but it can be easily swapped out for a different look.
Regarding durability, the case and Corning Gorilla Glass screen have been used with no signs of daily wear. The glass has a unique fingerprint-resistant coating that keeps it looking sleek. The TicWatch Pro 5's 1.43-inch display isn't great for delicate wrists, but I found the size perfect for my medium-sized wrists.
The TicWatch Pro 5 is perfect for people who want to wear their watch while swimming because it is water-resistant up to 5ATM. Additionally, it has a MIL-STD-810H durability grade, which considers pressure, temperature, waterproofing, humidity, and shock.
The TicWatch Pro 5 is powered by the latest and greatest Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1, 2GB RAM, and 32GB storage — nothing to complain about here, with everything feeling snappy and responsive to touches and navigation.
In smart mode, the 628mAh battery may last up to 80 hours and can be charged up to 65% in 30 minutes. The proprietary magnetic charger is the same as previous iterations of the watch, and while it’s annoying, it doesn’t support Qi wireless charging; at least you can purchase extra chargers cheaply.
I loved the Google Pixel watch but hated the one-day battery life. I was expecting a similar performance from the TicWatch Pro 5 and was pleasantly surprised at achieving up to four days on a single charge and sometimes even five. Although this isn’t class-leading in the smartwatch space, my baseline is being able to go away on a long weekend and not have to bring a charger for my watch.
The size of the battery helps, but there are a lot of smart features and OS optimisations going on to help the watch achieve great battery life. The dual-layer display is the main feature that helps keep the battery usable to a minimum.
When you tap the face or push a button in the default mode, you get the complete smartwatch experience. However, the always-on low-power display is active most of the time, and the backlight only turns on when you raise your wrist to check the time. The smart features will be disabled at night and automatically convert to essential mode until you interact with the watch again in the morning. Going back to normal mode requires putting in a pin if you set one and waiting a few seconds for it to switch back to normal mode.The main display is a striking OLED display with vibrant colours and clearness, while the second screen is monochrome and is used as an always-on display. While this might seem a disadvantage, it’s a massive bonus because it includes much more information than your typical OLED always-on display. Of course, it will display the time, date, heart rate, step count, and current battery level. I love that it doesn’t light up a dark room like an OLED always-on display, but the backlight will make it visible when you raise your wrist. If you want to interact with the main display, tap on it or press one of the buttons.
Most of Google's features, including my personal favourite — contactless payments with Google Wallet — are included with the TicWatch Pro 5. You also get media playback controls, Messages, Google Play Store, Google Maps navigation and smart home control with Google Home. Thanks to full Play Store compatibility, you have a good selection of apps, including Keep Notes, Google Home, WhatsApp, Spotify and Strava.
Swiping and tapping gestures are used to navigate the watch, but a rotating crown control provides nice haptic feedback and makes it much easier to scroll through notifications and your app drawer.
You can access all of the TicWatch Pro 5's options, including health and activity monitoring data, watch faces, tiles, and essential settings, using the Mobvoi Health app. A sizable number of watch faces come pre-installed, and many more are both free and paid for.
The app has a simple and easy-to-read layout with a ton of information if you want. I have found sleep tracking accurate with excellent insights into my sleep stages. I love seeing the results of my night's sleep stages directly on the watch. You also get average sleep heart rate, sleep blood oxygen, sleep respiratory rate, and skin temperature deviations for each sleep session.
There’s also a slew of fitness tracking features, including steps and all-day heart rate monitoring. Still, you can manually check your blood oxygen saturation, respiratory rate and stress level with just a few taps.
Over the last few months, I used the watch to track a number of fitness activities, including swimming and cycling. The results and data of those activities were excellent and comparable in terms of the accuracy of an Apple Watch Series 8. There are over 100 workout modes, including a newly integrated open-water swim and altitude calibration for climbing or trail running.
The TicWatch Pro 5 Pro is a great option if you're an Android phone user. You don’t have to worry about paying any subscriptions to gain access to all its features, and not having to charge the Pro 5 every day or two makes a four-day battery life a game-changer.
The latest Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 features more sensors and the latest Wear OS 4, but it works best with Galaxy devices. In contrast, the TicWatch 5 Pro works great with any Android smartphone, has better battery life and is a little cheaper, so it comes highly recommended.
Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 Pro - €360 Mobvoi
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