Is this a great alternative smartwatch? Let's have a look
Dave Taylor here and I'm looking at this. This is pretty cool. This is the TicWatch Pro 4G LTE
So, it is a smartwatch. I will tap it to wake the screen up
And it gives you all sorts of different features and functionality. And there's lots of stuff you can get to
But most importantly, this is a Wear OS smartwatch. So, it's kind of like the Apple Watch
Though, frankly, with an iPhone, less functionality. But we'll come back to that
What I will say is that it's actually really cool. And I really like it. And I've been wearing this very happily
One of the biggest things that TicWatch got right is they rethought the whole battery
So, this is actually a dual-layer screen. So, there's what's known as an FSTN, Passive LCD Matrix screen on top
So, right now, it's almost impossible for you to see. But when this illumination goes off, there's a sort of ghostly outline that shows me the time
And it uses incredibly little power. Then, when you wake it up or you touch it
then it actually fires up a color 1.39-inch AMOLED 400x400 screen that's underneath
So, basically, you get this super low-power screen that gives you basic functionality
If you're in direct sunlight, you can see what time it is. But any time you can, like, wake on your wrist turning
there's a variety of different things that can happen that cause the screen to light up
But by doing it that way, they've gained a ton of battery life
So, I will tell you that I can charge this overnight and not..
And, let's see. So, if I charge it overnight, the next morning, it still has 60% charge
So, that means 24 hours later, I'm still good to go. How'd they do that
They did that with a 415 mAh battery and a whole different design, like I said, for how battery is utilized
If you just want it in low-power mode and you never fire up the actual smartwatch feature
they say it can run for 30 days on a charge. By comparison, the Apple Watch is pretty much dead as a doornail in about 30 hours
So, having to not charge this every single night is really nice
Now, when you do charge it, like every one of these things, it comes with its own weird custom charger
This one is pretty easy to work with. It's a magnet, so, you know, it snaps right on
It's just a regular USB on the other side. Charges super fast. So, this is something you could actually top up your battery in 15 or 30 minutes, and you'll be in good shape
But, ultimately, it's the watch itself that's so cool. Now, let's talk about it
So, the case is made of a polyimide glass fiber, and this makes it super tough
It actually is... Let's see what it said. It's MIL-STD-810G durability, and it's IP68, which means it's not only water and dust resistant
but you can use it while you're swimming, too. I'm not sure what knocking on the table has to do with swimming
but let's say you're swimming and you whack your hand against the side of the pool. It is not going to be damaged
It has a stainless steel bezel, 22mm silicone watch strap. Not a huge fan of the watch strap, but it's a standard size, so you can easily replace it with something else
I think a black leather would look pretty nice with this, too. The watch itself is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100 chip with 1GB of RAM and 4GB of ROM
Amazing, right? All of that jammed into this watch, and it's not even that thick
It also supports three different kinds of GPS navigational systems. So, it does the standard US GPS, but it also supports GLONASS and Beidou
which are Russian and Chinese GPS systems, too. So, TicWatch from Mobvoi is clearly designed as a global watch for people regardless of where they are
and that's a good thing. I don't want to have to worry about, oh, I've traveled overseas, now my watch can't figure out where I am, right
So, this guy has that all covered. It also supports Google Pay with NFC payments
All of this stuff you're going to have to set up on your mobile device that it's paired to
We'll come back to that in just a second. So, it also, one of the other big things is it does have a heart monitor
and it has a whole action and activity monitor, too. So, they call this the TicPulse heart monitor and TicMotion activity tracker
It also can be configured so that it prompts you. So, I see every hour, it's like, take 70 more steps and you'll hit your hourly step goal
and it's just like, all right, I'll get up and I'll walk around for a couple seconds, right
So, maybe I'm not enthused, but the watch is helping me be healthy, and that's a good thing
So, it also, finally, includes Google Assistant, but I've been talking a lot
Let me just jump in and show you a quick demo. What I'm going to show here is I'm going to show the watch face
and then I'm going to swap down, and swapping down gives you access to a variety of quick shortcuts and such
one of which that's super important to know about is theater mode
Turn off your watch when you're at a movie. Swipe up from the bottom and you get notifications
Swipe from the left and you get to Google Assistant. And go back to the center, swipe from the right, and now I'm at my tiles
So, I have four different tiles set up, as you can see, all very handy
There are also two buttons on the side. So, one button gets you to the home screen, and then you push it again
it gets you to apps, and you push it again, it gets you to the home screen
So, that's really your primary button. And then the second one is a button that's dependent on where you are in the watch system
Super easy. The whole thing's actually pretty easy to work with. Wear OS, I find, takes a little bit of getting used to
The whole sort of swiping in all the different directions feels a little bit like Snapchat
but if you're good with Snapchat, you're going to be totally good with this. Now, it also uses the Wear OS app, and I've hooked it up with my iPhone
which I understand gives me the least functionality of all possible combinations
So, with an iPhone, it's basically a notification watch. For example, it will pop up and say, you have an incoming call, but I can't answer it on the watch
But I can answer it, and then it's live on my phone. Not hugely helpful
But if I had an Android phone, then I get a lot more functionality
because Android and Wear OS work much more tightly together. But before we go any further, let me just show you on the iPhone
when I go into the app, the Wear OS app, which is a free download
then I have a variety of different settings. I can go and set what tiles I want. I can set what notifications I want
And I can also change from any one of thousands of different watch faces
Super fun. And in case you didn't realize, it's a round screen
unlike the rectangular screen of the Apple Watch. I like that a lot, too
Now, here's the thing, is that when I started out, I said that this is the TicWatch Pro 4G LTE
And so far, you're like, well, there ain't no 4G or LTE going on here
And even with an Android phone, it's not going to give you its own sort of autonomous existence
unless you're on Verizon. Now, Verizon has some feature. I believe it's the eSIM feature, but it lets the watch be its own entity
So it has all the circuitry in it so that you could actually be far, far away from your phone
and you get a phone call or a text message, and it will still show up on your watch
even if it's too far to be low-power Bluetooth connected to your phone
That's really cool. I, sadly, do not have Verizon service, so I was not able to test that
So that is something that I'm guessing there's probably a little bit of fiddling and setup to do
But if you're on Verizon, that's a pretty sweet feature, right? And especially when I tell you the price
you'll be pretty amazed all of that is jammed into a watch that's this nice and this attractive
and has this great a battery life and is at that price point. But before we get to the price
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I appreciate that, and I appreciate you staying in touch. So this is the TicWatch Pro 4G LTE
I will tap it to wake it up. And it is $299.99
But at the moment I recorded this video, it was on sale for $224.25 at Mobvoi.com
$224 for an actual fully functional smartwatch with all of these features and the activity
and heart rate and GPS and everything smoothly integrated in a nice attractive watch
Kind of a no-brainer, you guys. And if you have an Android phone, you're going to love it even more
I'm talking about just using it with my iPhone and I'm a big fan
I'm more of a fan of this than my Apple Watch. Even though it has less functionality
it is better battery life, and I just feel like it's a smoother, easier experience
So there you go. If you're looking for a high level of interactivity
and you have an iPhone, this might not be a great option. But otherwise, this is definitely one to check out
So with that, I'm going to put it back on my wrist. I'm going to have to get up and walk around a little bit
to hit my hourly step goal because I definitely have not achieved that yet today
And that means that, there we go, I will catch you in my next video