Check out the Ticwatch S running Wear OS by Google. This watch is pretty feature packed for the price. The Ticwatch is a great alternative to the higher priced Wear OS Android watches and the Apple Watch. In this video I discuss the watch and its features. In future videos, we will compare this watch to the iPhone and the Fitbit Versa as alternatives.
Tickwatch S: http://jer.fyi/ticwatchs
As far as smartwatches go, the Ticwatch S is top notch for the price.
Video Transcript
Hey what’s up, it’s Jerad with State Of Tech and today we’re going to take a look at the Ticwatch S. This is a more budget Ticwatch S Android Wear Smartwatch or Wear OS watch, and it’s absolutely fantastic. For the price, this is one of the best watches you can get. Now I had seen the Ticwatch on Amazon for a while. I’ve seen a couple different variations of it and just never jumped on it because I thought to myself that looks like more of like a cheap entry-level one. When I started reading the reviews and I was looking for alternatives, and I kept looking at the list of what watches were getting the new version of Wear OS, what manufacturers were updating, I kept seeing Ticwatch and I thought I just have to try it, I have to try it.
I went on Amazon and I ordered the Ticwatch S in black and I’ve just been really impressed by this watch ever since I got it. Of course, there are a few shortcomings which I’ll talk about, but overall the experience of this watch has been pretty fantastic. The screen on it is nice. It has a 1.4 inch size display. The overall diameter of the watch is 45 millimeters, so it has a pretty good sized face on it. I like that because when I’m using the watch for things like navigation or sports tracking or anything like that, activity tracking, I like to have a little bit bigger display because it’s usually in those moments where it’s a little bit harder to get a good look at the watch, and so you want a good size display on there.
To me, I have a good sized wrist but this watch just fits and feels good, and it’s a good size display on a smartwatch. It is a little bit thicker than some other ones. As you can see here, 13 millimeters thick and then it’s a little bit thicker on this end too where the the home button is, but it’s not that big of a deal. I like it, I love the fact that the button is on the inside of my left hand here rather than the right side because when I wear gloves, I’m working out or something like that, I’m constantly hitting the button or the crown or whatever you want to call it on pretty much every other type of smartwatch. Having the button over here is nice.
It just makes sense because you squeeze the watch even if you’re using the buttons on the right, so being just using my thumb, perfect, works great, I like it. This watch is running Wear OS by Google, has been updated. If you’re using a Android device that has Android 4.3 or newer or an iPhone 8.0 or newer, you’re going to be able to use this watch. Now I’ve used this watch on both an iPhone and an Android device and have absolutely loved it. I have a video coming out soon where I’m going to be comparing this to the Apple Watch because a lot of people don’t want to pay that Apple Watch tax, but they want a smartwatch. I’m going to definitely do a comparison between the two, so make sure to subscribe to the channel here to be notified when that comes out.
This watch has a GPS integrated watch band, which means in the watch band there is like a GPS antenna I guess you could say, which answers the question can you change out the watch bands. Now it looks like you can, but I don’t know if necessarily that’d be a good idea because you want that GPS and without the GPS, you’re not going to have all the features that the watch has for fitness tracking. It has 512 megabytes of memory and four gigabytes of storage, which means you’re going to be able to load some music on it, so that you can listen to music with Bluetooth headphones, you can connect directly to it. It has the latest Bluetooth technology version 4.1 BLE.
Even if you have an internet connection, a Wi-Fi connection to the watch, you can stream music straight to whatever earbuds you’re using, Bluetooth earbuds. I even was able to connect my Apple EarPods to it and listen. Fantastic, definitely something you should check out and I’ll talk a little bit more about that when I do my comparison between this and the Apple Watch. It has a heart rate monitor, proximity sensor, accelerometer, all that good stuff. The heart rate monitor doesn’t seem to run continuously like maybe say a Fitbit Versa.
I’m going to do a comparison on the Versa as well because the Fitbit Versa and this watch are very comparable in price, but they have different feature sets and they’re good for different reasons, and so I want to do a video talking about that so definitely subscribe to check that one out as well when I get that video out. IP67 water-resistant which means you’ll most likely be able to swim, get this watch wet, but you aren’t going to want to submerge it too deep because it’s IP67 which is decent but not submergible decent, so be careful there. It has a very strong vibrator in it for notifications and stuff like that. I noticed some watches are pretty weak.
It just doesn’t really respond too well. This watch is great. I’m able to notice phone calls and text messages and other notifications coming in, even when I’m being more active and that’s when a lot of other smartwatches would let me down. I’d miss a notification because of movement of activity. What I do really like about this watch is the watch face. It has the the the watch bezel here that they say for superior display. I don’t necessarily know what that means, but it’s very highlighted bright numbers here, and then the watch face itself is pretty bright as well. It has an always-on display which is great. I’ve tried both with that turned off and turned on.
I have noticed that with the always-on display turned off, sometimes rotating my wrist to wake the watch requires a little bit more exaggeration than just a normal bringing of the watch up to your face, like right now I just did that and the watch didn’t even fully turn on with the … No, now it did, with the always-on display. With the always-on display, at least I could see what time it is and stuff like that. Sometimes you have to kind of exaggerate the waking of it a little bit, but I like the face here. This face, in particular, has the time. This outer ring going around the outside of the watch has the percentage of battery left.
I have my steps in my calories and then of course there’s the one that it came set to I believe was this one here the wonder, which shows a ring all the way around for your steps, and then it has the calories and how many notifications you’ve missed there. There’s a couple other, here’s like more of a standard watch face that has some notifications built into it. I’ve really enjoyed the watch faces that this watch comes with. I think they’re super useful and a lot of times watches are hit or miss with that, and you have to go to third-party watch faces in order to get what you’re looking for. All these watch faces are branded with the word Ticwatch on it which I’m all for showing off your brand, but I’d prefer not having the watch faces branded.
With that said, I mean this watch for its price is absolutely fantastic. Now I want to talk about the battery life of the watch a bit. The battery life was less than desirable. It says plus 48 hours depending on the usage, but I’ve barely been able to get a day’s use out of the watch. I’ve been using it heavily, I’ve been putting it through its paces and whatnot. If I used it lighter than it probably would last. I’ve used it all day with the always-on display turned on. I’ve also used it all day with the always-on display turned off and turning off the always-on display saves me about 12% battery life in a day, but still that’s not enough to get me from like 6 a.m. to or 10 or 11 p.m. I would be scraping by to get the watch to last all day.
Now of course I’ve installed additional apps, I’ve done some music streaming, it’s activity tracking. There’s lots of stuff that I’ve been doing throughout the day, so a day of not using the watch for a whole lot other than just notifications and stuff like that, you’re probably going to get at least a good solid day of use out of it. Like I said, the watch charges pretty quickly and you use basically this little adapter here just magnetically attaches and the watch will charge. Of course USB, so you could plug this into anything and get it charging. I’ve charged this watch in my car. I’ve charged it on my nightstand. I’ve charged it at my desk. It’s just very nice, very nice and minimal.
You can also just the watch sits nicely on the table as well. Not so much this way, but the cable coming off the top, which okay it’s not too bad, but it charges pretty fast and this definitely isn’t going to get in your way. I enjoy that about this watch, having something with a minimalistic charging port that just doesn’t become clutter. It’s not going to compare with the battery life and usage abilities of another smartwatch that might be higher priced. You’re definitely going to have to check out my comparison videos to find those things out for sure, but overall you just can’t go wrong for the price. It hands-down is one of the best smartwatches on the market right now for its price.
With that said, what are your thoughts on smartwatches, have you tried a Ticwatch, have you tried a budget SmartWatch and where has it been lacking. I think this watch is going to fill those gaps. Sure, it doesn’t have NFC, might be missing a few other features that you would like, but it has a mic and a speaker built-in so you can use Google Assistant, you can answer phone calls on it, do all those things. It checks all the other boxes and just misses just a few things that we can hold out for those higher-end watches, but is it really worth paying that extra money to get those things out of those watches? With that said, that’s going to do it for this video.
I hope you enjoyed the video on the Ticwatch. Definitely subscribe to our channel here to find out when we get new videos put up, follow us on Instagram because I’m going to put some photos that I took of the Ticwatch up there, and you can also check that out including all the specs and additional information on Stateoftech.net. Until next time, my name is Jared and I hope to see you back here soon on State Of Tech.
