Realme Watch S Review: A stylish yet affordable gateway into the world of fitness tracking

Realme just added two new smartwatches to its product portfolio in India. The Realme Watch S and Watch S Pro aim to step up the company’s efforts in the smart accessories game. While the Realme Watch S Pro aims to bring a premium smartwatch experience at a reasonable price, the vanilla Watch S is intended to succeed the Realme Watch. Today, our focus is on the Realme Watch S.

Design and Build

For design, the Realme Watch S has opted for a circular dial instead of the square dial on the original Realme Watch. The round form factor offers a more traditional timepiece design, which seamlessly blends with your attire. Two big improvements on the Realme Watch S are the slim bezels and an aluminium case as opposed to a plastic one on the original Realme Watch. The gunmetal frame and buttons are made from aluminium, while the sensors and charging pins on the back are made from plastic.

Despite the aluminium case, the watch still feels light and comfortable on the wrist but doesn’t by any means look cheap. In terms of dimensions, the Realme Watch S features a 47mm case, which is 12mm thick and weighs 48g. The Watch S also comes with a 22mm silicone strap that can easily be interchanged depending on your preference. Realme’s new smartwatch is also IP68 rated for water resistance up to 1.5 meters. The overall design and build quality of the Realme Watch S is a massive step up from the Realme Watch.

Display

The Realme Watch S boasts a 1.3-inch LCD touchscreen with a 360*360-pixel resolution. The company claims that the Watch S can deliver 600 nits of peak brightness. The Watch S also supports auto-brightness, which is another big improvement from the original Realme Watch. You can manually set brightness levels, but the ‘auto display’ feature works well.

This is a step down from a good OLED panel, but the text for notifications and apps look sharp. The display also looked good in direct sunlight, but you will definitely notice a difference if you are coming from an OLED screen. The screen is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The Realme Watch S has access to a total of 108 watch faces, with the option to create your own watch face. You can store up to seven watch faces on the smartwatch and access it by tapping and holding down on the home screen.

Performance

The Realme Watch S is smooth and responsive, which makes navigating through the multitude of its features an absolute breeze. You can use the swipe gesture or make use of the side buttons to access the watch’s features. The PPG optical heart rate sensor enables features like continuous monitoring, resting heart rate, heart rate alerts, and heart rate during exercise. It can also measure blood oxygen levels.

Realme’s latest smartwatch offers automatic sleep monitoring and can also track heart rate while you sleep. The Realme Watch S can track sleep duration as well as the different sleep stages, including deep, light, and REM. The sleep tracking and heart rate monitoring on the Watch S are not all that reliable, and like most smartwatches, it isn’t a substitute for professional equipment.

The Realme Watch S comes with a ton of different features to track your activity. There are 16 sports modes in total – Outdoor Run, Indoor Run, Walk, Outdoor Cycle, Strength Training, Football, Basketball, Yoga, Cricket, Aerobic Capacity, Badminton, Indoor Cycle, Stationary Bike, Elliptical, Rowing Machine and Table Tennis.

The one drawback here is the lack of a Swimming mode despite the watch’s IP68 rating. While running, the Realme Watch S displays stats such as pace, distance, and duration. There’s no built-in GPS, so the watch relies on your phone’s GPS signal to map outdoor activities. Overall, tracking isn’t very reliable and at times, feels inconsistent.

Software

The watch can be paired to your phone using the Realme Link app, and yes, we’ve finally got iOS support for the app. Once you’ve downloaded the app, you can log in using your Realme account. The setup process is simple and only takes a couple of seconds, although you’ll have to agree to all the prompts to start using the Realme Watch S. You can use the app to control notifications, toggle music, and the camera directly from the watch.

The Link app has a ton of cool features, like a reminder for getting up and drinking water in intervals. You can also download and use one of 100 watch faces from the app as well as customise your own watch face. The companion app provides detailed activity and health tracking metrics. It also gives you a detailed breakdown of workouts. You can also keep track of your fitness activity directly from the watch itself.

Battery

The Realme Watch S packs a 390mAh battery, which the company claims can deliver 15 days of battery life. Yes, you’ve heard right, ‘15 days’, not ‘up to 15 days.’ In my limited time using the watch, it seemed that Realme’s claims held true. The Watch S just lost anywhere between 5 to 10 percent every day, and this included the display set on auto-brightness with continuous heart rate enabled. To give you an idea about battery life, an hour of badminton with heart rate monitoring turned on only managed to drain 2 percent of battery.

The Realme Watch S also lost around 1 to 2 percent of battery life when kept overnight. There’s a magnetic charger included in the box to charge the watch when not in use. You can also use the ‘power saving mode’ to shut off features of the watch and only have it display time. The watch sits pretty securely on the charger, and it takes around two hours to fully power the watch. The Realme Watch S delivers excellent battery life and also does a great job with battery management.

Verdict

For Rs 4,999, the Realme Watch S packs a whole lot of features for a relatively small price. Apart from being affordable, the watch looked pretty good on my wrist and didn’t feel cheap. Additionally, battery life was never a bother when using the Realme Watch S; I so rarely found myself scrambling for the charger. For a budget smartwatch, the Watch S also had a ton of different features and is a pretty competent fitness tracker, although accuracy can be called into question at times, depending on the complexity of the activity.

There’s no built-in GPS here, so you cannot call it a full-fledge sports watch and the lack of a swimming mode despite the IP rating was also a letdown. I would say the Realme Watch S is an excellent gateway into the world of smartwatches. It offers a ton of features at a pretty affordable price and looks good doing so. The Realme Watch S is an excellent successor to the Realme Watch and is one of the best entry-level smartwatches you can buy right now.