Pebble Cosmos Luxe Smartwatch Review: Premium looking smartwatch in budget
Pebble Cosmos Luxe It has a 1.36 inch AMOLED display, Bluetooth calling capability, sensors to measure steps, heart rate and SpO2 level. It also attracts attention with its on-paper specifications. Does this affordable smartwatch live up to expectations and do its looks help it stand out from others in this segment? Let us know in this review.
Design of Pebble Cosmos Lux
The Pebble Cosmos Luxe stands out in this price segment for several reasons. A round screen and polished finish catches your attention. The right side of its 1.36-inch display has two buttons, one of which looks and functions like the buttons on a traditional mechanical watch. This adds to its attractive looks.
On its left side, there is a grill for the speaker which can be used for audio by connecting with the phone through Bluetooth. Optical sensors are provided below the dial which do health and fitness tracking. The contact points of the magnetic charging pin are also found here. This smartwatch is also effective against water and dust and is IP67 rated. Wearing it can also be used for swimming in shallow water.
The rubber strap that comes with it can be removed and replaced with a 22mm watchstrap. The straps that come with it are waterproof and comfortable to wear. Many points are given on these for adjustment and good fit.
Along with the two buttons on the right side, a microphone is also provided. Its primary button or crown button controls power, opens the app drawer, and takes you back to the home screen. It can also be rotated to scroll through menus. Another small button on the side takes you straight to the workout menu and from here it can be quickly launched to track walking workouts.
Pebble Cosmos Luxe weighs 50 grams. It features a 1.36-inch round AMOLED display with 390×390 pixels resolution with a peak brightness of 600 nits. Apart from Bluetooth 5 for connectivity, there are also step tracking, heart-rate monitoring and SpO2 monitoring sensors. A charging cable is included in the sales package, which plugs into the USB Type-A port. But wall adapter is not available. The unit that came to me for review had a slight misalignment in the display. However, this did not affect the functioning of the watch.
Pebble Cosmos Lux Software and Apps
Budget smartwatches come with basic software systems and rely on Bluetooth connectivity for syncing with smartphones and other connectivity features. The Pebble Cosmos Luxe has its own software that covers its core functionality, including watch faces, fitness and health tracking, and Bluetooth connectivity for calling from a paired smartphone.
Making good use of the AMOLED display, the Pebble Cosmos Luxe has an Always On mode that shows the time on the screen even when the watch is in standby. You can choose between analog and digital for this. You can turn it off if you want to extend battery life even more, but I found it useful for quickly checking the time.
The screen doesn’t wake up by tapping, but its lift to wake feature wakes it up as soon as you lift the watch or by pressing one of its two buttons. For quick settings you can swipe from top to bottom. If you want to check notifications of supported apps, you can swipe from bottom to top. By swiping from left to right you reach the main apps and by swiping from right to left you can reach widgets.
In its built-in apps, you get telephone, contacts, workout, workout record, heart rate, sleep, blood pressure, blood oxygen, stress, messages, weather, music and many tools like calculator and stopwatch etc. You cannot install any other app in the smartwatch. Of the apps that exist, some work on their own and some require connecting to the FitCloudPro app via Bluetooth.
With the help of the Telephone app, you can use the watch as wireless handsfree. With the Contacts app, you can make quick calls by creating favorite contacts, dial numbers directly from the dialer, and call records keep details of calls. It also has a voice assistant app that relies on Bluetooth, but it didn’t work when I tried to use it.
The FitCloudPro app handles the connection between the smartphone and the watch. It can also be used to customize settings. The apps from which notifications are to be received can also be selected. Google Fit can be used for more than just linking data.
This app stores fitness data from your watch and quickly activates all the sensors to give a combined report of your heart rate, stress level, blood pressure and blood oxygen. I found it quite useful. This app is good and I did not face any connectivity issues during the review.
You can change the watchface by long pressing on the home screen. It comes pre-loaded with 9 watchfaces. You can use the tenth watchface from the Companion app. The preloaded watchfaces are quite nice and match the look of the watch. The FitCloudPro app has a large collection of watchfaces that can be loaded onto the smartwatch.
Pebble Cosmos Lux performance and battery life
This smartwatch stands out from such affordable smartwatches due to its design and AMOLED display. Its screen is its most attractive feature, on which you can easily see the time and date and can also read the notifications clearly.
Its always on display mode and color level is good. But the deep black element of AMOLED display is not visible in it. This may be because the user interface is always bright which does not allow the black color to shine evenly by turning off the pixels. Still its sharpness and details are quite good.
The watchfaces are well designed. Live widgets are provided for steps, heart rate, weather and battery level. However, you can’t do anything with widgets. It is also a capable device for fitness tracking, as the company has said that the best sensors have been used in it. However, I didn’t experience any exceptional tracking and it performed similarly to other fitness tracking devices in this price segment. I saw the same error margins and imperfections that I saw on the Realme Watch 2 Pro and Just Corseca Ray Kanabis.
It has many workout modes which have been optimized for tracking activities. These include some common modes like walking, running, climbing, swimming and cycling etc. Apart from that there are also sports modes like basketball, badminton, football and volleyball. For review, I measured walking workout and climbing stairs in it.
When I manually counted 1000 steps, Cosmos Luxe counted 1042. An error margin of 4 percent was found in this. In the long distance, it started counting 65 steps more per 1000 steps than Apple Watch Series 5. The distance measurement was the same as the Apple Watch. But it showed a big difference from Apple Watch in calorie burning of a single workout. It showed more calories burned.
Heart rate tracking was fine. But the blood oxygen level readings were quite different from the pulse oximeter. The watch also shows readings for blood pressure, but as I have advised in previous reviews, the optical sensors of smartwatches cannot be relied upon too much for readings.
One of its big features is to use the watch hands-free during calls. It connects to your smartphone like a Bluetooth headset or speaker and you can play music right on your wrist. It worked well for calls, I held the watch near my mouth and it was fine for short calls. You may not like this method for long calls.
It has many useful apps which can be used as tools. It has a remote to play music on the smartphone, alarm clock, stopwatch, timer, calculator and a ring facility so that you can find the smartphone by ringing it if it is lost. Push notifications for apps work well, sleep tracking also works well with details of light and deep sleep. Connectivity also remained stable.
Its battery life is also good considering its price. It lasted for 5 days in normal use with a single charge. In which I did fitness tracking quite often, used Bluetooth hands-free occasionally and always had on display mode.
our decision
In a price segment that is full of options, this smartwatch differentiates itself through its good design, AMOLED display and better pricing. It gives a good smartwatch experience in budget. There is scope for optimization in the software and interface and the display could have been used better. Due to the additional features provided with it like Bluetooth hands free function and many good watchfaces, it becomes a good choice as a fitness tracker to buy under Rs 5000.
If you want more accurate fitness tracking then it may disappoint you here, in such a situation you can look at Mi Band 6 or Realme Watch 2 Pro. Its Bluetooth calling function and design does more justice to its price.
