Pebble Cosmos Luxe Smartwatch Review: Premium looking smartwatch on a budget
Pebble Cosmos Luxury It has a 1.36-inch AMOLED display, Bluetooth calling capability, sensors to measure steps, heart rate and SpO2 levels. 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’s find out 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 grab your attention. There are two buttons on the right side of its 1.36-inch display, one that looks and functions like the buttons on a traditional mechanical watch. This adds to its attractive look.
There is a grill for the speaker on its left side which can be used for audio by connecting it to the phone via Bluetooth. Optical sensors are provided below the dial which do health and fitness tracking. Contact points for the magnetic charging pin are also available here. This smartwatch is also effective against water and dust and is IP67 rated. One can also swim in shallow water wearing this.
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. They have many points for adjustment and a good fit.
There is a microphone along with two buttons on the right side. The primary button or crown button controls power, opens the app drawer, and returns to the home screen. It can also be rotated to scroll through menus. The other smaller button takes you directly to the workout menu and from here it can be quickly started to track walking workouts.
The Pebble Cosmos Luxe weighs 50 grams. It has a 1.36-inch 390×390 pixel resolution round AMOLED display 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. The sales package includes a charging cable, which plugs into a USB Type-A port. But there is no wall adapter. The unit I got for review had a slight lack of alignment in the display. However, it did not affect the functioning of the watch.
Pebble Cosmos Lux software and apps
Budget smartwatches come with a basic software system and rely on Bluetooth connectivity for synchronization with a smartphone and other connectivity features. The Pebble Cosmos Luxe has its own software that covers its main 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 also turn this off if you want to extend the battery life, but I found it useful for quickly checking the time.
Tapping the screen does not wake it up, but its Lift to Wake feature wakes it up as soon as you lift the watch or it can also be woken up 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 can reach the main apps and by swiping from right to left, you can reach the widgets.
In its built-in apps, you get telephone, contacts, workout, workout record, heart rate, sleep, blood pressure, blood oxygen, stress, message, weather, music and many tools like calculator and stopwatch etc. You cannot install any other app in the smartwatch. Some of the apps that are available work automatically and some have to be connected to the FitCloudPro app via Bluetooth.
The Telephone app lets you use the watch as a wireless handsfree. The Contacts app lets you create favorite contacts and quickly make calls, dial numbers directly from the dialer, and the call record keeps details of calls. There is also 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 to receive notifications can also be selected. Apart from linking Google Fit data, it can also be used for many other things.
This app stores fitness data from your watch and quickly activates all the sensors to give you a combined report of your heart rate, stress level, blood pressure and blood oxygen. I found it quite useful. The 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 with 9 watchfaces preloaded. You can use the tenth watchface from the companion app. The preloaded watchfaces in it are quite good and match the look of the watch. The FitCloudPro app has a large collection of watchfaces that can be loaded on the smartwatch.
Pebble Cosmos Luxe performance and battery life
This smartwatch stands out from other affordable smartwatches of this kind 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 are good. But the deep black element of AMOLED display is not visible in it. This may be because the user interface is always on 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. There are live widgets for steps, heart rate, weather and battery level. However, you cannot do much with the widgets. This is also a capable device for fitness tracking, as the company has said that it uses the best sensors. However, I did not feel anything like exceptional tracking in it and it performed similarly to other fitness tracking devices in this price segment. I saw the same error margins and flaws in it as I saw on the Realme Watch 2 Pro and Just Corseca Ray Kanabis.
It has several workout modes that are 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 the review, I measured walking workout and climbing stairs in it.
When I manually counted 1000 steps, Cosmos Luxe counted 1042. It had an error margin of 4 percent. In long distances, it started counting 65 steps more per 1000 steps than Apple Watch Series 5. The distance measurement was the same as Apple Watch. But in the calorie burning of the same workout, it showed a big difference from Apple Watch. It showed more calories burnt.
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 earlier reviews, the optical sensors of a smartwatch cannot be relied upon for readings.
One of the great features is the ability to use the watch as hands-free during calls. It connects to your smartphone as a Bluetooth headset or speaker and you can play music right on your wrist. This worked well for calls, I held the watch close to my mouth and it was good enough for short calls. You might not like this method for longer 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 feature so that you can ring and find the smartphone if it is lost. Push notifications for apps work well, sleep tracking also works well in which details of light and deep sleep were also given. Connectivity was also stable.
Battery life is also good for its price. It lasted for 5 days on a single charge with normal usage. I did fitness tracking quite a lot, used Bluetooth handsfree occasionally and always on display mode was on.
Our verdict
In a price segment that is full of options, this smartwatch stands out with its good design, AMOLED display and better pricing. It gives a good smartwatch experience in the budget. There is scope for optimization in the software and interface and the display could have been used better. Due to the additional features available 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 case you can look at Mi Band 6 or Realme Watch 2 Pro. Its Bluetooth calling function and design do more justice to its price.
