Realme TechLife Watch S100 Review: Cheap, but is it powerful too?
Realme Watch S100 The price of the Watch in India is Rs 2,499. It is the most affordable smartwatch you can buy from the company’s brands. It offers a lot in terms of features, including heart rate and SpO2 tracking as well as body temperature monitoring. Is it the most affordable smartwatch you can buy right now? Let’s find out in this review.
Design of Realme TechLife Watch S100
Most affordable smartwatches have a rectangular screen. Most of these are inspired by the Apple Watch. The Realme TechLife Watch S100 also has a similar look, but its low price affects the design and build quality of the watch. Still, it is a good-looking smartwatch at this price.
The Watch S100 has a 1.69-inch rectangular color display with a resolution of 240×280 pixels and a peak brightness of 530 nits. The screen is housed in a plastic case, which has a thick border around it. There is only a single physical button on the right side. Magnetic charger, optical sensor for heart rate, blood oxygen monitoring and body temperature sensor are provided at the bottom.
The single button serves as both a power button (long press turns the screen on or off) and a standby button (short press turns the screen on or off). It also lets you go back a step if you’re in a menu. For navigation and device control, the touch screen can be swiped and tapped to move between menus and select user interfaces.
The 20mm rubber strap of the watch feels very comfortable and comes with multiple points for adjustment on the wrist. It can be removed and replaced as well. This smartwatch comes in black and gray colors and has been given IP68 rating for water resistance. This rating makes the watch safe while bathing or swimming.
Realme TechLife Watch S100 is very light. It weighs only 34 grams. It has a 260mAh battery and apart from temperature sensor and optical sensors, there is also an accelerometer. For connectivity, it supports Bluetooth 5.1. It has support for Realme Fit app for pairing with the smartphone.
A charging cable is provided in the box with the smartwatch. It attaches to the charging points at the bottom of the watch. You do not get a wall adapter in the box. Instead, you can use a charger or the USB port of a computer.
Realme TechLife Watch S100 software, interface, and apps
Like most low-cost smartwatches, this watch runs on its own software, but requires an app to synchronize with the paired smartphone. The user interface is decent.
The watch has a quick settings menu from which you can easily control the battery status, brightness control, DND toggle, flash light and settings menu. A notification shade has been given to show fitness and health tracking notifications of some selected apps and widgets. You can also open the entire list of apps that come pre-installed in the smartwatch.
Watchfaces can be switched directly by tapping and holding on the home screen. Three watchfaces come pre-installed and are always available. The fourth can be selected and synced from the companion app.
Realme TechLife Watch S100 has special apps that allow you to fully utilize its functions and use health tracking features. You can set alarms and timers, track workouts, trigger your phone’s camera shutter. You can also control music. Note that there is no way to install new apps on this smartwatch.
Unlike the Realme Watch 2 Pro and many other devices that run on the company’s Realme Link app, this smartwatch uses the Realme Fit app. This app is available on both Android and iOS platforms. It provides detailed fitness and health data. You can control workouts, change device settings and choose apps that send notifications to the smartwatch.
I paired it with the OnePlus 9 and the app worked well. The connection was stable and the notification pushes were reliable. However, the app is not as well designed as Realme Link. At times, I encountered strange textual errors and mistakes that seemed like translation mistakes. Using the Realme Link app would have been a better experience.
Realme TechLife Watch S100 performance and battery life
Most wearables under Rs 3,000 are like fitness trackers with a simple basic screen. But the Realme TechLife Watch S100 looks and functions more like a smartwatch. It has a big screen, health tracking features and a large collection of watchfaces as well as customisation and personalisation.
Due to the large display, you can easily read notifications. In some notifications, you will get basic details and you will not be able to respond to them from the smartwatch. In this, you can delete the notification coming for incoming calls, but your phone will keep ringing even after tapping the decline option on the watch.
The watch faces on the Realme TechLife Watch S100 look pretty good. Many of them come with pre-installed complications that show live indicators for heart rate, steps, and body temperature. I liked the pre-installed watchfaces the most, but you get over 100 watchfaces to choose from in the Realme Fit app.
Health and fitness features on the Watch S100 include step, sleep, heart rate, blood oxygen, and body temperature tracking. Workout tracking uses step and heart rate data to show distance traveled and calories burned. Other tools on the watch include a flashlight, stopwatch, timer, alarm, weather report, camera shutter remote, and music playback remote. All of these work as expected.
The smartwatch tracked sleep accurately. It showed some difference in deep sleep breaks. The app also maintains a chart of how many times you slept well in a week or month. The device can log a variety of workouts including walking, cycling, yoga, cricket, football and basketball. It also has the ability to measure specific activities of an exercise or sport but I only did basic tests and used it for walking.
I manually counted 1000 steps but this Realme watch counted 1048 steps. The error margin was less than 5 percent. When I compared it with Apple Watch Series 5 in a long distance (wearing both watches together) the error margin became 1,055 while Apple Watch counted only 1000 steps. This much error can be expected in this price range.
Its heart rate tracking was accurate in both sitting and standing positions. Even then, it took a few seconds to match the readings shown by my pulse oximeter. While walking, the readings barely matched.
The blood oxygen readings on the Realme TechLife Watch S100 did not satisfy. It was showing a completely different reading than what the pulse oximeter showed. These readings were also fluctuating by 1-2 percent every few seconds, while the pulse oximeter readings remained stable.
Its body temperature sensor showed two different measurements, one skin temperature and the other body temperature. It is difficult to say how accurate they are as it depends on where and under what conditions the temperature is being measured. I did not find its readings to match those of the contactless thermometer. But, it was generally giving satisfactory results. It was also able to quickly indicate changes in skin temperature.
In normal use, its battery proved to be very good, which lasted for 8 days on a single charge. It lasted as long as the battery of Realme Watch 2 Pro, which is also more expensive and comes with a bigger battery.
Verdict
Affordable smart wearables mostly focus on fitness and health tracking and rarely have smartwatch features. But, the Realme TechLife Watch S100 has been launched as a premium-looking smartwatch and the price has also been kept low. It offers almost all the functions. But, it does not impress much in fitness tracking. Its specialty is its large display and notification functions.
Heart rate, step count and blood oxygen tracking were almost accurate in my experience. The app design seems awkward but its good screen, reliable connectivity, notification features and good battery life make it a good option under Rs 3000. If you want to go for the smartband form factor, you can also check out the Mi Band 6 priced at Rs 3,499.
