TicWatch E3

amazon TicWatch E3 reviews

The TicWatch E3 is a powerful Wear OS smartwatch that offers the latest technology at an affordable price point.

Google has confirmed Mobvoi’s watch model will work with Wear OS 3.0, billed as the biggest update to a smartwatch running Google’s operating system since its launch. It also says that this is a watch for the future, for Wear 3 at an affordable price that you can exactly find here at this moment.

One more important thing is the inclusion of Qualcomm’s powerful Snapdragon Wear 4100 processor, which is also available on the TicWatch Pro 3.

Aside from future software support, the TicWatch E3 shows that Mobvoi is pushing its software efforts, with features like the included TicCare to remotely monitor the data of other TicWatch users in the household, and friends, it also introduces a new dedicated mode for tracking HIIT workouts.

While the E3 may lack some of the high-end design details found in the Pro 3, that doesn’t mean it’ll be a Wear smartwatch worth the investment. Check out our full review of the TicWatch E3.

Information about TicWatch E3

Runs on Snapdragon Wear 4100 processor

Will be updated to Wear OS 3.0

Supports Google Pay and Google Assistant

1GB RAM, 8GB internal memory

Built-in GPS

Optical heart rate monitor

Monitor blood oxygen levels

Design and display

The TicWatch E3 is the successor to the E2, but its design is a bit of a luxury Pro series, although with the E3 you won’t get a metal case or leather strap, it doesn’t give much of a feel sports watch model like the previous TicWatch E2.

Outer shell size 44mm, gray paint finish in matte finish. The shell material is polycarbonate and carbon fiber, on the Pro 3, is stainless steel. Comes with a 20mm silicone rubber watch band that can be removed via a simple latch mechanism at the back. We’ve got a black strap and also optional yellow and blue straps here for £17.99 if you want something more personal on your wrist.

The product has IP68 waterproof certification, suitable for bathing and swimming in the pool. Weight is 32g, not heavy to wear on hand all day. On the machine, there are two physical buttons on the right, equipped with an onboard microphone and speaker, which can be used to communicate with the Google Assistant and listen to heart rate zone alerts during exercise.

The screen is slightly curved with 2.5D protective glass the curved screen will help increase the overall beauty of the outside. But having a rather large black bezel around it reduces this visual element.

1.3-inch AMOLED screen, 360 x 360 resolution, which is not the best screen resolution you will find on smartwatches these days, and is a drop from the screen 1.39 inch, 400 x 400 resolution available on TicWatch E2. For the price, the display is good quality, it’s nice and bright, the colors don’t look washed out, and you have the option to keep it always on.

In terms of visibility, you should have no problem seeing what’s on that screen indoors. When outdoors, where AMOLED screens often tend to be affected, and on the E3 too. It’s not unusable, but you do have to increase the brightness to improve visibility in bright outdoor sunlight, but it’s still a bit of a pain after that.

Overall, though, the TicWatch E3 is a differentiator from the E2 positively. It’s still plastic, but it doesn’t feel like a budget product. It has a good-quality screen but has a rather large bezel around it. However, if you prefer something more stylish, then check out the Amazfit or a Fossil-branded Wear watch.

Wear OS and smart features

E3 as mentioned will be able to update to the latest Wear version built by Google together with Samsung. In addition, Mobvoi’s software presence has grown over the past few years on E3, which is geared toward users interested in health and fitness.

On the performance front, the Wear 2.0 onboard is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 4100 processor, which isn’t the latest 4100+, but also makes it more up-to-date than most Wear models, and is one of the few watches that are technically supported by Qualcomm’s new processor. That combined with 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of internal memory, overall everything runs well and smoothly. Swiping across the screen has no lag, apps don’t take long to launch, there’s no lag, and there’s no need to reboot to get everything back to normal.

The screen interface is very familiar. It’s a gesture-based UI that features Tiles (or widgets) when you swipe left from the main watch face, and you can add or remove these Tiles. Swipe up to get notifications, swipe right to access Google features like Assistant, etc.

There’s also support for controlling the music player on your phone, and there’s NFC, so you can use Google Pay to your liking (if you have one). Setting up payments is relatively easy, and while it doesn’t feel as smooth as Apple Pay, it worked well during our time with it.

Pressing the top physical button will take you to Mobvoi’s app screen, not Google’s, which we think is a good idea. The interactive feel is much better, giving you larger icons to swipe through. There are a ton of watch faces here, with a few options already available and more via the Wear OS phone app. As far as Mobvoi goes, the apps focus on health and fitness tracking, which we’ll delve deeper into below.

Sports and activity tracking features

Whether you just want to track your daily steps, or track swimming in the pool and running, the E3 has support. There’s an optical heart rate sensor, built-in GPS, and support for the Glonass and Beidou satellite systems to track outdoor activities. There are 20 sports tracking modes, and you have access to Google’s Fit apps, third-party apps from the Play Store, or opt for Mobvoi’s.

If you choose to use Mobvoi’s tracking features, you’ll also need to download the Mobvoi phone app to be able to view your stats. It’s certainly not the prettiest or the most polished, but this is where you’ll need to go to see things like activity tracking stats, sleep data, and even noise tolerance.

Jogging

When out for a GPS check, getting a signal usually takes at least a minute, and you have the option to set a running goal based on time, distance, and calories burned.

During your run, you can see real-time speed, distance, and pace, and there are additional data pages that include information like heart rate data. It would be great if you could adjust the number of tables of data that could be displayed, thus making it easier to take in data on the go, but there are many running data statistics provided at anyway level here.

In terms of accuracy, it usually has a short deviation in distance track from the Garmin Enduro, although metrics like average speed and separation aren’t too far behind with Garmin watches. As for heart rate monitoring, it’s a similar story to what we’ve seen on the TicWatche line before.

Even when running at a steady pace with the strap securely fastened, it recorded an average maximum heart rate that was about 6-7 bpm off the Garmin HRM-Pro chest strap. It’s better on average, but the random spikes along the way that you may sometimes experience will skew the reliability of the data. You also don’t have the option to pair a chest strap monitor to correct these inaccuracies.

It’s a good enough running tracking experience overall, but it’s certainly not exactly what you’ll find from a dedicated running watch.

Swimming

For swimming, you are only covered by the warranty for use in freshwater pools, and once you have selected that mode, you will be prompted to set the pool size. You can also choose a goal based on information such as distance, lap, and time.

When you press go, the screen is locked, so if you want to see the data, you need to hold down one of the physical buttons to open the quick view. You can then view real-time data such as duration distances and laps. There’s also an additional screen to view pace, strokes, and calories, but you’ll need to unlock the screen to see it. The data tables are not large, and we had to try to get a quick look at the data underwater.

After you finish swimming laps, there will be a pretty loud warning telling you it is draining water from the watch. In terms of accuracy compared to the Form Goggles and Garmin watches, we found it to be 3-4 times shorter, so it’s not very accurate, but it’s certainly not the worst watch we’ve used in the pool for tracking.

If you use Mobvoi’s fitness tracking feature, you’ll need to go to that app, where you can see more breakdown of stroke types, although it already detects strokes when we did butterfly swims in a couple of swims, this is the kind of stroke we never want to experience while in the water.

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HIIT

Mobvoi also introduces a new HIIT mode that essentially lets you create your HIIT workouts. A total of 10 moves including crunches (indispensable), climbing, and squats. You also have the option of adding ‘other’ moves not covered here, although ultimately your movements won’t be tracked in this mode. It’s simply a way of categorizing moves, and building sets that you can track back when you return to that high-intensity regimen.

The workout screens are nicely laid out, highlighting the rest and counting down to the next part of the exercise, although it can do with some form of audio prompts just like you do the exercises. Polar’s FitSpark set, so you don’t have to constantly look at your watch to know when a set ends or begins.

Activity and sleep tracking

When you switch to activity tracking, you can have a dedicated widget on your watch to track steps, distance, activity hours, and exercise minutes during the day. There is also an app dedicated to sleep.

With sleep tracking, you’ll generate data like sleep stage, sleep heart rate, and sleep efficiency percentage. While as we’ve seen before in our recent testing of other TicWatches, the E3 has the peculiarity of recording sleep in two sections, and it did this for a couple of nights for us.

That said, sleep duration and sleep stages are very similar to those recorded by Garmin’s sleep tracking feature. The heart rate data looks high based on what we normally see while sleeping on other watches. That data also lacks the insights to suggest you make changes like what you can find from watches like Fitbit, Huawei, Xiaomi, and on Amazfit watches.

Health and heart rate monitoring

The E3 offers many ways to monitor your health, although none of these features are designed to monitor serious health conditions, and should only be seen as providing guidance.

The TicPulse app is the place to see real-time resting heart rate readings, along with your maximum and minimum heart rate numbers, heart rate zones, and resting heart rate for the past week. While the real-time readings are largely accurate, the usual daily resting heart rate data puts us at 70bpm, while we know our resting heart rate is just around the 44-45bpm mark.

TicOxygen is the way to measure blood oxygen levels, and you can take measurements locally or continuously monitor levels during sleep for richer sleep data. On-site readings largely match clinical-grade pulse oximeters, although there’s not much interpretation of what the data might mean (on the meter or the app). It will alert you if it believes those levels are abnormal.

There are apps TicZen and TicBreathe, all related to mindfulness, that allow you to track your stress levels and use guided breathing exercises to help you return to a calmer state. The stress tracker gives you your highest, lowest, and average stress scores, stress, and stress distribution for the week from the watch, though based on cadence monitor reliability heart rate and the fact that it is using heart rate variability measurements to generate those scores, we wouldn’t put great faith in the reliability of those scores.

TicHear is a pretty clear recap similar to Apple’s proprietary Noise app, which uses the onboard microphone to gauge your tolerance to ambient noise in decibels in real-time. If it is green, then you are exposed to moderate noise levels. If it turns red, it’s considered a dangerous noise level. Although it seems like just talking a little loudly can make everything turn red.

A new feature is TicCare, which essentially allows you to share your fitness and health records through the Mobvoi app with the rest of your family to help each other stay on track. You can choose whether to share both types of records and then you can follow a few steps to invite people to access your data. It’s a good idea, especially if you have elderly or young children in your family and you want to make sure they stay healthy.

Battery life

The E3 has a 380mAh battery, which is smaller than the 415mAh battery in the TicWatch E2 and the 577mAh battery used on the TicWatch Pro 3. Mobvoi doesn’t give a rating on battery life, but based on our experience it’s good for a day.

Using from 8 am to 8 pm, the battery dropped from 100% to 40%. That is when the screen is not set to always on, notifications are turned on, and only one exercise is tracked for 30-40 minutes. In an hour of running with GPS tracking mode, the battery loss is 9-10%.

When using it for sleep tracking, in the morning it usually switches to Essential mode, which will work when you have less than 5% battery life to use. That gives you a single screen to show time, date, step count, and heart rate data.

One of the benefits of using Qualcomm’s Wear 4100 processor is better battery life, although when using this watch in full smartwatch mode it doesn’t make a difference on E3.