And why it’s actually a good watch

I’ve been daily driving Mobvoi’s latest smartwatch for around a month and I’m delighted to say that I’ve enjoyed every minute of using the watch!

Based on my own experience of daily driving the watch, I think that the Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 is a brilliant watch with a lot to offer, especially if you’re into outdoor sports such as cycling, running or even hiking.

My previous daily driver of 9 months was the Google Pixel Watch, which will always remain as one of my favourite WearOS smartwatches. I think the main reason for that is that it was Google’s first attempt at releasing a smartwatch.

The TicWatch Pro 5 is not the first smartwatch I had from Mobvoi, in fact, the first one I had happened to be the TicWatch C2, but that was before starting this blog. Since then, I’ve also had the TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra, which I remember enjoying quite a lot.

Now, that I’ve had the smartwatch for a month, I wanted to talk about some of the things I noticed while daily driving it.

So without any further ado, here are 5 things I noticed while daily driving the TicWatch Pro 5…

It gets updates!

One of the first things I wanted to discuss about the watch is the fact that it gets updates. I remember one of the first things I noticed after setting up the watch for the very first time was a WearOS update.

A couple of days ago I was thrilled to discover that they have released a second WearOS update. I was so thrilled to see that I even posted a tweet on X!

The apps that come with the watch also seem to get updates which is nice to see and can I just say that I am a huge fan of Mobvoi’s fitness apps. I think that they are a lot better than the FitBit apps I used for the last 9 months and they seem to show more information.

As a whole, the entire WearOS platform works really well on this watch, I have yet to experience any crashes, lag or performance issues.

The battery life is AMAZING!

As mentioned in my previous article about this watch, on average I get around 3 days worth of battery life with general use, which really does seem huge, especially compared to my Pixel Watch which gets around 1 day.

It actually feels strange not having to charge my watch on a daily basis, so much so that I actually forget to charge the watch!

Doing demanding activities such as outdoor GPS activities doesn’t tend to affect the battery as much as they did on the Pixel Watch, which is something important to me as I tend to be an outdoorsy person.

My only complaint in this department is that the watch does not support wireless charging and it has a propriety charger. But at the same time, I can’t complain much as it does tend to charge the watch pretty fast.

Mobvoi states on their website that you can get around 65% of battery life in 30 minutes, which is something that I’m seeing. I think that this is a great feature, as there are times when I forget to charge my watch before heading out, so this feature enables me to charge the watch at least a tiny bit before heading out.

Love the dual-display

The TicWatch Pro 5 wasn’t the first watch I had with a dual display, that title goes to the TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra and as a whole, I think that this is a really good feature to have, especially outdoors.

One of the most annoying things about some smartwatches is not being able to see the screen on a sunny day, even when you just want to check the time. Mobvoi solved this issue pretty well with the dual display screen.

The Monochrome only shows basic things such as the time, steps and basic activity-related information, but at least you can see it on a sunny day. On top of that, let’s not forget that it helps preserve battery life.

Another thing I like about the monochrome display is that there is a backlight that is easy on your eyes during the night.

Since we’re talking about the display, I think that it is the perfect size for a watch, don’t get me wrong, I really liked the display on the Google Pixel Watch, but I thought it was a bit too small.

The TicWatch Pro 5 has a display size of 1.43“ which is great for reading and responding to messages as well as emails. I find it the perfect size for using a keyboard too.

I’m starting to miss Google Assistant

I don’t know whether the TicWatch Pro 5 will receive Google Assistant, and to be fair, it’s not a feature I use often on the Google Pixel Watch, but now that I don’t have an option to use the assistant I kind of miss it.

I think it would be nice to be able to ask my watch what the weather is like while ironing or getting ready to go out, but then again, it’s not a deal-breaker for me as I am able to ask my phone or any of the Amazon Echo’s I have in my house.

I guess it’s just one of those features that are nice to have but aren’t really required to enjoy the device.

The Mobvoi Health Apps are really good!

The last thing that I wanted to talk about in this article is the Mobvoi apps that are built into the watch. I think that this is an area that Google needs to improve on especially if they plan to release a pro version of the Pixel Watch.

I tend to use the health and activity apps a lot, whether it’s tracking my morning walk to the train station or going on long cycling trips in the Cotswolds, the apps cope really well and show a lot of detail throughout the activities, something that I’m hoping to show in an upcoming video on my YouTube channel over the next couple of weeks.

I also like the sleep-tracking functionality of this watch. It shows me tips, sleep stages, heart rate, blood oxygen and more! If I were to compare it to Fitbit, I think it’s better for two reasons, the first one being that I find it easier to understand my sleep with the Mobvoi app and the second reason is that I don’t have to pay a monthly subscription to get advanced sleep tracking like I do with Fitbit.

In terms of the smartphone app, the app is called Mobvoi Health and I find it very user-friendly. With the help of this app, you can control your watch and see your health stats on a larger screen in more detail.

Speaking about health, if you’re like me and like to sync your activities with Strava, you can!

Final thoughts…

Yeah, so I’ve been daily driving the Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 for around a month and so far my first impressions of this watch are very positive!

I think that it is seriously a great watch and I hope that it will continue being great for a long time to come. I also hope that the watch will be supported in a similar way to smartwatches from other brands with new features and updates being released throughout the year.

I know that what I’m about to say is not particularly related to the TicWatch Pro 5, But when it comes to WearOS, I think it has gone a long way since its early days, but what I would really like to see is more of the mainstream apps supporting it.

I seriously think and hope that now that Google has released 2 Pixel Watches, we will see more of the mainstream apps support the platform.