This is my Samsung Gear S3 smartwatch and after using it for 4 years, it's time to let it go.
So should I pick the new Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 or should I go with something
better? I want a smartwatch with really good battery life, and I don't want to
deal with a substandard voice assistant. After struggling with Bixby for the last 4 years,
I think I am done. Bixby never understood my voice commands and it always messed up voice to
text dictation. So here is my new smartwatch. It's TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra GPS from Mobvoi.
It comes with Google Assistant which unlike Bixby has no trouble understanding my Indian accent. So
even though I may sound like Appu Simpson, I can easily issue voice commands and ask google
assistant to compose replies to my emails and text without ever touching my watch.
So I have had this watch for over a month now and I love how snappy the Ticwatch feels. It's
powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 4100 processor and comes with 1GB RAM and 8GB storage. Mobvoi
has overclocked the Snapdragon 4100 chipset to run up to 2.0 GHz. That provides more than enough
horsepower to run android wear OS smoothly. When I run multiple apps and constantly switch between
features, I experience no lags, bugs or glitches. Animations are smooth and most apps
open very quickly. But what differentiates TicWatch from other other android watches
is the Mobvoi dual processor system that enables a secondary LCD display and something called low
power “essential mode”. These unique features are not found in either the flagship Apple watch or
the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4. The backlight color of the secondary display is fully customizable
and you have a choice of 18 color palette to pick from. I have set mine to yellow because
it pops out both in dark and bright lit rooms and is very easy to read.
Let's talk about battery life. I am consistently getting over 3 days of normal use on a single
charge, something I could never accomplish on my old watch. If I want, I can squeeze even
longer battery life by disabling the 24 hour heart rate monitoring, but I chose not to.
Compared to Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 which has a smaller 361 mAh battery, Ticwatch comes with a
much larger 577 mAh. So it's no wonder that it outperforms Samsung in battery life.
Now I consider my watch a fashion statement. I love how the Ticwatch looks with its circular
shape. I don't care how many watch Apple sells, the rectangular Apple watch looks ugly as hell,
and if you don't agree, you can go to hell. I have strong feelings on how a watch should look, and
the rectangular isn't the right shape. Ticwatch is sporting a 1.4” circular AMOLED touch screen
with a resolution of 454X454. That translates to 326 pixels per square inch making it a very sharp
screen. It's also plenty bright and easy to read in bright sunlight. You can switch the TicWatch
to a low-power mode that turns off Wear OS and the OLED screen. But the watch still shows time, date,
steps and some other fitness tracking data on it's secondary LCD screen. This is a very
helpful feature when your battery is running low and you cannot get to a charger quickly
The dimensions of TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra are 47 x 48 x 12.3 mm, and it weighs 41g.
So this is definitely not a slim watch. There is a chronograph-style bezel around the display. This
bezel isn't raised around the screen and cannot rotate like my older samsung watch. I personally
think that a rotating mechanical bezel is the best way to navigate a smartwatch interface.
So I would love to see Ticwatch incorporate this feature in their future design. For now
you are getting 2 physical buttons but there is no hardware scrolling mechanism. You will have to
rely on swiping gestures which may be an issue if your fingers are wet or if you are wearing gloves.
Pressing the top button takes you home to the clock face, or opens the app launcher, if you
are on the clock face. And the bottom one is a customizable shortcut key. By default,
it displays a list of workouts that you can start, but I have set mine to alarm. Holding
down the top button opens Google Assistant, and holding down the bottom button takes you to a
power menu. The back of the watch has charging pins for power, plus an array of health sensors
in the center. Unfortunately, there is no support for wireless charging. BTW, these watch straps are
interchangeable and you can replace them with any 22 mm standard watch straps. The default rubber
straps are very comfortable and I can wear my Ticwatch the whole day without any discomfort.
Let's talk about the software experience. So TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra is currently running Wear
OS 2 but the good news is that this is one of the few watches handpicked by google to receive
Wear OS 3 update. Ticwatch has a customized app launcher that definitely looks better than the
stock launcher. Mobvoi has developed a bunch of custom health apps for 24hr continuous heart
rate monitoring, all-day blood oxygen monitoring and sleep tracking. This watch can also do some
advanced stuff like irregular heart beat detection including notifying you if your heart is pumping
too fast, too slow, or detect irregular patterns like AFib. It can also measure your mental fatigue
and energy levels through heart rate variability. But my favorite feature is sleep tracking.
It tracks all stages of my sleep and gives daily insights to help build better sleep habits. There
is a smart wake up feature that works with your sleep goals and gently wakes you up in the morning
with a vibration. Pretty cool. BTW all google apps including google pay, google maps, youtube
music and Spotify are available in ticwatch. Now if you are a fitness enthusiast, you will love
more than 100 professional workout modes on this watch. This bottom button by default is programmed
to launch TicExecise which allows access to all these modes including swimming and high-intensity
interval training. Now I am not an exercise buf, so I haven't used this feature a lot. But the
feature that I use the most is notification. You can set which apps can send notifications
from your phone to the watch. Quickly checking out new emails and messages on my watch is super
convenient. If needed I can use Google assistant to compose a quick reply. BTW you can also pick up
calls right from the watch. The onboard mic and speakers are good enough for a quick call.
Like I mentioned before, Ticwatch is eligible to receive the Wear OS 3 update when google finally
releases it. I am eagerly awaiting for this update, because Wear OS 3.0 is going to be a
major overhaul. For this reason alone I would recommend Ticwatch over other android watches
because Google has officially confirmed that Ticwatch is one of the first watches in line to
receive wear OS 3.0. Now Samsung would claim that their Galaxy Watch 4 is already running Wear OS 3,
but it's a heavily customized version with key features like Google Assistant missing. So here
is my question to you guys. What kind of watch do you prefer? Classic old-school watch or a modern
smart watch? Let me know in the comment section below. If you found this video useful, please like
it and subscribe to Techno Panda. That is it for today, I will see you guys in my next video. Bye