Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 3 GPS

Mobvoi's TicWatch Pro 3 GPS is a well-rounded smartwatch that's built on the Google Wear OS platform, and it features lots of good features out of the box with the option to add apps to extend its cycling-related capabilities.

In terms of looks, the TicWatch Pro 3 is more or less the accepted form for an activity smartwatch right now: round screen, a metal bezel that's mainly for show, and a couple of chunky buttons. It's very nicely made, with a silicone strap that has nice stitching detail in contrasting orange to make it look a bit like a leather strap. It's comfortable on the wrist, the strap especially so, and it feels like a premium product.

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On the back there are charging contacts and an array of LEDs for reading your pulse and, on this new version, blood oxygen saturation. It's a fairly large watch but it doesn't feel too bulky on the wrist. It's IP68 water and dust resistant so pool swimming and riding in the rain are both fine.

Inside, the TicWatch Pro 3 has been updated to the new Qualcomm® Snapdragon Wear™ 4100 chipset, which is both more powerful than the outgoing 3100 and also lighter on the battery, which Mobvoi claims will increase battery life by up to 40%. There are significant improvements to the graphics processing unit too, which is a claimed two and a half times faster than before. Smartwatches using Google's Wear OS platform have in the past suffered from plenty of screen lag, but that's certainly not the case here: everything's super-slick as you swipe and scroll around.

One of the most interesting features of the TicWatch Pro 3 is its dual screen. Like you'd expect, the TicWatch has a touch-enabled AMOLED screen, in this case measuring 1.4 inches across with a resolution of 454 pixels square. It's a very good screen that is bright enough for viewing in all conditions, and the touch sensitivity is good. As usual you have a pick of a huge selection of watch faces from the sublime to the ridiculous, encompassing pretty much any look you could want, or think of.

On top of that AMOLED screen is layered a second screen, a more basic LCD one that most of the time just shows the time and date, your step count and a three-bar battery indicator; if you're exercising (and have told the Mobvoi Exercise app as much) it'll also display heart rate, distance and such. It's not particularly contrasty, although it does have a backlight that activates when you raise your wrist. That helps you to read it in daylight, although at night it's very bright; it could use either an automatic brightness based on conditions or at least a night and day setting.

Anyway, the point of the second screen is to preserve battery life: it requires a fraction of the power of the AMOLED screen to run, so you get an always-on display without the battery drain. Also it means that when the battery is depleted you can switch to essentials mode and the watch will run for days on the dregs of the battery, so at least it's still telling you the time rather than just being a brick on your wrist until you can charge it again.

If you just use the LCD screen then you'll get up to 45 days out of a single charge, according to Mobvoi, although there are cheaper watches with an LCD screen if that's all you're after.

Charging is taken care of by a magnetic USB cradle; it's easy enough to use and 20 minutes plugged in will get you through a normal day of use. Mobvoi says that the TicWatch Pro 3 will give you up to 72 hours of use in normal use, but that's not my experience – two days is as much as I've managed.

It'll depend on what's enabled on the watch, and other settings, but with the screen set to normal brightness and the recommended five-second timeout, and heart rate monitoring (but not blood oxygen monitoring) going on in the background, and chucking in a few short Strava recordings that fire up the GPS chip, I was more comfortable charging up the watch for a bit every morning than attempting to leave it longer.

It's perfectly usable like that, but coming off the back of testing the Honor GS Pro, which will go for a couple of weeks on a single charge, it felt like I was much more aware of the battery state of the watch at all times. That being said, it's a huge improvement over earlier versions of the TicWatch Pro, and it's comparable with many of the other watches at this kind of price. It's a pity that Mobvoi hasn't implemented wireless charging for this watch. With more and more phones capable of charging another device, it would definitely make sense. My Huawei P30 Pro could do it, and the 4,200mAh battery is seven times the size of the watch battery.

Apps and stuff

So once you've got your TicWatch Pro 3 on your wrist, what can you do with it? Well, it's running Google's Wear OS, so it will probably work best if you're also packing an Android phone, as the iOS experience is more limited and not as slick. I paired the TicWatch Pro 3 with my Huawei P30 Pro without any issues, and once the two are paired you can do plenty.

The watch has a microphone and speaker, so it's possible to take calls on the watch, and talk to the Google Assistant. The TicWatch Pro 3 is also NFC-enabled, so you can use your watch to pay through Google Pay too; the only proviso to that is that you need to set up a screen lock in order to use that function, which detracts a bit from the day-to-day watch experience.

You can receive notifications, and Wear OS allows you to choose which apps send notifications to the phone. You can reply to messages too – some apps like WhatsApp will offer you stock responses, and it's possible to type or speak replies too. You can get Google Calendar reminders, check the weather... many of the things you'd habitually do on your phone.

As well as Google's own ecosystem, Mobvoi has its own app which runs in tandem with the Wear OS app on your phone. This is where you'll get all the usual activity data that you'd associate with a smartwatch.

The TicWatch Pro 3 is capable of continuously monitoring your heart rate through the day, through the TicPulse app. Comparing the watch to a Wahoo TICKR heart rate strap, I've found it to be reasonably accurate, usually reporting within 3-4bpm of the chest strap. It's better if it's more tightly mounted on your wrist so it's worth doing the strap up a notch before you head out on a ride. Your heart rate range is shown in graphical form over time on the phone app.

If you've enabled the TicSleep app then you'll get a sleep chart that'll be familiar if you've used a fitness tracker before, broken into REM sleep, light sleep and deep sleep. You'll get a sleep efficiency score, too, based on how much of each type of sleep you've managed. I'm always a little wary of taking these sleep graphs at face value, but they generally seem to come up with similar numbers for me, so there is some consistency across platforms. Certainly the TicSleep app is good at working out when I've gone to bed and woken up, and the periods of waking time do correspond to the times I'm awake when I remember to look at the watch and get temporarily blinded by the backlight.

The TicWatch Pro 3 can also measure your blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) via the TicOxygen app, using the same array of sensors that it uses for heart rate monitoring. If you're like me you probably haven't given much thought to your blood oxygenation levels. If you're active then there are good reasons to measure it, though. A decreasing SpO2 level when you're participating in an endurance sport can be an indicator that your effort isn't sustainable and it's possible to test yourself with increasing levels of effort to find out where that point is. When you're sleeping, low SpO2 levels can be associated with headaches and swelling, and are also linked to sleep apnea, so if you've ever suffered from sleep issues it might be worthwhile monitoring yourself overnight. Both the constant monitoring of SpO2 and heart rate will, of course, have an effect on battery life.

Mobvoi's Exercise watch app allows you to track your active lifestyle through your phone. The list of activities – Pool Swimming, Yoga, Rowing Machine, Mountaineering, Body Mechanics, Trail Running, Elliptical Machine, Outdoor Run, Indoor Running, Outdoor Walk, Indoor Cycling, Free Style, Outdoor Cycling – isn't exhaustive but covers most of the bases for normal day-to-day activity. Anything that's outdoors, including cycling, will make use of the in-built GPS for distance tracking, and you can collate all your activities in the Mobvoi phone app. And, a bit like the Honor GS Pro, that's where they'll stay.

But worry not, because this is a Wear OS device, and that means you can do all sorts of other stuff with it that's not tied in to Mobvoi's proprietary ecosystem. For a start, you can get the Strava watch app, which allows you to record rides on the watch and then sync them with your Strava account. It's pretty basic: that is basically all it does, there are no bells and whistles. But if like me you use Strava for recording all your riding activity, so you can spout an arbitrary number at the end of the year, it's great.

If I'm going out for a day on the bike then I'll have a computer on my bars, or at the very least I'll make sure I'm recording on my phone. When you're just out and about – rolling down to work, or popping to the shops – it's easy to forget, and if you do you often can't be bothered to stop and fish your phone out. With Strava on your wrist it's much easier to access for those short journeys.

If you use your phone as your primary device for recording and navigating on your rides then there are a number of other apps that can be useful. If you're using Komoot then you can follow a route on your phone, and the watch can be used to give you turn-by-turn directions along the way. The same is true of RideWithGPS, which also allows you to record directly on the watch if you prefer. With ViewRanger you can get OS maps on your watch too, as well as save routes for offline use. All of those platforms require a subscription, but there's a good range of functionality available out there which you should be able to tie in with your particular needs.

If you want mapping and navigation features for free then you also have the Google Maps app, which works in sync with your phone. You're limited to 10 points when you're plotting a route on Google maps on your desktop that you can send to your phone, but longer rides can be broken up into sections. Getting turn-by-turn directions to your phone isn't as intuitive as having them out in front of you on a standalone GPS, but it's a workable solution if it's something you do sporadically rather than all the time.

Overall

Having tested two smartwatches back to back, it's a fairly straightforward conclusion that this TicWatch Pro 3 is a much better bet than the Honor GS Pro if you're specifically looking at its suitability for cycling. The battery life isn't anywhere near as good, but the ability to use third party apps for mapping, navigation and recording – and, crucially, the ability to move that data outside of Mobvoi's own app – means that it's a lot more versatile.

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It's easy to get along with on a day-to-day basis and if you're using an android phone then the communication between the two is pretty seamless in nearly all cases.

At £289.99 it's got plenty of competition, both from other Wear OS devices like the well-regarded Fossil Gen 5 and other platforms such as the Honor GS Pro we've previously reviewed, and the Fitbit Sense and Garmin's Vivoactive and Venu watches among others, but the TicWatch Pro 3 works well, and the feature set is good. The reasonably short battery life and lack of wireless charging mark it down a bit but it's a very good smartwatch choice if you want some cycling functionality as well as the usual fitness bundle.

Verdict

Good quality smartwatch with plenty of options for tracking and routing