Smart home company Wyze continues to break down price barriers with a new Wyze Watch smartwatch that costs a mere $20 (around £15).
Despite the physical resemblance, this isn’t an Apple Watch rival, but its no slouch either. Alongside its heart rate and activity tracking capabilities, there’s also a blood oxygen saturation monitor on board. That’s a feature we’re more used to seeing on more expensive trackers.
The attractive aluminium alloy watch promises up to 9 days of battery life from the 300mAh battery (260mAh on the smaller version), and it’ll take 2.5 hours to recharge. It provides sleep monitoring, step counting and menstrual health tracking too. Data can also be synced back to the Google Fit and Apple Health apps.
The watch, which can be pre-ordered in the US today, offers two size options. The 47mm case has a large 1.75-inch TFT LCD touchscreen (1.4-inch on the 44mm version) and it has a IP68 water resistance rating for up to 2 metres.
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Naturally, the Wyze Watch will offer shortcuts to control the company’s range of affordable smart cameras, thermostats, video doorbells, smart bulbs, robot vacuum cleaners, sprinkler controllers and more. However, there’s also support for apps like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Gmail, Twitter and YouTube for all of your smartphone notifications.
So what aren’t you getting? Well there’s no GPS, no cellular data or no standalone Wi-Fi with the Bluetooth device piggybacking on the smartphone for internet connectivity for all three. There’s no NFC for contactless payments, you can only receive messages, you can’t play music, and it isn’t compatible with any voice assistants. But, you know, it’s $20 and available to pre-order today.
The company does not reveal which operating system the watch runs on, so it’s safe to assume it’s a custom job rather than Google’s WearOS. Wyze products still aren’t available in the UK, but we’d be interested to see this device introduced to the UK market at some point.
Would you buy a £15 smartwatch? Or would you rather stick with your classic Casio cheap-and-cheerful digital watch. Let us know @trustedreviews on Twitter.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.