Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5

A watch with hidden depths and strong battery life, but you'll need to use Mobvoi's apps to fully exploit it

-  TIM DANTON

SCORE 4/5

PRICE £275 (£330 inc VAT) from mobvoi.com

With so many smartwatches being released at any one time, you may wonder what makes Mobvoi's latest so special as to deserve a full-page review. The answer is two-fold: the TicWatch Pro 5 marks a debut for Qualcomm's Snapdragon W5+ G1 chip, and it promises over three days of battery life. With a rugged design, could this be Android's answer to the Apple Watch Ultra (see issue 339, p76)?

The TicWatch Pro 5 certainly makes a fine first impression. Its aluminium casing is finished in gunmetal grey with a subtle ridged pattern on the bezel's outer edges that sends all the right signals in terms of quality. It's chunky, standing 12mm proud from your wrist, but during long walks, runs and numerous tennis matches it never felt intrusive. It also boasts full MIL-STD-810H certification (as opposed to passing a selection of hand-picked tests), along with 5 ATM water resistance. It's a great choice for open-water swimming.

The screen is protected with Corning Gorilla glass, and this 1.43in AMOLED display is worth protecting. It's easy to read in sunny weather, giving Google Wear OS 3 every chance to shine. Mobvoi hasn't made any major changes to the watch OS, but you'll be pushed to download Mobvoi's own Health app rather than Google's to control the watch from your phone and sync data. Using this, you can apply a myriad of watch faces and dig into your stats, but to install more apps you must use the Play Store directly on the watch.