Following on from theTicWatch Pro 3 Ultra, Mobvoi released the TicWatch Pro 5 earlier this year. This latest iteration uses the Wear OS platform, together with the Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 + Gen1 chipset to offer users one of the fastest and most sophisticated Android smartwatches on the market. However, this feature-rich wearable comes with a price tag that’s as chunky as the watch itself, and the lack of Google Assistant means it’ll only be suitable for some users.
Ticwatch Pro 5 Android Smartwatch
The TicWatch Pro 5 is a Wear OS smartwatch that features a dual-layer OLED and FSTN display. It delivers a super-fast and efficient performance and has comprehensive health and fitness tracking across more than 100 activities.
Back in Black Design
One way to describe the TicWatch Pro 5’s appearance would be to use words such as sleek and minimalist. Another would be to say that it looks a little uninspired. That’s not to say it looks bad by any means. Everything here has been finished to a very high standard. It’s just very black-on-black, and not particularly visually arresting.
It’s a bit of a pity in all honesty, because the watch itself is anything but uninspired. Yet the Pro 5’s appearance means it tends to blend into the background when it should be standing out. Luckily, however, the features packed inside make the Pro 5 stand out from the crowd.
It has a 1.43-inch touchscreen AMOLED face with a dual-layer display and is coated in durable Gorilla Glass. The second display lights up with a flick of the wrist when the watch itself is not being actively used. It’s a low-power display that shows basic metrics for heart rate, calories, steps, and the like.
On the side, a textured button provides quick access to your most recently used apps. Additionally, two quick taps open up your Google Wallet, and holding down this button can be used to exit from Essential Mode—an optional battery-saving mode that conserves power at the expense of some functionality (more on this later).
Beneath this button is the rotating crown, which is an excellent feature that makes light work of scrolling through apps and settings. The Pro 5 also features a built-in microphone and speaker (on the side panel and the underside of the watch, respectively) for voice calls, but sadly not for Google Assistant, which remains absent in this latest generation.
It’s made from a combination of aluminum and stainless steel, with a flexible silicone strap. It’s chunky yet lightweight, suitably rugged and durable, and looks like something a Navy Seal might wear on operations.
A Short and Sweet Setup
Setting up the TicWatch Pro 5 is a relatively painless affair that saw me happily tinkering with this new toy in just a few minutes.
After powering on your Pro 5, you’ll need to download theMobvoi Health Appon your phone and create an account, as this will be used to measure and record all your vitals. Doing so prompts automatic pairing of the Pro 5 with your phone, walking you through a few simple steps to complete the setup.
As part of the setup, you will also need to connect to your Google Account, to enable you to use Google apps and the Find My Device feature. You’ll then be presented with a list of recommended apps to use, which you can accept or dismiss, according to your needs.
It’s a nice, easy process that doesn’t outstay its welcome, and lets you get stuck into enjoying the Pro 5 more or less straight away.
A Wear OS 3.5 Smartwatch With the Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 + Gen1 Chipset
Running on the Wear OS 3.5 platform, and with the power of the Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 + Gen 1 chip, the TicWatch Pro 5’s operation is smoother than 007 ordering a vodka martini in a freshly pressed dinner suit.
Expect fast response times across the board, and fluid interactions with the plethora of available apps to install, such asGoogle WalletandGoogle Maps.
In fact, the only lag I experienced during my time with the Pro 5 was when I exited Essential Mode. Doing so seems to initiate a complete restart of the watch, which takes a minute or two to finish. It’s not exactly the end of the world, but it did stand out for me, as everything else seemed so swift by comparison.
Otherwise, the smooth, efficient operation perfectly complements the stunning display and goes some way to justifying that premium price tag.
The GOAT for Battery Life
The battery life on the TicWatch Pro 5 is impressive, and seriously so. Depending on how you have your smartwatch configured, it will give you up to 80 hours of use on a full charge, which is enough to rival any of its peers.
However, this phenomenal battery life comes with a few caveats you need to be aware of.
First off, you’ll need to ensure that you’ve got the ultra-low power (ULP) mode engaged. If you leave the AMOLED display on as your default (particularly in the always-on mode), you’ll find that this chews up your battery life faster than Augustus Gloop chews up Wonka bars.
In ULP mode, you’ll see the FSTN display first and foremost when you twist your wrist to view the screen. This display only takes small sips from the power reserves, yet still shows your key metrics, such as BPM, calories burned, steps taken, and so on. And it resembles a Casio-like digital watch display, which scores it some cool retro points in my book.
With ULP mode engaged, you’ll already be making valuable savings on the amount of battery power being consumed. But you can extend this even further by launching your watch into Essential Mode.
Essential Mode engages the ULP mode 24/7 (until manually switched off), thereby extending the battery life for days on end. While engaged, this mode only allows access to certain features (time, BPM, calorie info), with everything else suspended in a sleeping state.
Usefully, there’s also a Smart Essential Mode, which isn’t quite as spartan, and activates automatically during sleep and idle states, preserving a bit of additional power, without you having to abstain from all other features.
Activating all Essential Mode settings is nice and easy, too. A firm press of the TicWatch Pro 5’s crown brings up a scrollable list of settings, among which you will find Essential Mode. Select this and you can engage this mode 24/7, auto-switch it on according to your schedule, or have it kick in once battery power reaches less than 5%.
Naturally, how much battery you consume will vary, depending on how you use your Pro 5 and what you use it for. Nevertheless, it has one of the best battery lives of any current-gen smartwatch, and the options to tweak it to get even more are a welcome addition.
Comprehensive Health & Fitness Tracking
This is the real meat and potatoes of the TicWatch Pro 5, and in my opinion, the chief reason for owning one. If measuring your metrics and tracking your fitness data holds any interest for you whatsoever, you’ll find brand new ways to obsess over those details here.
It features a laundry list of native apps that includes TicHealth, TicExercise, TicBreathe, TicPulse, TicOxygen, TicSleep, and on and on, ad infinitum (well, almost). There’s also a TicZen which tracks your stress levels, too, which are likely to be slightly higher than normal, after scrolling through all that lot.
There’s support for more than 100 different workout types on TicExercise, and launching into a workout of your choice is nice and easy. For running, walking, or cycling, you may use the built-in GPS to register your location and set optional goals in terms of distance or time. Once you’ve completed your activity, you are rewarded with a map of your route, as well as all the relevant vital statistics.
Additionally, there’s a one-tap measurement app that records your BPM, respiration rate, stress level, and Sp02 in just ninety seconds. Luckily, at the time of testing, all my levels registered as normal, which naturally, I was pleased to see.
Activities can be handily organized according to the most recently used, so your favorites can always sit at the top of the pile. This quality-of-life feature saves your scroll thumb from undue wear and tear and helps bypass what could otherwise be an exercise in tedium.
Most activities can be launched via the TicExercise App on the Pro 5 and work (rather neatly) in conjunction with the ultra-low power display, which changes color according to how your heart rate changes.
The Pro 5 also has automatic activity tracking, which is perfect for people like me, who are prone to forgetting to launch the relevant exercise tracker before commencing it IRL. Living in a very hilly part of the world as I do, there’s walking for miles in the surrounding area. When I set off on a hike, the Pro 5 will recognize that I’m walking and buzz me to ask what I’m doing and whether I want my activity to be tracked.
Granted, it does take a few minutes to catch on that you might be doing something active, but it’s still a welcome feature for the more scatter-brained among us, and means you never end up with a bunch of unregistered data at the end of a long march.
Sleep Tracking is here too, although it’s a bit of a mixed bag by comparison. The main problem with it is that it seems to struggle to differentiate between time spent in bed, versus time actually spent sleeping. It measures the various sleep stages (awake, light, deep, and REM), presenting the results for viewing in the Mobvoi Health App.
Although broadly on par with the sleep data collected from my Samsung Galaxy 5, it did suggest that I’d spent more time in restful sleep than my Galaxy Watch did.
Should You Buy the TicWatch Pro 5?
To be blunt, if you’re an iOS user, the answer is no, as there’s no support for that platform. For everyone else, there are plenty of reasons to consider it.
Firstly, there’s the ingenious dual-screen large display. It’s the perfect antidote to those annoying always-on features that sap your battery life, particularly on the Wear OS platform. The color-changing panel on the ULP display is useful too, letting you know at a glance when you’re overdoing or underdoing it, so you can course-correct to hit your targets.
Overall performance is excellent, and the battery life is second to none for the current smartwatch generation. Additions such as the rotating crown make navigation a breeze, and there are plenty of ways to customize your experience with the Pro 5.
On the downside, the absence of Google Assistant seems like a glaring omission. As yet, there’s no word on whether this is likely to be introduced with updates, although I suspect it might be held back for the Pro 6, or whatever comes next from TicWatch.
In addition, the Mobvoi Health App could do with a bit of polish, as its strictly functional appearance fails to generate much excitement for this viewer.
These few gripes aside, the TicWatch Pro 5 shines in just about every other respect.
It’s a high-quality, premium, smartwatch, with fantastic battery life, super smooth operation, and a metric ton of health and fitness tracking crammed under its hood.
It certainly has the chops to rival any other Android smartwatch that’s out there right now, in terms of its efficiency and performance. And it comfortably outperforms most when it comes to its battery life.
The TicWatch Pro 5 may be a few steps away from absolute glory, but there’s enough here to cement its status as a real contender among the current crop.
