My workout routine went for a toss after I twisted my knee while playing basketball, a sport I usually don’t play. The problem is that a week’s break is a long time when you are into kickboxing. Just when I was trying to ease back into my fitness routine, Honor sent me its latest Choice smartwatch.
The Honor Choice smartwatch felt great when I took it out of the box it came in. A very high-resolution 1.95-inch screen looks very sharp and could go up to 550-nits of peak brightness. The screen does not have automatic brightness adjustments. This meant that the watch nearly blinded me a couple of times when I looked at it while lying down in bed.
The screen is surrounded by significantly large bezels but the smartwatch has a classy-looking metal frame and what looks like a dial at the centre of the right-hand side of the watch. But surprise — that is not a dial, instead it is just a button, the only one on the smartwatch.
The overall construction of the Honor Watch is solid and the button on the side is just the right amount of clicky. Apart from being very sharp, the screen is also extremely responsive, comparable to a smartphone from a few years back. When you press the button from the watch display screen, it takes you to a menu of apps laid out in a “honeycomb” structure that is reminiscent of grid menus on Apple Watches.
The smartwatch came with a white silicone strap out of the box. I am not a fan of the mechanism where you have to tuck one side of the strap under the other when you wear the watch, which is quite fiddly and inconvenient. I also recommend that you wash the watchstrap more frequently than you usually would.
Not just because the white fades quickly but also because it gave me skin irritation much faster than any other smartwatch I have used in the past. The unbearable heat of Kochi during the past couple of weeks is partly to blame. Combined with the fact that the strap made an annoying noise when I typed on my (plastic construction) laptop, I would recommend just getting a completely new strap altogether.
Honor Watch: Operating system and health monitoring
Swipe right from the watch face, and you will get your activity record, heart rate monitor, SpO2 monitor, stress levels and sleep, in that order. One issue is that while swiping right will give you a preview of these things, you will need to click on the screen once again to get more details.
The activity monitor consists of three concentric circles that measure your activity record in three categories — number of steps, minutes spent on medium to high-intensity activity, and calorie consumption. I found most of these indicators to be fairly accurate in my experience. When I was pushing myself harder than usual during my workouts, it clearly registered on the watch. It also has plenty of workout modes, which comes in handy because I alternate between kickboxing, weight training and other forms of strength and conditioning throughout the week.
But one indicator that seemed a bit iffy was the step counter. More than a couple of times, I found the watch congratulating me for completing my steps goal when I was just sitting at my desk fidgeting. That aside, the monitoring was more than accurate enough for me to keep track of my performance in training and outside.
Honor Choice: Honor Health smartphone app
When I initially received the watch, I was using it with the Honor X9b smartphone, which comes preloaded with the Honor Health app. The initial setup process was fairly smooth and I loved the app. Before I started going for group kickboxing sessions, I wanted to do some light workouts at home to make sure that I am ready for sparring.
The app offered a fair amount of guided workout options that were quite convenient for me. Unfortunately, the guided workouts were available only on the smartphone app and did not interact in any way with the smartwatch. It would have been nice if I received vibrations or some indication from my wrist when I had to switch between different exercises.
But after I completed my review of the Honor X9b smartphone, I sent it back to the company, and that is when things started falling apart. I had used my Google ID to create an Honor ID. On the Honor X9b, this meant that the Honor Health app automatically signed into the same ID. But when I downloaded the Health app on my personal Samsung Galaxy S20 FE, there was no Google login option.
In fact, I was not able to access the login screen multiple times when I was using the app on my own phone. Eventually, I created a new ID and logged into the app. This meant that I would lose all my health data on the watch when I paired it once again with my phone, which I understand is important for privacy, but with the dicey login mechanism, this made everything quite inconvenient for me.
Honor Choice Watch: Verdict
The Honor Choice smartwatch has a screen that looks great, and it is also quite responsive. The device itself looks great on the wrist and could be mistaken for a more premium device. Most of the health tracking features work as intended as well.
But at Rs 5,999, it is quite hard to justify. Especially considering that it straddles the line between a fitness tracker and a smartwatch. Yes, you can attend phone calls using the device. And yes, you can view your notifications on the watch even though you cannot do anything about them. But the smartwatch market is fairly saturated and you can find excellent examples like the CMF Watch Pro for Rs 4,999. The Choice smartwatch can be a great pick if you plan to invest in Honor’s ecosystem that is coming together.
