The Realme TechLife Watch S100 price in India is Rs 2,499. It is one of the most affordable smartwatches you can buy from the company’s brands. It offers a lot in terms of features, including heart rate and SpO2 tracking, plus body temperature monitoring. Is this the most affordable smartwatch you can buy right now? Let’s find out in this review.
Realme TechLife Watch S100 design
Most affordable smartwatches have a rectangular screen. Most of these are inspired by the Apple Watch. The Realme TechLife Watch S100 also looks the same, but its lower price dwarfs the design and build quality of the watch. Still, it’s a good smartwatch at this price.
Watch S100 has a 1.69-inch rectangular color display with a resolution of 240×280 pixels and a maximum brightness of 530 nits. The screen is housed in a plastic case with thick borders around it. There is only one physical button on the right side. The magnetic charger, optical heart rate sensor, blood oxygen monitor, and body temperature sensor are located at the bottom.
The single button doubles as the power button (on or off with a long press) and the standby button (screen on or off with a short press). It also works to go back one step if you’re in a menu. For device navigation and control, the touch screen can be swiped and tapped to navigate between menus and select the user interface.
The watch’s 20mm rubber strap feels quite comfortable and comes with multiple adjustment points on the wrist. It can be removed and replaced as well. This smartwatch comes in black and gray colors and has an IP68 water resistance rating. This rating makes the watch safe while showering or swimming.
Realme TechLife Watch S100 is very light. Its weight is only 34 grams. It houses a 260 mAh battery and houses an accelerometer in addition to temperature sensors and optical sensors. It has support for Bluetooth 5.1 for connectivity. The Realme Fit app has been supported for pairing with the smartphone.
The charging cable comes in the box with the smartwatch. It connects to the charging points at the bottom of the watch. You don’t get a wall adapter in the box. Instead, you can use the USB port of a charger or computer.
Realme TechLife Watch S100 software, interface and applications
Like most budget smartwatches, the watch runs on its own software, but requires an app to sync with a paired smartphone. The user interface is decent.
The watch comes with a quick settings menu that provides easy access to battery status, brightness control, DND toggle, flashlight, and settings menu. It also has a notification shade to display health and fitness tracking notifications from selected apps and widgets. You can also open the full list of apps that come pre-installed on your smartwatch.
The watch face can be changed directly by touching and holding the home screen. It comes with three pre-installed and always available watch faces. The fourth can be selected and synced from the companion app.
The Realme TechLife Watch S100 comes with dedicated apps that allow you to make full use of its features and access health tracking features. You can set alarms and timers, track workouts, trigger your phone’s camera shutter. Music can also be controlled. Please note that there is no way to install new apps on this smartwatch.
Unlike the Realme Watch 2 Pro and many other devices, which run on the company’s Realme Link app, the smartwatch uses the Realme Fit app. This app is available on Android and iOS platforms. Detailed fitness and health data is available on it. You can monitor workouts, change device settings, and choose which apps send notifications to your smartwatch.
I paired it with OnePlus 9 and the app worked fine. In this, the connection was stable and the sending of notifications was also reliable. However, the app is not as well designed as the Realme Link. Sometimes I found textual idiosyncrasies and errors in what I thought was a translation error. Had the Realme Link app been used on this, it would have been a better experience.
Performance and battery life of the Realme TechLife Watch S100
Most wearable fitness trackers under Rs 3000 are similar, with a simple basic display. But the Realme TechLife Watch S100 looks and works more like a smartwatch. It has a large display, health tracking features, and a huge collection of watch faces, as well as customization and customization.
Due to the large screen, you can easily read the notifications. In some notifications, you will get basic details and you will not be able to reply to them with the smartwatch. In this, you can remove the incoming call notification, but your phone will still ring even after you tap on the reject option on the watch.
Watch faces look great on the Realme TechLife Watch S100. Many of these come with pre-installed complications that display live indicators for heart rate, steps, and body temperature. I liked the pre-installed watch faces better, but the Realme Fit app gives you more than 100 watch faces to choose from.
Health and fitness features on the Watch S100 include tracking steps, sleep, heart rate, blood oxygen, and body temperature. Workout tracking uses heart rate and step data to track distance covered and calories burned. Other tools on the watch include a flashlight, stopwatch, timer, alarm, weather report, camera shutter remote, and music playback remote. All of these work as expected.
The smartwatch accurately tracked sleep. It did show some difference when deep sleep was interrupted. The app also keeps a graph of how well you sleep over a week or a month. Various workouts that can be recorded on the device include walking, cycling, yoga, cricket, football, and basketball, etc. It also has the ability to measure activity specific to an exercise or sport, but I only did basic tests with it and tried using it for walking.
I manually counted 1000 steps but the Realme watch counted 1048 steps. The margin of error was less than 5 percent. When compared to the Apple Watch Series 5 over long distances (using both watches together), the margin of error was 1,055, while the Apple Watch only counted 1,000 steps. So much error can be expected in this price range.
Its heart rate tracking was accurate in a sitting and standing position. Even then, it took me a few seconds to match the reading my pulse oximeter was showing. The readings barely matched as I walked.
The blood oxygen readings of the Realme TechLife Watch S100 were not satisfactory. It was showing a completely different reading than what the pulse oximeter was showing. These readings also fluctuated by 1 to 2 percent every few seconds, while the pulse oximeter reading remained stable.
His body temperature sensor displayed two different measurements, one skin temperature and the other body temperature. It’s hard to say how accurate they are because it depends on where and under what conditions the temperature is being measured. I couldn’t find your readings to match the non-contact thermometer. But overall, it was giving satisfactory results. Changes in skin temperature were also reported quickly.
Its battery proved to be very good in normal use, lasting 8 days on a single charge. It lasted almost as long as the battery on the Realme Watch 2 Pro, which is also more expensive and comes with a larger battery.
Verdict
Affordable smart wearables are mostly focused on fitness and health tracking, and smartwatch features are rarely seen on them. But, the Realme TechLife Watch S100 was launched as a premium looking smartwatch and the price has also been kept low. It offers almost all kinds of functions. But it doesn’t impress much in fitness tracking. Its main features are its large screen and notification functions.
Heart rate, step count, and blood oxygen tracking were almost as accurate in my experience. The app’s layout is awkward, but its good display, reliable connectivity, notification features, and decent battery life make it a good option for less than Rs.3000. If you want to move towards the smartband form factor, you can also check out the Mi Band 6 priced at Rs 3,499.