Fire Boltt Review: An affordable smartwatch that lets you take calls on the go

Fire-Boltt Talk review: Buying an affordable smartwatch today can be a daunting task, thanks to a variety of devices that are easy on the pocket but packed with features such as activity tracking, monitoring health and sleep, checking notifications and controlling music from your smartphone. In fact, a lot of the smartwatches that cost up to ₹5,000 are essentially fitness trackers with a few additional features. Here’s where the Fire-Boltt Talk comes with features seen on more expensive offerings from companies like Apple and Samsung, allowing users to take calls from their wrist.

The Fire-Boltt Talk smartwatch comes packed with features that include heart rate monitoring, fitness and activity tracking, sleep monitoring, blood oxygen level (SpO2) and blood pressure tracking. The smartwatch also allows users to check the weather, click smartphone photos using their wrist, and even take calls without picking up their phone. The device is priced at ₹4,999 and comes in green, white and black colour options. The company sent us the green variant for review – we’ve spent a few weeks with the device and here are our thoughts.

Fire-Boltt Talk review: Design

The Fire-Boltt Talk closely resembles a regular wristwatch, from the round design to the crown and the 3.2cm (1.28-inch) display. Under the display is where the sensors are located and the watch body does not feel very heavy while wearing it. Clicking the crown (which is actually a button) turns on the display, while the touchscreen interface lets you swipe through menus and settings. The watch comes with rubber straps, we got the green variant for review and found the material soft to the touch and comfortable to wear.

Fire-Boltt Talk review: Performance

The Fire-Boltt Talk is geared towards tracking a wide range of activity, sleep and health parameters and it appeared to do most of these things rather well in our tests. Walking while counting steps aloud and keeping track of the smartwatch showed that it tracked steps accurately while running, walking and jogging. Similarly, the Fire-Boltt Talk can measure your blood oxygen levels rather accurately, and we found the readings matching a BPL SpO2 reader we purchased online during the pandemic.

The heart rate tracker is also quite reliable, and the Fire-Boltt Talk comes with a continuous heart rate monitoring feature. However, this, along with sleep tracking, will drain your battery a lot faster – we could get at least six and a half days of battery life when these features were disabled. The Fire-Boltt Talk also comes with a blood pressure monitoring system, but taking readings in succession showed different readings and this does not appear to be a reliable method of checking one's blood pressure.

One of the headlining features of the Fire-Boltt Talk is the ability to use your smartwatch as a receiver while taking calls, and during our testing, we found that it worked rather well. Your smartphone basically treats the Fire-Boltt Talk as a speaker with a built-in microphone, and you can hear voices rather well. If there’s audio playing on the other side, you might find it a little tinny, but the connection itself was quite stable and there were no issues while speaking using the smartwatch.

We tested the Fire-Boltt Talk on both an Android smartphone and an iPhone running iOS 14.8, and found that the device worked flawlessly with both devices, after download the Da Fit app from the respective stores. What is interesting about the Fire-Boltt Talk is that we didn’t have to pick up our phone to quickly check our heard rate or to see who was calling – it even showed us recent callers, a set of contacts that we could sync to the phone and a dial pad. However, these are features that will work only on your Android devices, while the software on the watch was a little slow to respond to our touches on the main home screen – which looks a lot like Apple’s watchOS.

Fire-Boltt Talk review: Battery

Coming to the battery life, the Fire-Boltt Talk is rated to have a battery life of around 10 days, but we found that while using it on a daily basis, we were lucky to get around five hours of battery backup before needing a charge again. That being said, this device still offers better battery life than other fitness trackers with smaller displays and with fewer features – including using the watch as a phone call receiver.

Charging the Fire-Boltt Talk is done via a male USB-A charging cable that fits into your charging brick, while the other end connects to the smartwatch base via a magnetic connector. It only attaches when positioned properly, and turning it the other way repels the watch from the connector which is something you have to get used to while charging. The watch went from 10 percent to 100 in just under one hour and 40 minutes, which seems decent if it is something we have to do every five days.

Verdict

There are quite a few options if you’re looking for an affordable fitness tracker under ₹5,000. Many of these fitness trackers will offer the same number of features, and allow you to monitor important health parameters, check your messages and notifications and so on. The Fire-Boltt Talk adds another important feature, while keeping the price under ₹5,000 – the ability to make and answer calls on your wrist. This is a feature you see on more expensive watches from companies like Apple and Samsung, and it is quite refreshing to see it on such an affordable device. 

Using the Fire-Boltt Talk's phone call feature is also a little safer than taking out your phone to check your notifications, or answer calls, in light of the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic. This smartwatch does the basics well, such as activity, sleep, SpO2 and heart rate monitoring, and even though we would not recommend relying on the blood pressure monitor, the overall value offered by this smartwatch for the price makes it an easy recommendation for those looking for a smartwatch on a budget.