Dizo Watch R review: The one to beat under Rs. 4000

Name: Dizo Watch R
Item: Dizo Watch R
Author: Amritanshu Mukherjee

The Dizo Watch R scores high on style and is laden with features. At Rs. 3,999, is this the best choice to consider?

By: AMRITANSHU MUKHERJEE
| Updated on: Jan 15 2022, 09:27 IST

The Dizo Watch R comes in three colours and costs Rs. 3,999. (Amritanshu / HT Tech)

Fitness trackers are a dime-a-dozen and for less than Rs. 4,000, you can find many that could literally put some expensive smartwatches to shame. However, brands are trying to blur the lines between fitness bands and watches, with Realme and Dizo making a name for themselves with some impressive affordable sub-Rs. 5,000 smartwatches. Dizo's latest attempt in 2022 makes me wonder whether fitness bands, such as Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 6, are done!

Because one look at the Dizo Watch R and it is easy to lose your heart over it. I do not recall any other smartwatch that looks this desirable and still carries a figure of ₹3,999. And it's not only the looks; Dizo has loaded it up with almost every imaginable feature you expect from a smartwatch costing at least twice!

Has Dizo hit the ball out of the park? I have been wearing the Watch R for close to 10 days and here's all I have to share.

Dizo Watch R Design

If you follow all developments in the world of smartwatches, you might be familiar with the Amazfit GTR 3; an expensive watch costing Rs. 14,000. The Dizo Watch R looks and feels exactly like it. No kidding, place them next to each other and you will be hard pressed to choose the cheaper one. Its large 1.3-inch circular dial fusing into a slim metal body makes even my Apple Watch Series 7 ashamed of all its bloated figure.

image caption — Dizo Watch R (Amritanshu / HT Tech)

It is built extremely well too. This has a metal chassis that feels nice to touch, while the glass display is good at resisting smudges – characteristics that I haven't seen on a watch this affordable. Even the buttons have a satisfactory tactility to them. The underbody holding all the optical sensors is shaped nicely and does not dig into the skin like most fitness bands do at this price.

I also have high praises for the strap. Made of silicone material, it is highly flexible and is soft on the skin. I wore it all day and night throughout my usage and it never caused an irritation. The strap is one of the big reasons the Dizo Watch R is so comfortable to wear.

Dizo Watch R Smart features

I feel Dizo wanted to make a smartwatch primarily instead of a fitness tracker and as someone who appreciates a good “smart”watch, I am impressed. It starts right with the display, which measures 1.3-inches and features a 550 nits AMOLED screen with a resolution of 360 x 360 pixels. This is a very good display for a wearable on a daily basis, it shows. Colours almost pop-out of the pitch-black dials and there's no awkward colour shifting when viewed at an angle. It is easily legible even under the morning sunshine.

Dizo makes the most out of this display with some of the coolest watch faces I have seen on a smartwatch yet. Most of these are from Realme watches but there's enough variety to have one for the mood, or for today's fashion. The Always On Display feature is handy and you get to choose from a digital or analogue face. No customisation available on these watch faces or AOD designs though.

The software interface is largely similar to the Realme watches, with familiar designs for menus and various health data widgets. It all comes together to make for a cheerful user interface that is easy to use and nice to look at. The animations are fairly decent for a watch of this price and the lags are kept to a minimum. The two buttons make for easy navigation, with one of them acting as the shortcut to health tracking onboard apps. You also get apps for music control, weather details, camera control, alarm clock and some more.

However, this being an entry-level watch, the smartness is limited. Notifications from your smartphone support limited characters, which means texts in Hindi and Emojis don't appear on the watch. You cannot respond to messages or catch a glimpse of Twitter notifications. Also, for some reason, I was unable to get notifications from Gmail as well as call reminders.

The Dizo companion app is well designed and easy to figure out, especially with regards to watch settings and health monitoring functions. You can choose watch faces from here but know that it takes time to transfer the faces to the watch; this is due to the Watch R only supporting Bluetooth for data transfer and connectivity. The watch is neatly laid out and one can get a clear representation of the health data.

Speaking of health…

Dizo Watch R Health tracking

The Dizo Watch R brings a plethora of fitness tracking functions as well as some basic health monitoring systems. Other than continuous heart rate and steps monitoring, you can track Blood Oxygen saturation and sleep data as well. Other than these, there are over 110 sports mode to track activities such as swimming, running, weight lifting, and the likes.

I do not possess a medical grade device to test the accuracy of the heart and SpO2 data but compared to the Apple Watch Series 7, the disparity was minimum. The SpO2 data was 1-2 percent adrift of the Apple Watch data. I could say the same for the steps data most of the time. The data isn't accurate but for casual tracking, it's good enough; on par with other fitness trackers at this price.

Fitness activities during this third wave of Omicron-dominated COVID wave were limited and I could only test the outdoor walking mode. Again, the workout data is useful for generic tracking purposes and you can see it all consolidated with beautiful graphs on the smartphone app. The sleep tracking mode shows light and deep sleep data on the watch but you get REM sleep data on the app.

Dizo Watch R Battery life

Dizo claims up to 12 hours of battery life on a single charge but I could get it to last barely past 3 days. With the Always On Display mode activated along with continuous health data tracking, the Dizo Watch R kept dying mostly after completing 48 hours. Obviously, you can turn down 24x7 tracking and AOD to get more battery but Dizo could have stuffed a bigger capacity battery here.

The Watch R, however, charges faster to 70 percent with a regular 5W charging adapter. It takes close to two hours for a full charge.

Verdict

The Dizo Watch R is a surprising delight! It has no business being this good at being an affordable smartwatch but there we have it. It is surely going to lure a lot of you with its svelte design and the gorgeous display – two factors that even a Rs. 7000 smartwatch often struggles to achieve. Other than the design, it has got all the features you expect from a high-end smartwatch. Fitness enthusiasts won't be left disappointed either.

Not all is good though. The software experience reminds me of its low price, especially with its inability to read emojis or Hindi text, and the initial batch of bugs limiting certain features. The battery life is another reason of concern; its 2-3 days of battery stamina is fine but that 12-day figure is only possible by turning some of its tracking features and AOD off.

At this price, the Dizo Watch R has serious competition from the Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 6 costing Rs. 3,499, Redmi Watch GPS at Rs. 3,999, Realme Watch 2 at Rs. 3,999 and the Amazfit Bip U at Rs. 3,499. As someone who has reviewed all of them, I can say the Dizo Watch R outdoes them all.

Our take: The Dizo Watch R is easily the best looking and most feature rich smartwatch you can buy today. Unless you seek a fitness tracker, this is our top recommendation under Rs. 4,000.

Rating

4 out of 5

Price

INR 3,999/-

Product Name

Dizo Watch R

Brand Name

Dizo

Pros