Our Verdict
The Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 makes great use of powerful hardware and clever design choices to deliver the best fitness-tracking experience on the market.
In an industry awash with big-name competitors like Google and Apple, it can be difficult for a less well-known company to stake its place in the market. Despite being in the smartwatch game for less than a decade, Mobvoi has built a reputation for delivering solid smartwatches with decent build quality and performance. The Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 is the latest and greatest in the Ticwatch Pro lineage, underlining everything Mobvoi smartwatches do well with fewer blips than ever.
Like the rest of its Ticwatch brethren and many of the best smartwatches, the Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 uses Wear OS, albeit the latest 3.5 version. It has dutifully followed the trajectory of previous entries, bringing even better battery life, a sleeker design, and a slightly larger price tag than its predecessor, the Ticwatch Pro 3. There’s a lot to discuss, so keep reading for our full review of this excellent smartwatch below.
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Pros
- Great for workouts
- Excellent battery life
- Simple-but-classy design
Cons
Price and availability
The Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5’s price is $349.99 / £329.99, and it’s available for purchase via multiple platforms, including Mobvoi’s website and Amazon. It comes in two colors: obsidian and sandstone. Or, for normal people, black and gray. Our review covers the obsidian version, which is classy although a little plain, something that might put others off. The sandstone version stands out more but likely won’t be to everyone’s taste.
Its price tag is a hefty increase on the Ticwatch Pro 3, which sets you back $299 / £279. Although I think Mobvoi justifies this increase thanks to the wealth of features the Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 offers, it might push it out of the price range of some folk. Others might wonder why it costs the same as smartwatches from more recognizable brands. That’s a valid concern, but Mobvoi has gone big on clever design choices to help it rub shoulders with the big guns.
Specs
Features
The Mobvoi Ticwatch 5 Pro enjoys (nearly) all the features we’ve come to expect from modern smartwatches, plus a few cool extras. In terms of the usual suspects, Wear OS brings access to Google Wallet, YouTube Music, Maps, Play Store, and all that good stuff.
Like many smartwatches, the main focus is on health and fitness, an area where the Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 really shines. Firstly, you get surprisingly accurate GPS tracking, which can help when you’ve got no cellular data signal. I’m a keen walker, so being able to rely on precise GNSS-based positioning is a comfort, and the Mobvoi Ticwatch 5 Pro also has a built-in compass to help with navigation.
Then there are a wealth of features for gym-based workouts. TicExercise offers dedicated tracking for specific activities, from the standard ones like running or swimming to niche movements like the Arnold press or the interestingly named ‘high traveling bear crawl.’ The Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 also has all the general health-related apps you’d expect, such as blood oxygen saturation, sleep, and stress monitoring, among others.
However, as I mentioned earlier, not all preinstalled apps are useful, and most of them you can’t delete. Useless bloatware like TicBreathe, TicCare (a means to share health data with people via QR code), Mobvoi Privacy, and Mobvoi Treadmill clog up the interface and make scrolling to your desired app more painful than necessary.
The Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5’s utility extends beyond the watch itself. If you want to take a more granular view of a particular workout or look at your long-term health and fitness trends, that’s where the companion mobile phone app, Mobvoi Health, comes in. The smartwatch automatically sends data to the app, giving you more flexibility in how you view it, such as tables and graphs. Although it’s not the most sophisticated companion app I’ve seen — and you’re probably not thrilled at the prospect of another app on your phone — it does the job.
Now it’s time to talk about what the Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 doesn’t have, and it’s a short list. The most glaring omission from the feature set is Google Assistant. While it may seem churlish to mark it down for this, considering many smartwatches don’t have it, some do, and you’d expect this one to have practically everything on offer for its premium price tag. There’s also no LTE option, so if you’re struggling for cellular data on your Bluetooth-connected mobile, you’re out of luck. Instead, you have to rely on Bluetooth 5.2 and single-band Wi-Fi. It’s also an Android-only smartwatch, so you won’t be able to use it with your iPhone.
Design and display
While it’s not going to win any awards for innovation or out-of-the-box thinking courtesy of its design, the Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 looks pretty good. While the sandstone version stands out a bit more, the black version on my wrist looks slick enough to feel premium without being too showy or garish. The emphasis is undoubtedly on what’s under the bonnet, which is exactly how I like my smartwatches to be.
Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 has a typical round watch face surrounded by a cross-hatched bezel. You control it using a button to the upper right-hand side, your standard touch screen swiping, and a tactile rotating crown to make scrolling through apps a breeze. This is handy, considering this smartwatch has more than its fair share of bloatware, something we’ll come onto in the features section of this review.
Like its predecessors, the Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 is two-faced… literally. The main attraction is the 1.43-inch AMOLED screen, which lights up whenever you press the side button or crown. While I don’t have an exact brightness figure for it in nits, it certainly seems bright enough for any occasion, whether you’re at home or out and about in heavy sunlight.
You can choose from a wide range of free and paid-for watch faces for the AMOLED screen, depending on your taste. I prefer a more old-school design, so I opted for a traditional analog display for the most part. But you can suit yourself with this one, whether you want a flashy neon design with all the readings from the various apps, like steps, heart rate, and more, or a custom design that someone’s made on Reddit.
The watch often reverts to its ultra-low-power (ULP) display, a pared-back digital watch face showing the date, time, battery level, daily steps, and current heart rate. While this is less spectacular than its AMOLED face, it does absolute wonders for the Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5’s battery life. Again, that’s something I’ll expand on below.
The screen and watch should take some punishment, considering it’s MIL-STD 810H certified. This certification means, unlike some other premium smartwatches, it should be able to endure sand, high altitude, hot and cold temperatures, moderate impacts, and more. It’s also 5ATM water resistant, meaning you can submerge it up to 164 feet before getting damaged, and it should be fine when taken into a swimming pool or the sea.
Battery
The Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5’s battery is an absolute powerhouse that can go for days without topping up. While the ULP display may not be flashy, it means this smartwatch’s 628mAh battery can run and run. I actually found the advertised 80-hour battery life to be an underestimate. If you’re constantly fiddling around in the AMOLED interface, it will likely substantially reduce the battery’s staying power. But with light use, even with all the sensors actively monitoring your vitals, I only had to charge my watch every four days or so.
And it doesn’t take long to charge, either. In my experience, it goes from low charge to around 80% in less than an hour when plugged into a USB port on my wall. As this tends to provide less power than a typical plug, you’ll probably find it charges even faster if you juice it via an actual plug. In terms of the port on the watch itself, the two-pin charging cable may look fiddly, but it slots in securely.
Performance
The Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 is the first Ticwatch to rock Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon W5+ chipset. The power of this processor is evident in everything the Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 does, and switching between apps and menus takes no time at all. I didn’t find myself staring at the watch face and waiting for something to load once.
Its accuracy in monitoring workouts is also pretty stellar. Although TicExercise’s calorie tracking function seems to just assign a calorie-burning rate to each type of workout and calculates your overall number of calories burned using that rate alongside how long you’ve spent exercising and your heart rate during the workout, it’s still useful if you’re trying to track calories closely.
Speaking of the heart rate monitor, its readings are consistent with the dedicated armband monitor I have at home. During general use, it takes a heart rate reading roughly every 5-10 minutes. If you want up-to-date readings while exercising, I’d advise activating TicExercise on your Ticwatch Pro 5, which makes the heart rate monitor update any changes to your heart rate in real time.
However, if you want to know your heart rate at a glance, Mobvoi has introduced an elegant solution. If you’ve activated a workout on TicExercise, the watch’s ULP mode displays a different-colored backlight depending on your heart rate zone. This UI is customizable, but I saw no reason to change the default colors, all of which are common sense and range in color gradients from blue for resting up to red for dangerous.
I find it invaluable when out for a walk to see if I’m in the ‘resting’ zone, as it lets me know I need to up the intensity. Similarly, if I’m aiming for a deadlift PB and stray into the cardio territory, I probably need to take things down a notch. It’s not groundbreaking, just a clever and simple feature that typifies Mobvoi’s finesse in smartwatch design.
The sleep monitoring app, TicSleep, takes periodic readings of your heart rate, blood oxygen levels, skin temperature, and respiratory rate, as well as evaluating the quality of your sleep with different-colored sections showing whether you’re awake or in light sleep, deep sleep, or REM. Although it sometimes fails to distinguish between light sleep and wakefulness, I found the app accurate enough to be practical in setting healthy sleeping habits.
Should you buy the Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5?
My recommendation for this smartwatch depends on what you’re planning to use it for. If you like walking, running, swimming, pumping iron, or engaging in any fitness-related activity with a trusty smartwatch on your wrist, you’ll struggle to improve on the Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5. It can run for days thanks to its dual-display design and a hefty battery, staying by your side to provide accurate readings whether you’re halfway up a mountain, carving a path through a choppy sea, or just enjoying a pleasant, sun-kissed walk in the woods.
However, if you’re not interested in fitness or are happy to workout without knowing how many calories you’ve burned, how far you’ve traveled, or your heart rate, you can probably do better elsewhere. Although the Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 is classy enough, more stylish watches are available. If you want a device to help you organize your time, this works well enough, but you’ll likely want something compatible with Google Assistant. Still, as a fitness aid, this is a smartwatch you can’t beat.
Alternatives
If our Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 review leaves you looking elsewhere for a smartwatch, here are a couple of suggestions for alternatives.
Samsung Galaxy Watch 6
If you want a smartwatch that brings the helpful Google Assistant along for the ride, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 is a great option. It brings all the fitness tracking capabilities you could want alongside a stunning display and a swathe of customization options. It’s also a touch cheaper than the Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 and offers the comfort of the reliable Samsung brand.
Apple Watch Series 9
The Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 is incompatible with iPhones, so you’ll probably be searching elsewhere if you’re an adherent of the Apple design philosophy. If so, look no further than the Apple Watch Series 9. With its stunning display, seamless iOS connectivity, and beefy processor, Apple’s latest entry in its smartwatch series is one of the best devices out there. Its operating system is also more intuitive than even the best Android-compatible devices on the market.