Lenovo Watch 9 is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful smartwatches in the lower house, but will that be enough for success?

Again, a bloody eccentric turned in our circles; the Watch 9 has a visibly classic look but a modern interior. With this duality, the well-known Chinese manufacturer has ventured, but the pull guarantees that the watch will stand out from the field. By the way, did you know that “Lenovo” as a name came from the word combination “Le” (from Legend) and “Novo” (new)? So merging the opposites is far from far from Lenovo.

Main specifications

Packaging and exterior

Seeing the restrained box, few are likely to get their heads up, much more because of the Watch’s stunning design. The attached guide will do a very good service, we just have to walk to the nearest Chinese store in the belief that we will catch the seller in a good mood and helpfully translate the paperwork we received - the other method is the link above where you can find the English version. A charging cable was not included, after which we concluded with sharp logic that the structure has a battery drive.

As you can see, we’ve got the gorgeous version in black, and there’s also a white version - presumably tailored to the needs of the nicer sex. At first glance, the Watch 9 can be said to be a little ostentatious, making it perfect for everyday use, a kind of mechanical watch with electronic interiors. By the way, in addition to the decorative look, Lenovo also considered quality, if we can believe the official announcement, the watch will be scratch-resistant sapphire crystal with a hardness of 9H according to the Mohs hardness scale - this is surpassed only by diamonds. The housing of the device is made of stainless steel made of 316L type alloy, which is often used in high-purity medical devices as well. The steel casing was sandblasted prior to painting and then the metal surface was treated with a vacuum ion coating to make the glaze resistant to the iron teeth of time. We do not have a materials testing laboratory (for the time being), we are forced to believe Lenovo at the above points. In fact, such a high level of material use in this price range is, to put it mildly, unusual; frankly, we can’t even be expected to get a lifetime product for $ 16,99. If that’s the case though, take off your hat in front of Lenovo!

Tip:

• Tempered Glass Smart Screen Protector Anti-Scratch Protective Glass for Lenovo Watch 9 - $ 1,50

As for the looks, we haven’t talked about one more thing, which is nothing but the (replaceable) silicone strap. The hypoallergenic strap protrudes slightly from the image, at least in the sense that a leather variant would have further enhanced the elegance. My last prejudice dissipated in an instant, but more on that later.

For our part, with regard to the outer rail, we would like to point out that the visibility of the traditional dial and the pointer is excellent (even in strong sunlight), we did not encounter any internal fogging. The latter is due to the fact that the watch has basic water protection, so it can be used for showering, bathing, occasional, short-term swimming, fishing, washing dishes without any problems, and it is not a problem in heavy rain - only the dynamic pressure from higher speeds ( water sports) or cannot withstand the water pressure from a deeper dive. There is no interior lighting, the visibility of phosphorescent indicators in the dark is almost completely inadequate.

Use 

By definition, in the absence of a digital display, we can read the usual information not from the watch, but from our smartphone. By the way, these data refer to the usual things in this category, so: pedometer, heart rate measurement, and unmissable sleep monitoring. It should be noted that sleep monitoring is by no means an idea to dismiss at the Watch 9, which is mainly due to the extremely comfortable strap. At this point, I am forced to revise myself because invisibly I didn’t have a good opinion of this watch strap at all, but in a moment, he convinced me! There may be a more elegant solution than this, but in fact, it is hardly more comfortable. The silicone strap can only be spoken of in superlatives without exaggeration: it is soft, the inside is ribbed (the air is not stuffy under it), and it embraces our wrists so unobtrusively that we can hardly feel its existence - it really isn't bad!

There is also a dial on the clock, yet it holds curiosities; When there is an incoming call, the minute hand jumps to "CALL", even when a message arrives, to "MSG" - these markings are on a semicircular scale, unfortunately you can hardly see them, but we can deduce from their location. In the latter we also find a scale with the following scales: 0, 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100. This sophistication is in principle used to find out how we are in terms of the daily goal set in the pedometer - of course it shows in percentage form. In principle, because unfortunately we couldn’t make it work, but we made sure it was available to others.

There is only one button that bulges out of the case, which is used to turn Bluetooth on and off. On second thought, it has one more function: You can reject calls with this or a few shaking gestures. For a wireless connection, it will be helpful to have a tell-tale LED at 12:00 noon to determine when the watch is ready to pair. The sponsor app runs under the name Lenovo Watch and can be downloaded for both apple and robotic systems. As you can see in the pictures below, the utility delights us with a clean user interface, we get all the important information on the home screen immediately: numbers about our activity (all in a detailed breakdown), from here we can start customizing, and compare our results with other users . After a while, you can set an alarm, configure notifications (calls, messages, and app alerts), activate your phone's camera remotely, and measure your heart rate with your smartphone's rear camera and LED flash - so the latter makes sense. 

• For the first pairing, place the watch as close to the phone as possible, and for the latter, turn on the positioning service (GPS);
• The OTA update may not be installed first, in which case the clock will automatically revert to the previous version after a few minutes - experience. It is recommended to minimize the data transfer distance, in addition to waiting for the Lenovo Watch application to automatically connect to the watch, so that sooner or later we will succeed;
• The weather forecast function does not provide data even after entering the location data, others have already complained about this - the error has been going on for more than a month;
• The heart rate monitor uses the phone's rear camera and LED flash, so it's not worth expecting much from it.

The application may occasionally lose its connection within range, but even then it is not necessary to start manual synchronization, as the Watch app will do it for us in a few moments anyway. Another curiosity can be reported: The exact time was set in a rather strange way, because in the Lenovo Watch application we did not have to enter the time we wanted to set, but the current state on the clock - British scientists are still researching why.

We do not deny that the above may seem daunting at first reading, but the situation is improving (with some exaggeration) day by day:

• Lenovo Watch 3.0.2 - 2018.10.21
• Lenovo Watch 3.0.1 - 2018.10.20
• Lenovo Watch 3.0.0 - 2018.10.19
• Lenovo Watch 2.4.1 - 2018.09.05

The whole software is very intuitive anyway, there is no complaint about readability, the various options are in a logical scheme, and we appreciated that Watch also pays serious attention to motivation: it compares our statistics with the user community, comments and recommendations on calories burned and sleep time. draws our attention to even excessive mobile use! Amidst the flipping between the menus, we had the impression that the app was quite user-friendly and people-centered, simply making sure that the developers didn’t neglect serving. But there is something else here…

We certainly don't need to show you the movie Witness, the following scene takes place in the first minutes:

How would such a mood report look today? We know the answer, because Lenovo Watch tries to determine what kind of mood we are / will be based on based on a set of information (sleep time, activity, age, etc.)!

Summary

You may have noticed that we rarely used the term smartwatch during the test. Well, it was no coincidence at all, as we have come to the conclusion that Watch 9 is not primarily brilliant in this area, most buyers will put the product in the basket on an emotional basis rather than based on their knowledge. We are in an easy position to evaluate, however, because the product runs at an extremely affordable price (the white version is $ 16,99, the black is barely three dollars more expensive) and we were lucky enough to learn about a quality, lovable device. So the testing ended with positive experiences, and with some benevolence we can say the same about the utility. The role of the latter here is now more important than average, as it replaces the clock display. Let’s face it, the software isn’t really flawless, but due to frequent updates, we anticipate that the situation will only improve in the future.