We’ve tried it and you know everything you can expect from a smart watch, you don’t even have to put on your pants.

I didn’t wear a watch for a lot of years because I felt like I didn’t need it, and anyway, I always had my phone there if I wanted to know what time it was. Then last year, because of the tests, I started wearing smart bracelets and realized that these wearable smart devices are no longer the watches I remembered a long time ago. They are light, practical and waterproof. Pretty slowly, before I noticed, I got used to looking at the exact time on my wrist, starting the music I was listening to while driving, or looking at it when my message arrived.

So I wear a smart watch for a while. No fluff, it looks pretty simple on the outside, but it knows a lot. Because of this, I look at the watches more and more in my favorite web store, so I caught my eye on a structure called SMA 09.

It wasn’t his knowledge, it was the outside that made me notice it. It belongs to the cheaper category, but still, it has a watch look, not self-explanatory, but visibly a showy, traditional round-shaped smart watch.

Examining his knowledge, I then decided to order one of them. I’m not going to replace my current watch with it, but I’ve been very curious about what they cut around for $ 60, because the pictures often show the object of our desires on the pages of the stores much more beautiful.

Wrapping

The SMA 09 came in a simple black box. You can find unpacking videos on Youtube where the clock can be seen at the top of the box, but in the meantime this has been spared. It is suspicious that there are several types of watches in this single box, but we don’t have to care about that, after all, we’re not going to carry the box with us, but the watch on our wrist.

At the bottom of the black cardboard packaging we find information, for example, here is a fairly long list of capabilities. You can see that we need to use either an Android or iOS phone to use. Among the capabilities, weather reporting does not work on iOS and Siri on Android phones. The full list will be published at the end of the article.

Opening the lid of the box, we find the clock on the left, a smaller box on the right, and a storage compartment in the lid of the box. From this we can conclude that we will find several kinds of accessories, but this is not true. The cover only hides the instructions for use, luckily in English, while in the smaller box you will find the charging cable. So much for the accessories, though we won't need anything else.

The manufacturer

Shenzhen Smart Care Technology Limited, or SMA, is a company that, as its name suggests, specializes in the manufacture of wearable smart devices. We don’t know anything about their company or founding time on their website, the most important information is that a Hong Kong designer who has been designing watches for more than 10 years has been designing their watches. This is a useful thing according to the attached figure, I might not have ordered this watch if it weren’t so. In addition to the little information, we get a video about the company, so it’s worth watching.

SMA 09 from the outside

As I wrote above, in the case of SMA 09, the images were captured first. I don’t like chic stuff, for example, I especially hate big, colorful, rubber-covered sports watches. I’m a believer in traditional, so to speak, conservative things, so you’ll like a smart watch if the watch doesn’t seem like an accessory to some sci-fi movie.

Well, the SMA 09 point is like that. It’s a watch-looking item that’s round like an old-fashioned watch, and depending on what you want in a leather or metal strap. I stayed with the skin, the metal looked a bit unisex based on the pictures. The round housing is not too thick, not too thick, it is smooth to believe that we are wearing a traditional watch. It’s not full of buttons, not a single one that is deceptively similar to traditional pull-up buttons, with which we can essentially just turn the clock on and off, or if the display turns off during use, we can wake it up.

As I wrote I ordered the leather strap version. Well, if it's a leather strap, I'll eat my hat. Rather, it appears as if a thin layer of skin has been scraped onto some soft substrate. Let’s say you might not expect more for the price. The leather feeling is there, the strap is not very hard, but also not soft, quite comfortable. I don’t know what it would be like to wear at 35 degrees, how much it would sweat on my wrist, but now it’s good.

SMA 09 capabilities

In addition to the exterior, what you can expect from a smartwatch is very important. Well, from SMA 09, pretty much as much as it’s listed on the datasheet, because we’re pretty Czech in terms of both memory and storage, and I was still subtly expressing myself then. That is, at this hour, no one should expect to install all kinds of programs afterwards. I know the system on it, I know you can hack through ADB, but in that case I didn't see any point in that.

Fortunately, the watch has programs installed that we would use on a daily basis anyway, and the watch knows the capabilities we may need. These are:

• Messages synchronization
• step Count
• Gentle alarm clock
• Sleep monitor
• Heart monitor
• Phonebook
• Dialer
• Call list
• Bluetooth music
• Camera remote control
• File manager
• Calendar
• Alarm
• Stopper
• Calculator

As we will not lack visible abilities, it is a question of how well the watch works!

Phone App

The easiest way to find the program for the watch is to tap the icon containing the QR code on the watch and scan the displayed code with your phone. On the page that appears, you can choose whether you want to download to your Android or iOS phone, and then the fun can begin!

The program was very appealing and transparent, it really became quite professional. On the main screens, you can see things related to sports, sleep, and blood pressure, and in the settings, you can set alarms for virtually any application installed on your phone.

This software was a particularly positive disappointment. Like the clock, it doesn’t delight in many things either, but what it does, it does with honor. As I say, a picture says more than a thousand words, and we don’t just have one picture, so look at them.

Experiences

I have a bad trait, I can’t write an article quickly. More specifically, the writing goes fast, but for weeks before that, I use everything to give a really well-founded opinion.

I also wore the SMA 09 watch for a while and I have to admit that it’s not a Xiaomi, so I was ultimately happy to get my own watch back. But, and here’s a big one, and that is that the SMA 09 points cost half as much as the Xiaomi, and compared to that, in theory, it knows so much less that it doesn’t have a GPS. Of course, the interface is also practically different, essentially just like all the cheaper Android smartphones.

SMA has proven to be surprisingly useful in everyday life. At first I was a little scared of him because after installing the program and plugging in the watch and phone, he started acting as a speakerphone. For example, in order for phone messages to appear on the clock, for contacts to be in sync, and everything else I had to endure so that I could only call by shouting into my clock and what everyone on the other side was saying around me. This solution was so useful in one place, namely in the car, while driving, where, if not pulled down, the window was the perfect speakerphone. Anyway, the watch also has a dialer, so you can even keep the phone in your pocket so we can make and receive calls.

Then, while searching for settings, I realized that I could only disable the phone feature on a Bluetooth connection, so the messages would still sync and the camera remote control would work, for example.

It’s good to remember, I haven’t even talked about this, we can also control music playback and the camera from the watch, meaning we can take great pictures of ourselves from several meters if we can find a safe place for the phone.

Using the watch anyway is really not a craze. Specifically, you don’t need a degree, it’s awfully easy to figure out. The interface is completely standard, responds well and accurately to touch, and unlike the Xiaomi, the backlight turns on at a good rate when I swing it in front of my eyes.

Interestingly, even heart rate measurement was quite accurate. True, I counted the drumming in my head with my finger, it was never as much as what the clock showed, but there was no big difference, that is, to be able to follow the pace at least approximately well. Pedometer worked similarly to heart rate. Of course, it will never be the most accurate to count the pace of the arms yourself, but you can keep track of our daily activity with it.

Summary

How could we close this article? With that, I really liked SMA 09 at first. For the second time, it scared me a lot with the non-turn-off speakerphone feature, which then, as it turned out, can still be turned off. Eventually, I realized that this watch is really priced, meaning we get the level we can expect from a $ 60 watch.

He knows everything he promises, there is no trick. So, if you want a cheap-looking smart watch on your wrist, buy it. It may be enough for you, too, to soon realize you like this smartwatch thing, and if that happens, you’ll soon order the $ 100-150 piece that you’ll be happy with.

I ordered from here: SMA 09 smartwatch

Attention, at the time of writing this article is still available for $ 39 from a watch with a silver metal strap, if you manage to pin it off it will be a real jackpot!