The Timex Group has entered the fitness wearables market with two new smartwatches — the iConnect and the iConnect Fashion. Both these smartwatches are part of the new iConnect collection. We shall be reviewing the latter of the two here.
Design – Timex iConnect Fashion Review
The Timex iConnect Fashion comes with a traditional yet chic 45 mm circular dial encompassing the super bright display underneath. It is available in 4 colors, Black, Grey, Beige and White. We have the Black version with us. The display is a 240 x 240 pixel TFT LCD display. The display can get super bright and we had no issue reading our texts on it in bright sunlight.
There is single button on the right to control the functions of the smartwatch. While this button rotates like a traditional dial, it is a press-type button.
The watch feels robust and well made and gives a premium feel. The straps are easily swappable with standard sized bands. While the watch is not rated for water resistance, it is sweat resistant and can survive around a little water. Do not however take it for a swim or wear it under the shower regularly.
Connectivity – Timex iConnect Fashion Review
Connectivity is where the iConnect shines. Unlike most smartwatches at this price point, it has a built in speaker to listen to audio messages and take calls.
The watch remains perpetually connected with your smartphone and can be used to make calls directly from it. The iConnect has access to your entire contact list and thus a call can be placed without taking your smartphone out of your pocket. During our testing the calls were crisp and of good quality, however, you might want to use the smartphone itself in noisy environments as the tiny speaker is barely audible in places with high noise.
Software – Timex iConnect Fashion Review
Timex has provided for an “iConnect” companion app for both android and iOS. The app is moderately useful and leaves much to be desired. It shows basic data such as sleep and step count. We expected the app to be able to modify the watch’s settings but this is not the case and to change any of the settings one has to go deep into the watch itself.
The display of the iConnect Fashion is not an always on display, which is understandable since it is an LCD and not an LED display. You can enable the setting whereby the display switches on everytime you raise your wrist to see the time. This can however be an annoyance during the night if you wear the watch to sleep as the display keeps switching on. We would have liked the software to have a ‘sleep mode’ to counter this issue.
The software on the watch itself is bare-bone and provides for basic functionality such as controlling your smartphone camera shutter, a calculator app, a calender and an app to read your SMSes. There is no possibility to download 3rd party apps or any other apps from Timex itself.
As for the push notifications w.r.t the apps on your smartphone, the watch does well. That being said, something that we were mighty disappointed with was the sheer dearth of watch faces. The iConnect Fashion comes with 4 in-built watch faces and there is no possibility of adding any more as for now. Hopefully Timex will allow users to choose from a wider variety of watch faces in the future.
Sleep / Step Tracker and HR Monitor – Timex iConnect Fashion Review
The steps-tracker on the iConnect fashion is great and was in line with our Fitbit and Garmin devices. The sleep counter was mostly off by 30mins to 1.5 hours on any giver day.
Fortunately the sleep counter displays your sleep with Deep and Light sleep categories which we found to be fairly accurate.
The Heart rate monitor too does its job well and was always in proximity to our dedicated Fitbit and Garmin devices. However there was no option to see a chart/graph of the HR throughout a day which was disappointing.
Battery – Timex iConnect Fashion Review
One of our favourite things about the Timex iConnect Fashion was that it can be charged over a standard microUSB cable unlike most brands out there, who are always pushing out proprietary cables and docks. One less cable to carry on a trip!
That said, with the HR on 24/7 the watch barely made it past one day. With the HR switched off and on manual mode, the iConnect fashion pushed around a day and a half.
As per Timex, the watch has a talk time of around 2 hours on speaker. While it is largely not possible to make/take calls regularly on the watch, a 15 minute call did drain out the battery considerably.
Conclusion – Timex iConnect Fashion Review
While the ROI on the Timex iConnect fashion, priced at Rs 9,995 is steep and there are many other options in similar price range with many more features, it remains as one of the cheaper smartwatches with a focus on call-making/taking ability.
If you want an uncomplicated smartwatch which can measure your step/calorie/sleep/HR and make calls, pick the iConnect Fashion up.
