A £3.75 Smartwatch: Is it legit?

Macaron Color Watch smart

What can you get for £3.75? Well, with inflation off the roof, you probably can't get that many things as you would imagine. For starters, you can't even get a Tesco Meal Deal, since they've up the price to £3.85 for Clubcard holders (their loyalty scheme), which is absolutely bonkers. Sainsbury's, being the main supplier of my protein shakes, even charge 10p more (£3.95) than Tesco for their standard meal deals. How ridiculous is that?

Order details on the smartwatch

Product Description

So, what can you get for £3.75? The answer, or one of the answers, is the "Macaron Color Watch smart". It's a "Multifunctional Smart Watch Men Women Bluetooth-compatible Connected Phone Music Fitness Sports Bracelet Sleep Monitor", selling at precisely £3.75 from AliExpress. Now, I'm not sure if you can get a traditional analog watch with this price, but I guess tech has become more accessible than ever, so accessible, that a smartwatch only costs £3.75. But what are you getting exactly with that £3.75? Well, the product description is written in Spanish, so I guess only Spanish speaking people will know what they're getting exactly. But don't worry if you're not Español, I'm gonna buy it to show you all what we're getting exactly.  

Anyway, I paid the whopping £3.75 plus an extra £2.99 for shipping, and a week later, Evri, out of all local UK logistic companies, has successfully delivered it to me. (Yay, I suppose? At least they didn't lose it.) The packaging itself has seen better days. I supposed it's crushed slightly either on the flight from China or on the Evri delivery vans. (Yes, the watch is shipped from China) But luckily the watch itself is in one piece and there are no visible scratches or aesthetical defects.

The box shows 8 different colour variants of this watch on both sides, the one that I'll be reviewing, is in dark blue. One side of the box has included a tag, noting that the manufacture is Shenzhen Wang Yi Mai Technology Co., Ltd. Never heard of them? Neither do I. 

The box has also illustrated some of the watch's functionalities, including heart rate, calories, blood oxygen (that's surprising), pedometer, and messages. So just typical stuff you'd expect on a smartwatch (not quite blood oxygen levels, but hey, I ain't complaining).

Inside the box, there's the watch itself, straps, and a user manual, written in both English and Chinese. The watch itself has got a dusty protector film applied on both the front and the back of the watch. 

And yes, I did notice the resemblance of it with the Apple Watch, only without the digital crown and a push button on the right-hand side of the watch. The watch is, unsurprisingly, made entirely with plastic, including the display at the front. 

Now you might notice that there isn't a dedicated charger included in the box, that's because the watch actually charges via a USB-A plug built into the watch, which also acts as a connector for the strap, where the plug can be inserted into a slot in the strap to attach. This does mean that you'll have to unplug the strap to charge the watch, but still, it's a £3.75 smartwatch, so it's not surprising here that they built in the charging connector with the device. 

A little capacitive button is located under the screen for navigation, as the screen, a 1.44-inch Twisted Nematic (TN) LCD screen, is of course, not a touchscreen. Which means that the button is the only way to navigate through the menu. 

Like any other smartwatches, an app is required so that your watch can transfer data like your steps and heart rate to your phone and make advanced settings for the watch. The app required for this smartwatch is called "FitPro", which apparently is developed by some Chinese tech firm. More about the app later. 

So, without further ado, I'm going to test and review the watch's functionalities.

1. The Display

The Display, which is a 1.44-inch TN LCD screen, did struggle under the British sun. As the brightness of the display cannot be adjusted, you're likely to have trouble reading what's on the screen under the sun. The other thing that's rather apparent is the resolution of the display, as you can see each pixel if you look closely, you can tell that it's not particularly high definition. But nonetheless, it gets the job done and for £3.75, it's good enough.

2. The Sensors

Now according to the box, this watch should include a heart rate sensor and pedometer. (step counter) Which are very common smartwatch sensors. 

Of course, the accuracy of the heart rate sensor can't really be evaluated as I don't have access to a medical grade heart rate sensor. But it does give you a number in beats per minute for the heart rate, a percentage for the blood oxygen level in SpO2 and two numbers for blood pressure in mmHg. In the image above, the number 115 is the systolic pressure (the pressure when your heart beats), and the 70 is the diastolic pressure (pressure when your heart rests between beats). Again, the accuracy of such data can't be properly evaluated without access to medical grade sensors.

Data from Macaron Color Watch smart

Step Data from Macaron Color Watch smart

Moving on, let's test the step counter. I've set up both my regular daily smartwatch (A Samsung Galaxy Fit 2 smartband) and the Macaron Color Watch smart into Walking mode. In a 15-minute walk, the Macaron Color Watch smart has detected an average pace of 13'01" per km, and 62 Calories. But somehow my steps remain zero.

Data from Galaxy Fit 2

In comparison, my Galaxy Fit 2 has logged an average pace of 17'28" per mile and 0.83 miles covered in total with a step count of 1548 steps. Now I'm not saying that the Fit 2 is the most accurate step counter, but surely, I'd have more than 0 steps in order to average pace of 13'01" per km?

Based on the results, Either I'm a ghost that can cover 1.16km with 0 steps at all, or I'm assuming that the step counter (or pedometer, whatever you like to call it) is faulty. 

3. Battery Life

According to the product specifications, the watch should have a battery life of 6 hours. But based on my actual usage, the watch has lasted around 2 days. (I guess the faulty (or non-existent) pedometer does save some power)

4. Build Quality

The watch itself is made entirely from plastic. It looks and feels as cheap as it is, super lightweight, hollow sounding when tapped, and obviously not built to last. Water resistance and Scratch resistance are of course, non-existent, and the screen has picked up micro-scratches after the first day of usage. 

But hey, for £3.75, it does an admirable job of fooling people into thinking you're wearing an Apple Watch... from about 20 feet away, in dim lighting, if they're not paying attention.

5. Companion App

As mentioned earlier, the app required for this smartwatch is called "FitPro", which is unsurprisingly, developed by some random Chinese tech firm. It's the bog-standard budget-watch app: pair the device, tweak watch faces and settings, kick off 'sports sessions,' view dodgy sleep scores, heart rate graphs, and the usual parade of meaningless metrics.

It does all the basics stuff you'd expect in these apps. But the thing that annoyed me the most is how it played ads when opened. Every single time you launch the app, you're greeted with a video ad (luckily, it's manually skippable after a few seconds) trying to sell you random crap.

But let's be real: there's no point in deep testing any of this as we've already got a sensor down in the watch, arguably the most important one known as the pedometer, without the number of steps, how will they work out the calories burned?

6. Value for Money & Conclusion

At £3.75, you really can't expect much on a smartwatch. But I don't know if I can even categorise it as one. It's more of a novelty toy that tells you the time and your heartrate in a very pixelated LCD screen. It's a plasticky fake Apple Watch lookalike that fools no one up close.

So, in conclusion, if you're looking for a smartwatch, DON'T BUY IT. You'd better off saving that £3.75 and get something that actually functions as a smartwatch. If you're on a limited budget, I'd recommend a traditional watch. 2nd hand smartwatches are just not worth it and often very unreliable. What people don't realise is that electronics are consumables and do wear out over time and usage. Even refurbished models can be risky; you don't know what they've done to the inside of the watch. They might swap out an original failed or worn-out battery for a non-original/official pack, failed ICs for cheaper unoriginal alternatives that might keep the watch running, but definitely not as long and reliably as you'd expect. 

At the end of the day, you can't expect too much from a £3.75 price point. All I can say is, if you're looking for a budget smartwatch, don't buy it. I did this review so you don't have to buy it yourself, waste your money, and end up with the same plastic toy that can't even count your steps. Save the £3.75 for a coffee, a bus ride, or chuck it in your piggy bank toward something actually worth the price. A traditional watch will tell you about the time without all the hassle that comes with it. If you just want a watch, get a traditional one. I've been using smartwatches and smartbands for years now, not because I need to keep track of how many steps or how many calories I've burned off today, it's because that's the stuff I study and work with. I did various projects on microcontrollers, or digital electronics in general and it's more of a symbolic gesture on "I believe in what I'm working on."

Huawei Watch Fit 4 does resemble the Apple Watch more closely. But nonetheless, it's a proper smartwatch.

But without getting too far off topic, if you want an actual, usable smartwatch on a limited budget, go for the big Chinese brands: Huawei, Xiaomi and whatever. They offer actual functional smartwatches that's often cheaper than the fancy American brands (Apple, Google, and etc.) and provide much better value for money. 

What are your thoughts on this £3.75 smartwatch or smartwatches in general? Let me know in the comments and as always, I'll see you in the next post.

Disclaimer:

This review represents my personal, independent, and unbiased opinion, formed solely from purchasing and personally using the £3.75 smartwatch in question, as well as my extensive background in electronics. I have not received any form of compensation, sponsorship, affiliation, free products, affiliate commissions, promotional incentives, kickbacks, or other benefits from the seller of this device (i.e. AliExpress), nor from any brands referenced as alternatives (including but not limited to Xiaomi, Huawei, Apple, Google, or others). No affiliate links are included in this content (any that may appear elsewhere are unrelated to me), and all statements reflect my genuine experience and assessment. The purpose of this review is to provide transparent, honest feedback to help others make informed decisions. All opinions expressed are my own.