The Realme Watch 3 has launched in India, as the company comes back with its next generation affordable smartwatch. And the company has also teased a slim-looking Watch 3 Pro.
The Realme Watch series has been an excellent budget option, and this time it heralds a slight design tweak, with flatter edges that make it feel more modern – and slightly more premium.
Realme Watch 3
The major change is a far larger screen-body ratio, and the usable display now occupies 67.5% of the screen area, rather than just 50% on the Realme Watch 2. That means less black abyss around the viewable area, which is a big factor in budget smartwatches.
Back to the display itself, it’s a 1.8-inch LCD panel, so not visually up to the AMOLED technology found on more premium devices. The screen resolution is 240x286 – which is actually lower than the Realme Watch 2 – and the screen size has jumped up from 1.4-inch on the last generation, too.
That seems an odd change – a lower resolution on a larger display – so the result could be a reduced visual experience. We’ll have to see how that pans out.
The rest of the Realme Watch 3 doesn’t hold too many surprises.
There’s an IP68 water resistance, so it’s not really fit for swimming – and is only rated to be submerged in 1.5m of water for 30 mins. Most smartwatches now are 5ATM rated, which is fit for 50m.
The quoted battery life is 7 days from the 340mAh battery, but we’d expect to see less than this in real world usage.
There’s no GPS built in, but there is a heart rate monitor and SpO2 sensor on board. You can opt in to have SpO2 measured constantly, but it will check to see if you’re still for 10 minutes before taking a reading.
That means you should get decent night time coverage – so you can look for any sleep-related issues. However, turning this on will decimate battery life.
The heart rate monitor drives stress monitoring, by tracking heart rate variability constantly during the day – and you can see an hour-by-hour breakdown of physical stress.
Sleep is a big focus, and the Realme Watch 3 will show breakdown of sleep stages.
And like the Xiaomi Smart Band 7, there’s a focus on activity insights – with VO2 Max estimates, recovery advice and performance analysis, based on the 110 workout profiles.
However, all of these metrics are based on accurate heart rate data – and we've experienced some seriously wonky VO2 Max estimates on rival devices. If you can’t get accurate data in, then the analysis won’t be right. And that will be the main challenge for budget devices.
The Realme Watch 3 is heading to India first, and will cost INR 3,500 ($44).
Realme Watch 3 Pro teased
And Realme has also teased the Watch 3 Pro – although we don't have full specs as yet.
The company teased the Watch 3 Pro on social channels – but it will have an AMOLED display, which is an upgrade on the LCD panel found on the previous Watch 2 Pro. It may also have GPS on board.
Realme has released some teaser images, and the build of the new Watch 3 Pro looks super thin.
However, it's certainly at a tantalizing angle and we've seen some fairly exaggerated renders from budget brands in the past.
This is certainly one to watch – and we'll update this as we get more information.
How we test
James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.