If there weren’t enough cheap Apple Watch clones getting released, ZTE has announced the ZTE Watch Live.
ZTE has done a smartwatch before: 2017's ZTE Quartz, which ran Wear OS. But now it's back, following the lead of the Redmi Watch, Amazfit Pop and Xiaomi Mi Watch Lite all hitting this price point, with similar specs.
There’s an emerging market of similarly-priced and designed smartwatches hitting the Chinese market, all priced around the $40 mark.
In terms of design the ZTE Watch Live is another square smartwatch, which makes a not-so-subtle nod in the Apple Watch’s direction. Only keen observers could distinguish between this Watch Live and Mi Watch Lite.
The ZTE Watch Live packs a fairly mundane 1.3-inch 240 x 240 TFT screen, which does pale in comparison to the 320 x 320 LCD panels found on its Xiaomi-manufactured rivals.
However, it does have some tricks up its sleeve. SpO2 makes an appearance, and means that blood oxygen monitoring continues to tumble down the price bands.
On the sports tracking front, there are 12 profiles on board and it has a heart rate monitor on board. There’s no mention of GPS, which we’d presume doesn’t make the cut.
And according to ZTE you’ll get between 14 and 21 days battery life – similar to that of Amazfit and its Amazfit GTS/GTR 2 devices.
The ZTE Watch Live is priced at 249 yuan, which is around $38. There’s no mention of global availability outside of China.
As the big Western brands such as Apple, Samsung and Fitbit have wrapped up their releases ahead of the Holidays, all we seem to be writing about is super-budget smartwatches getting announced in China.
None have made it to the West yet, with the exception of the Ticwatch GTX.
But we’d expect that to change in 2021, which is already looking like the year for the super budget market.
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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.