The Red99RedMagic watch is now available — but do you need to buy it?

The Red99RedMagic watch is now available — but do you need to buy it?

Good news for fans of niche smartwatch makers: the RedMagic Watch currently sells for just $99 worldwide. While this price is cheap, Nubia's RedMagic Watch offers features such as blood oxygen monitoring, GPS, and a 15-day battery life.

But should you buy this budget smartwatch? Let's take a look at its specs to see if it's a bargain.

The RedMagic Watch was announced at the same time as the Nubia RedMagic 6 smartphone in early March; unlike the smartphone, which was available for pre-order as of April 9, the RedMagic Watch was not released in the US until April 22. It had been available in China since March 11.

The watch currently sells for $99. At least in the U.S., it comes with either a black band and case or a white band and silver case. In other markets, the watch is also available with orange, gray silicone, or brown leather straps.

The $99 RedMagic Watch is priced competitively with the best inexpensive smartwatches, including the $54 Amazfit Bip, $149 Samsung Galaxy Watch Active, and $149 Fitbit Versa 2.

The design of the Nubia RedMagic Watch is fairly minimalist, with a business casual look. A bezel with engraved numbers surrounds a circular display, with two buttons on the right side for power and shortcuts. Certainly not as radical in design as the Nubia Watch with its wraparound OLED display.

The RedMagic Watch has a 1.39-inch AMOLED touchscreen display with a resolution of 454x454 pixels; Nubia has not mentioned the size of the case, but judging from the images, it is estimated to be at least 42 mm.

The watch screen is not protected by any kind of Gorilla Glass, but the watch itself is water resistant to 5 bar.

According to Nubia's product page, the RedMagic Watch uses a Sony CXD6506 processor, runs its own operating system, and appears to support Bluetooth 5.0 LE.

Nubia does not say whether the RedMagic Watch is compatible with both Android and iOS devices, but there is a RedMagic Sports app for iPhone that can manage alarms, calendar, call notifications, and music control The watch is also available for iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Android devices. It also provides health data from the Watch. The app also allows users to choose from a collection of watch faces, but it is unclear if they can be customized.

As a budget smartwatch focused on fitness, the RedMagic Watch has a pretty good feature set: in addition to GPS/GLONASS/QZSS, it offers blood oxygen monitoring and 24-hour heart rate monitoring. In addition to GPS/GLONASS/QZSS, it has blood oxygenation monitoring and 24-hour heart rate monitoring.

While not as comprehensive as Garmin's best watches, the RedMagic Watch has 16 activity tracking modes, including soccer, running, rowing, swimming, strength training, and yoga. In addition, a "dynamic activity mapping" feature can show where you spent the most time on the soccer field, for example.

Sleep tracking, which is becoming a must-have feature for smartwatches, fitness-related or not, is not mentioned.

Nubia states that the RedMagic Watch will last up to 15 days in normal mode, 23 days in power saver mode, and up to 50 hours in outdoor sports mode. Presumably this means active use of the GPS, although not as often as a running watch.

According to filings with the FCC, the watch will come with a wireless charging cradle.

The 15-day battery life is obviously dependent on a variety of factors, but it compares quite well to other smartwatches.

There is no shortage of inexpensive smartwatches on the market, including the OnePlus Watch, Wyze Watch, and Xiaomi Mi Watch. By offering longer battery life than its competitors and offering GPS and blood oxygen level monitoring, the RedMagic Watch may have found a way to stand out.

Categories