Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 guide

Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 review: timing is everything

This long-delayed smartwatch is good, but it would’ve been great if it came out when it was supposed to.

hey say good things come to those who wait. So the $349.99 Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 should be one of the best dang things to happen to Wear OS 3. It’s sporting the shiny new Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 Plus chip, Mobvoi’s signature battery-saving dual display, and a new digital crown, and it’s the first Wear OS 3 TicWatch. And if this watch had arrived six or seven months ago, I’d be saying, “Winner winner chicken dinner.”

But that’s not what happened. The TicWatch Pro 5 was supposed to launch last fall, and then over Christmas. Instead, after months of silence, the TicWatch Pro 5 arrived two weeks after Wear OS 4 was announced. And in a few months, Samsung will likely start the onslaught of next-gen Android smartwatches. All of this leaves a big question mark over the TicWatch Pro 5’s place in the Wear OS ecosystem.

As a result, I’m neither over nor underwhelmed. I’m mostly just whelmed and a little sad at how an otherwise good Android smartwatch got shafted by bad timing.

Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 review: The best Wear OS smartwatch yet?

BY

LUKE BAKER

PUBLISHED JUN 2, 2023

With the latest Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 chip on board, Wear OS 3 and promises of big battery life, the TicWatch Pro 5 certainly looks promising.

While the new TicWatch Pro 5 may look familiar at first glance, there are quite a few changes both in and outside of the Wear OS 3 smartwatch.

I've been a fan of Mobvoi watches since I bought the original TicWatch E on Kickstarter in 2017. But what really locked me into the brand was the first TicWatch Pro, which launched in 2018. One of the key features of this series has been the dual-layer display, where the secondary screen is a monochromatic transparent LED panel that is highly visible in direct light but goes away entirely when the full-color OLED panel is activated. This is what keeps me coming back to TicWatch as my primary driver, and that hasn't changed with the latest model, the TicWatch Pro 5.

This watch is the first from Mobvoi to offer Wear OS 3, 3.5 to be more specific. It's not only the first to offer the new operating system, but it's also the first to run the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 Wearable Platform on any watch. Along with these two major upgrades, the secondary display I love so much also picks up some handy new features, like tiles that offer additional information and color-coded backlighting to indicate if your heart rate is out of range during exercise. This is also the first watch from Mobvoi with a rotating crown for navigation. All of this leads to what might be one of the most complete smartwatches on the market, but it won't be for everyone.

It's been a long time since the TicWatch Pro 3 first impressed us with its ingenious solution to the battery-hungry Wear OS platform. That model launched in September 2020, and in the time since, Google has entered the arena with a smartwatch of its own.

The TicWatch Pro 5 comes in at a price of $349, exactly the same as the Pixel Watch, so it's up against pretty stiff competition. However, with the clever dual-display tech making an appearance on the new model, it's definitely going to have a leg-up when it comes to battery life.

It’s here! And I don’t just mean the Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5. I also mean Qualcomm’s Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 processor. When the chip was announced in July 2022, Mobvoi said it would use it in a future smartwatch, but little did we know we’d have to wait almost a year for it — and that when it did arrive, it would still be unique.

The past couple of years have been equal parts exciting and frustrating for Wear OS fans. While Samsung’s Wear OS-based Galaxy Watches and Google’s Pixel Watch have breathed new life into the platform, options from other players have stagnated, offering late and incomplete updates to the modern Wear OS 3.