Last year my wife bought me a fitness watch as she knew that I was interested in keeping track of my fitness. Unfortunately, there were issues with that watch, from the company sending the wrong version to it having a seemingly non-existent battery life. So, with the option to review the V-Fitness Smart Fitness Watch Activity Tracker came a chance to find out what a decent fitness watch can be like.

The first thing of note is this pack comes with three interchangeable wrist bands, so you can keep the black that it comes attached with on, or you can swap it with the blue or orange strap.

The second thing of note (and this relates directly to my prior experience of these watches), the pack states it has a two week battery life… I’ve found that to be a conservative figure. Obviously the battery will run down faster if you are actively using the watch more (say for receiving messages etc)… but for passive use, checking your details occasionally, it seems to easily pass that two week mark. When it does come time to charge, the connector has magnets in it so it is impossible to connect the wrong way (the magnets will repel if you try and connect them the wrong way around, when corrected they will snap together nicely).

The watch face (that is the display of a watch face) can be changed between four different options, two digital and two analogue. Unfortunately the date format is stuck in U.S. format (ie month before day), which is a little annoying but not a deal breaker. The watch can display your heart rate, the weather, messages and can also be used to set the sort of activity you are engaging in, it tells you the number of steps you have taken, the calories burnt and the duration of the activity.

The app is arguably where the real depth of the watches capacity is explored. It is compatible with Google Fit and Apple Health (I tried the former but ended up reverting to the V-Fitness app as I preferred the layout). The app presents you with all your tracked data from your activities to sleep to heart rate. Here you can view your current details and your past results in figures and graph form. You can set personal goals in the app that will help you to keep to your targets, number of steps a day, amount of sleep to get, calories and weight desired or distance to travel.

From time to time the watch will loose it’s bluetooth connection to your phone but this is typically fixed by jumping on the app which then syncs between the two items (the main difference you will notice on the watch when it’s not linked is the weather won’t be shown).

I suspect that the accuracy of this watch is about the same as any sports watch when tracking details. That is to say that it should only ever be used as a rough guide. A case in point is the “step tracking”… I’m sure there’s a joke about a young male wearing a step counter on their wrist and seemingly having run a marathon… the point being the watch is only really registering movement of your arm (specifically the portion that the watch is on)… as such you can certainly trick it into thinking you have done more walking than you have. Why someone would want to intentionally trick it into thinking they have done more walking than they have is a mystery to me (as it defeats the purpose of the tracking in the first place)… but the problem arises when you are moving your arm but not much/nothing else… this will be registered as walking even though it might be far less active than walking and so your calorie burnt count and step count will be off. As mentioned though… this is only really an issue if you are taking the figures as being absolute and infallible which you shouldn’t. The same can be said for the sleep tracker. Whilst I generally found the sleep tracking got my time getting to sleep and my time waking accurately (I have no detailed idea how)… I did have one occasion when I was quite sure it was out by about an hour or so. The sleep tracker also claims to know when you are in deep sleep which is pretty cool but I would imagine it is to be considered like all the other figures, merely a best estimate (I assume it uses movement and possibly heart rate to assess the stage of sleep you are in).

Whilst the watch does have a function that allows you to activate the face by simply turning your wrist (which my son thought was cool… as did I), I quickly turned this off as it tends to activate also when you don’t want it and when you are watching a movie in an otherwise dark room… it can be quite distracting to suddenly have your wrist lit up.

So not surprisingly there are pros and cons to the this watch, I have been very impressed by the battery life and despite hesitation in doing so I did wear it in the shower and it came out fine (it is listed as having IP68 waterproof rating). I suspect that any issues with tracking are the same that you would get in any far more expensive tracking wearable and aren’t really an issue if you use this as I suspect it is meant to be used, ie as a guide to what you have done not strictly a precise measurement. If you are looking to drop some kilo’s (I’m currently in the process of doing so and had already dropped about 10kg before getting this watch)… this will certainly be a useful aid in keeping track of what you have done and what you want to do, setting goals and having the watch remind you to stay active.

For the price I’ve been very impressed and I told my wife that I am considering this to be the watch that she bought me. If you want to keep track of your health a bit more and maybe help get yourself in shape, this is a great option at a pretty reasonable price.