Premium hardware, patchy performance

The HX3690 PPG sensor used in the watch can track heart rate, SPO2, stress and sleep patterns.

The Lava Prowatch X is an interesting beast; it ticks a lot of boxes of what you want from a smartwatch at a fair price. Let’s start with all the tech and sensors in this thing packs. The Prowatch X features a 1.43-inch AMOLED display protected by Gorilla Glass 3, a 300mAh battery, Bluetooth 5.3, a 128Mhz processor, built-in GPS, Altimeter, barometric pressure and compass sensors. The HX3690 PPG sensor used in the watch can track heart rate, SPO2, stress and sleep patterns.

The battery, even with the always-on display and all sensors active, provides at least 5 days of battery life between charges. It also enters a power-saving mode when the watch’s battery is low. The metal chassis of the watch is also beautifully crafted, and all the strap options, which are more about the material than about the colour, also work well with the watch. There is only one colour option in this watch, which is a sort of gunmetal grey.  

Connecting the watch to the phone was a breeze, and the app looks really good, with all the features you would expect to see on the surface. Unfortunately, this is where the cracks appear. The main screen features all the usual suspects, including Steps, Heart Rate, Distance, Calories, SpO2, Sleep, Stress, exercise tracking options, and Pro modes. The first problem is that the software contains numerous bugs. For example, if you start tracking an activity from your watch and end it on your phone, the entire activity is gone. 

Additionally, if the Prowatch X GPS fails to connect, it doesn’t leverage the phone’s GPS. There is no way to export the daily data, and it doesn’t connect to either my Pokémon Go, which I use to track my, or Google Fit, which could have used the data to analyse my sleep patterns.  Cheaper fitness trackers from Mi and Honor already do this. What is the point of all this data? 

The Prowatch X at R4,500 is a fantastically designed and feature-packed smartwatch that is let down by its software stack. This is by far the biggest problem that Lava has to overcome if it wants to succeed. While I can recommend the hardware, the software still needs a bit more time to mature.

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