Smartwatches: Xiaomi Best for Everyday Use... Samsung and Apple Excel in Health Management

Korea Consumer Agency, Test and Evaluation Results of 8 Products

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Chun-han] As interest in health has recently increased, the number of consumers using smartwatches is also rising, but it has been found that features such as exercise measurement accuracy and battery life vary by product.

On the 8th, the Korea Consumer Agency announced that this was confirmed through testing and evaluation of eight popular smartwatch products. The evaluated products were Garmin 'vivomove Sport', Lenovo 'S2 Pro', Samsung 'Galaxy Watch4 40mm Aluminum', Xiaomi 'Redmi Watch 2 Lite', Apple 'Watch Series 7 41mm Aluminum GPS', Amazfit 'GTR3 Pro', Coa 'Rain2', and Fitbit 'Versa 3'.

After wearing these products and measuring heart rate during indoor and outdoor walking (6 km/h, 30 minutes), six out of the eight products (Garmin, Samsung, Xiaomi, Apple, Amazfit, Fitbit) showed excellent performance. All products had accurate step count, and five (Samsung, Xiaomi, Apple, Amazfit, Fitbit) showed excellent accuracy in measuring exercise distance.

Regarding health management functions, Samsung products had the most with eight features including electrocardiogram (ECG), blood pressure, and blood oxygen saturation measurement, while Lenovo and Xiaomi had the fewest with three each. ECG and blood pressure measurement functions require medical device approval, but Coa products included blood pressure measurement without approval.

Samsung and Apple products had the most communication and convenience features with 11 each, while Lenovo products had none. Samsung also had the most features such as Find My Phone and remote camera shooting, while Lenovo had the fewest with six.

Based on wearing the device for 14 hours a day after a full charge and initial setup, Xiaomi had the longest battery life at 9.2 days, while Samsung and Apple had the shortest at 2.3 days. Garmin had the fastest battery charging time at 52 minutes, and Samsung took the longest at 125 minutes. Lenovo products showed poor compatibility as they could not transfer exercise results measured by the smartwatch to Android smartphones.