Almost 2 years ago, I reviewed the NO.1 D5 smartwatch running on full-fledged Android 4.4 OS and supports 3G SIM. Recently, GearBest contacted me again to collaborate and review their products on my blog. The product? NO.1 F6.
Who is GearBest?
GearBest is a China online store that I have patronised since 2015. They do offer attractively-priced products and is one of my go-to site to look for great bargains. In recent years, with strong competition from Taobao, AliExpress, and Lazada, I have almost stopped buying from GearBest. But as savvy shoppers, you must check out their website to at least compare prices and uncover occasional gems. Shipping tends to be on the slow side, but after sales support are good.
Who is NO.1?
Pronounced as “number one”, here is a corporate video to get you acquainted.
Monochrome Sports Band
Hats off to China brands like NO.1 that produce diverse smartwatch designs and styles. The F6 model is styled like a sports watch complete with printed labels and bulky bezels.
The actual display area is within a square 0.96-inch area, in monochrome OLED, offering an advantage of a really long battery life compared to full-colour screen smartwatches.
The watch is operated with 4 buttons and a capacitive area at the bottom of the display. The 2 buttons at the left side are up and down menu buttons, the top button at the right is select button, and the lower red button is the back button. The capacitive button also scrolls the menu pages.
Here are the detailed breakdown of the menu items and functions of the NO.1 F6:
- Step Tracker
- Steps
- Distance
- Calories
- Medical
- Real time Heartrate
- Sleep hours
- Notification
- Up to 8 most recent notifications
- Activity (Running, Calories, Heartrate, Time, Steps)
- Cycling
- Baseketball
- Swimming
- Table Tennis
- Badminton
- Climbing
- Football
- Watchface
- 4 Faces
- Settings
- Stopwatch
- Find Phone
- QR Code
- Vibration Mode
- Audible Tone
- Version
- Reset
- Power Off
Test for Extreme Durability
The NO.1 F6 has undergone rigorous testing to ensure it is durable in harsh conditions. Check out the video link.
Fundo Pro App
I like the Fundo Pro smartwatch app which has a dark grey background and well-contrasted text and graphics to display comprehensive activity stats. It captures the sports activity, walking steps, sleep stats, heartrate and presents them in real-time, hourly breakdown, daily summary, weekly and monthly charts. The data collected over the period is presented in various data representations, like showing the best performance ever, the average, a comparison with yesterday’s data.
For activity tracking, the app will sync activities recorded on both the smartwatch and the smartphone. As the smartwatch does not have GPS, only activities recorded from the phone will capture stats like pace, map, elevation. stride. Like the watch, the app has the option for user to define the type of activity to capture – running, walking, treadmill, hiking, marathon. I can also configure whether to turn the screen on at all times, enable auto pause, define the countdown period or workout period.
Many of the sensors and functions have greater granularity over the trigger frequencies. For instance, I can define the frequency of auto-reading the heart-rate sensor, the start and end period of activating the sensor reading. I can do the same also for sedentary reminder, drinking water reminder. I can also set a do-not-disturb period so the watch will automatically stop receiving notification, for instance, during sleeping period.
Battery Life
Thanks to the monochrome display, the NO.1 F6 does not require charging that often. After wearing it on and off for nearly 2 weeks, the battery is still not depleted. For me, I am happy as long as the watch can last for at least a week so that I do not need to charge so often. A proprietary magnetic cable is needed to charge the watch.
Overall Experience
Despite its bulk, the NO.1 F6 wears comfortably on my wrist. The plastic strap does not stick to my skin unlike the typical silicone sports band. The smartwatch seems to sync quite reliably with the smartphone during my review period. Incoming notifications arrive faster than the Samsung Gear Sport which I wear at the same time. The notification message is very minimal, some apps like Gmail could not display any preview text, and to me it’s quite a handicap, so I wouldn’t recommend this watch if you are looking for a watch with good notification content. I could not ascertain whether the activity and heart-rate sensors are accurate, though I felt that the step tracker is a little less sensitive, probably to prevent false-counting. The heart-rate monitor seems to measure well during resting, and could not register very high heartrate pulses when running. The sleep tracker also seems to have problems identifying the time that I actually fall asleep, while capturing my waking time correctly. The activity data is not stored in the cloud, so there is no need to sign up for any account. But this also means if you change smartphone, the activity data does not carry over to the new smartphone.
Verdict
The DT NO.1 F6 sports tracker watch is designed for consumers who love to wear rugged-looking digital watches but at the same time needed basic activity tracker to monitor the health. The US$33.41 price tag is inexpensive, the sensors might not be industrial standard, but offers a good gauge of the health trends. Available in black and silver from GearBest, click this affiliate link to find out the latest offer price.
Likes
- IP68 water resistant
- Long battery life
- Tracks steps, sleep, heartrate, sports activities
- Smartphone app offers extensive activity data
Dislikes
- Basic smartphone notification
- Does not integrate with popular health tracking apps
