Not many of you have probably heard of TicWatch Pro, a Wear OS-powered smartwatch by chinese firm Mobvoi. The watch might not carry a big brand tag, but certainly does offer enough to become one of the best Wear OS watch available in the current market. So if you’re looking to buy a Wear OS watch right now, TicWatch Pro might be ideal for you. However, if you’re not much concerned about the operating system, there are other alternatives, with the recently launched Samsung Galaxy Watch being the latest one.
So how the two watches, TicWatch Pro and Galaxy Watch, stack-up, let’s find out.
Samsung Galaxy Watch vs TicWatch Pro
Design and hardware
We are pretty much familiar with the Samsung smartwatch hardware. The AMOLED circular display and the patented rotating bezel have become synonyms with Samsung watches. The Galaxy Watch offers a 1.3-inch (1.2-inch variant exists as well) AMOLED display of 360×360 resolution. The TicWatch Pro, on the other hand, sports a 1.39-inch dual-screen of 400×400 resolution. The dual AMOLED and FSTN LCD display combines excellently to offer always-on functionality and high-contrast usability in direct sunlight. Samsung’s display is also always on, but instead of a high contrast mode, it opts for a full-color display at all times.
While the Samsung watch boasts waterproofing down to 5 ATM and a MIL-STD-810G durability rating, the TicWatch Pro lacks big time here. The watch only has a IP68 ingress rating, which essentially means it’s only dust-proof, but still is water resistant.
Software
Wear OS and Tizen are two completely different OS’s, developed by Google and Samsung respectively. Wear OS is a stripped down version of Android optimized for the wrist devices. It comes with a ton of apps and a lot of cool gesture controls to play with them. Wear OS also comes integrated with Google Assistant.
Tizen, on the other hand, is still a work in progress. It’s relatively new, and still lacks far behind in terms of app support. However, it’s been optimized for the wrist in ways Wear OS has not, resulting in superior battery life. Tizen running Galaxy Watch comes with Bixby digital assistant.
Battery
The Samsung Galaxy Watch packs a 472mAh battery, which the company claims to offer up to 80 hours of normal usage. The smaller model houses a 270mAh battery offering up to 45 hours of normal usage. The TicWatch Pro, on the other hand, houses a 415mAh battery, which gives a usable time of 2 days on smart mode. However, on essential mode, the watch claims to offer a battery backup of up to 30 days.
Features
Both the watches come with the basic fitness features such as heart-rate monitor, steps counter, calories counter, speed & cadence monitor, and GPS. However, the Samsung Galaxy Watch offers a lot more than that when it comes to health and fitness. Both the watches are NFC enabled for mobile payments.
Price and availability
As we see, the Galaxy Watch and the TicWatch Pro are both incredibly capable watches with a ton of useful features, but there’s still a substantial price difference between the two. The TicWatch Pro is currently available at Amazon for $250, whereas the 46mm version of the Samsung Galaxy Watch is going to cost you a full $100 more. The smaller, 42mm Galaxy Watch is priced at $330.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch will be available in the US August 24 onward.
