The TicWatch GTH Pro is Mobvoi’s latest affordable smartwatch, offering a suite of health tracking features like heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, SpO2 measurements, and more.
Priced at just $79.99, the TicWatch GTH Pro packs impressive specs and capabilities into a slender, lightweight design. But how does it hold up in real-world use?
I’ve been testing the GTH Pro extensively, wearing it daily for exercise, sleep tracking, and all-day use. Here is my in-depth review detailing the pros and cons, highlighted through a photo journey of the TicWatch GTH Pro experience:
Unboxing
The TicWatch GTH Pro ships in a compact box containing the watch itself, a short proprietary USB charging cable, and a very sparse quick start guide.
While minimal, the packaging reflects the GTH Pro’s budget price point. Those seeking luxury will need to look elsewhere.
But everything you need – the watch plus charger – is included to get started tracking your health and activity.
Wrist Profile
On the wrist, the GTH Pro has a slim, discreet profile that wears comfortably for all-day and overnight use.
Weighing just 10.1 grams, I often forget I’m wearing the TicWatch until a notification buzzes. The rounded sides and smooth silicone band help it fly under the cuff unnoticed.
Though lightweight, the GTH Pro still conveys a sense of sporty durability. The matte finish resists smudges and scratches well during my testing period.
At this budget pricing, the TicWatch GTH Pro looks suitably modern without feeling cheap or flimsy.
Quick Settings
With the GTH Pro, commonly used settings like screen brightness, Find My Device, Do Not Disturb mode, screen wake options, and shortcuts can be quickly accessed by swiping down from the watch face.
The capacitive touch display generally recognizes swipes and taps accurately to toggle through the various modes. This handy control panel makes accessing frequent settings a cinch.
You can also hold the single side button to activate Google Assistant voice controls, in case your hands are occupied. The quick settings streamline access well.
Watch Face Customization
One advantage smartwatches hold over basic fitness trackers is the ability to customize your watch face. The TicWatch GTH Pro faces can be tailored to your preferences.
Simply long press on the watch face to browse designs and then tap to choose your preferred background look. You can select a digital or analog style.
After selecting a face, you can tap on elements like the time or background to further modify the design – adjusting colors, adding complications like battery level, calendar events, weather, and more.
Having several face options to match my mood or activity helps keep the GTH Pro interface feeling fresh.
Workout Tracking
With built-in GPS and 24/7 heart rate monitoring, the TicWatch GTH Pro covers the staples for outdoor activity tracking.
When starting a workout, you can choose from over 10 exercise modes including walking, running, cycling, swimming, gym cardio, climbing, yoga and more. These tailor metrics to each sport.
As I log runs and rides, the GTH Pro records duration, distance, route, pace/speed and heart rate data. The GPS proved fairly accurate based on my testing against known routes.
While serious athletes may yearn for more advanced analytics, the TicWatch GTH satisfies basic fitness tracking needs for the price.
Heart Rate Accuracy
In addition to workouts, the GTH Pro uses its onboard optical heart rate sensor to continuously measure your pulse around the clock. This powers key health features like sleep tracking, stress monitoring, warnings for elevated resting heart rate, and continuous zone minutes.
During my testing, heart rate readings aligned closely with medical-grade chest straps like the Polar H10, instilling confidence in the sensor’s precision. Heart-based health insights require dependable data.
The TicWatch GTH Pro delivers impressively reliable heart rate stats, enabling useful wellness data you can trust and act on.
Sleep Tracking
With its slender design, the GTH Pro is comfortable enough to wear to bed for sleep tracking. Overnight, it monitors sleep stages (light, deep, REM), duration, interruptions, breathing disturbances and SpO2.
Each morning, you can view your previous night’s sleep breakdown and overall quality score. The metrics prove relatively accurate based on my perception of restfulness.
While the data is not as finely detailed as medical sleep studies, at this affordable price the GTH Pro sleep tracking capabilities are quite robust.
Stress Monitoring
In addition to physical metrics, the TicWatch GTH Pro also attempts to quantify mental stress by measuring electrodermal activity (EDA) responses in your skin triggered by sweat gland nerves.
Simply place your finger on the metal bezel around the watch face to initiate a 2-minute EDA scan. The watch will determine your stress level based on microscopic conductivity changes.
I’m skeptical about how precise EDA-based stress detection can be compared to medical analysis. But the readings do directionally align with my perceived stress on stressful versus relaxed days.
SpO2 Tracking
Joining numerous fitness trackers, the GTH Pro includes blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) tracking during sleep and on-demand spot checks. This helps identify breathing abnormalities that could signify health issues.
However, medical experts still debate the accuracy of wrist-based SpO2 compared to dedicated pulse oximeters. I noticed occasional anomalous drops in GTH Pro readings not reflected in medical device checks.
Consider the SpO2 data more of an estimate rather than perfectly precise. TicWatch seems to acknowledge this by emphasizing relative SpO2 changes over time versus any defined range.
Menstrual Health Tracking
In addition to activity data, the TicWatch GTH Pro aims to support women’s health by allowing users to log menstrual cycle information like period start dates, flow details, symptoms and reminders for tracking consistency.
This information can uncover useful fertility and wellness insights when paired with the GTH Pro’s other biometrics like sleep, heart rate variability and stress. Building a comprehensive self-quantification profile fuels personal analytics.
For women seeking deeper tech-assisted understanding of monthly hormonal fluctuations, the TicWatch provides an easy logging tool at your wrist.
Skin Temperature Tracking
One unique sensor on the GTH Pro measures skin surface temperature variations, which can potentially indicate changes happening deeper in the body.
Sudden drops in skin temperature, for example, may reflect restricted blood flow consistent with cardiovascular conditions, while spikes could signal fever or illness.
I didn’t experience any obvious temperature shifts during testing to derive insights from. But the sensor may detect long-term patterns I’m unable to perceive day-to-day. Time will tell if this proves beneficial.
Blood Pressure Trends
While not capable of on-demand blood pressure measurements like upper arm monitors, the GTH Pro attempts to estimate trends in your blood pressure over days and weeks using the heart rate sensor.
However, without any ground truth from a blood pressure cuff to correlate data, I hesitate to put much faith in the accuracy of these indirect calculations. The results were inconsistent and unpredictable in my testing.
Consider the blood pressure trends as entertainment rather than medically significant. Though the rest of the biometrics prove reliable, blood pressure seems a stretch too far for wrist-worn optical tech currently.
Smart Notifications
Beyond just health tracking, the TicWatch GTH Pro also offers basic smartwatch functionality like receiving phone call, text, app and calendar alerts on your wrist. This allows glancing at notifications without pulling out your phone.
After linking the watch to your smartphone, notifications can be managed in the TicWatch app. You can enable or disable alerts from various apps on your watch.
While limited compared to full smartwatches, having essential alerts sent to your wrist proves convenient for staying discretely connected without breaking focus to check your phone.
Music Controls
Another handy smartwatch feature of the GTH Pro is the ability to remotely control music playback. When playing audio on your phone, you can pause, skip tracks, adjust volume and more right from the watch.
This lets you easily manage tunes and podcasts without fumbling with your phone, like when exercising or driving. Just tap your wrist to change songs.
Again, it’s a small but meaningful advantage over basic trackers. The TicWatch amplifies conveniences already used to on proper smartwatches.
Find My Phone
One of my favorite capabilities of the GTH Pro is using your watch to ring your misplaced smartphone. Just swipe down on the watch face to access Quick Settings and tap Find My Phone.
Your paired phone will ring loudly to help locate it, even on silent mode. This “reverse find my device” functionality is brilliant for families or couples sharing both watch and phone.
Never crawl under furniture or ransack bags again seeking your lost phone. Just tap your wrist for an audible locator.
Proprietary Charger
On the downside, the TicWatch GTH Pro uses a proprietary charger rather than standard USB or wireless charging. This means if you ever lose the included cable, replacements can only be purchased from Mobvoi.
I’d strongly prefer Type-C or Qi charging as a more universal standard. Relying on a single-source proprietary plug poses a headache if your charger breaks or gets lost. It’s an odd choice for an otherwise mainstream consumer device.
Battery Life
Mobvoi promises up to 10 days of battery life from the 260 mAh capacity on the GTH Pro. This proved relatively accurate in my testing depending on usage.
With continuous heart rate and sleep tracking enabled, I averaged between 5-7 days of lifespan per charge including 1-2 tracked workouts daily. Disabling continuous heart rate can extend this towards 9-10 days.
For a device this slim and reasonably priced, the GTH Pro’s stamina exceeded my expectations. Charging once a week fits easily into most routines.
Is the TicWatch GTH Pro Worth It?
After several weeks testing the TicWatch GTH Pro exhaustively, my verdict is that it’s an unequivocal value for money based on sub-$100 pricing. Shoppers get an impressive feature set at a budget-friendly cost.
The array of health sensors like heart rate, SpO2, skin temperature and EDA combine to paint a meaningful picture of your physical and mental state day-to-day. And nailing the basics like automatic sleep tracking and workout logging brings real utility.
While advanced athletes and biohackers may desire more hardcore performance metrics like running dynamics, lactate threshold and recovery insights, the GTH Pro will satisfy most casual users’ health tracking and fitness motivation needs.
And extras like music controls, smart notifications and Find My Phone functionality make the TicWatch GTH Pro a nicely capable jack-of-all-trades wearable, rather than just a single-purpose activity band.
Yes, you can find individual devices that do single functions better: more accurate sleep bands, dedicated GPS sport watches, medical pulse oximeters and so on.
But finding everything the TicWatch GTH Pro offers in one sleek, affordable wrist package is tough. If you’re seeking an all-around tracker for lifestyle goals on a budget, it warrants a spot on your radar.
