Lava Prowatch X Review: A good fitness watch that could have been great

Pros:

Sturdy yet lightweight metal alloy body, elegant design

IP68 rated dust and water resistant

Sharp AMOLED display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection

Fairly accurate health tracking for the segment

Built-in GPS, altimeter, barometer and compass

Bluetooth calling

Good battery backup

Simple and responsive user interface

Well priced, 2 years warranty

Cons:

App needs more depth, also demands too many unnecessary permissions

Fitness and health data goes missing from the watch at times

GPS lock can take a considerable amount of time

A few bugs that need fixing

Rating: 3.8/5

Price: Rs 3,999

Last year, we reviewed the Prowatch ZN, Lava’s debut fitness watch, which was surprisingly good for its asking price. The Indian tech brand has retained the good elements of that watch and added a few extras to its successor, the Prowatch X, which we will look at closely today. Doesn’t it warrant the bump in the price tag? Let’s find out.

Elegant design, lightweight yet sturdy build

The Lava Prowatch X looks quite elegant in a dark grey aluminium alloy body with a matte finish, and you get a choice between silicon and stainless steel metal straps; we got one with the former for review and the latter is Rs 500 more expensive. They have standard 22 mm width and can be replaced with any third party straps of the same width irrespective of the material. The silicon straps fit well and do not cause skin irritation even after wearing the watch all day.

Nothing about the build or design suggests this is a budget watch. It can easily pass off as something more premium. The Prowatch X is incredibly light, not just as compared to its predecessor but also with respect to other watches with a metal body and a dial this size. Despite its low weight, the build is quite solid and the watch feels sturdy. Strangely, there is no visible branding anywhere except at the back of the watch, which obviously won’t be seen once you wear the watch.

The watch is IP68 rated dust and water resistant. While it can easily handle a few splashes and dips, that does not make it swim-proof as the company claims. So don’t forget to take it off before jumping into the pool. The SpO2 and heart rate sensors are located at the back, along with the charging pins. There are two physical buttons on the right side – one serves multiple purposes, while the other acts as a shortcut for different workouts.

Sharp AMOLED display with slots for multiple watchfaces

The Lava Prowatch X retains the sharp and vibrant 1.43-inch circular AMOLED display. It has a resolution of 466 x 466 pixels and a rated peak brightness of 500 nits - a drop of 100 nits from the Prowatch ZN. The screen also retains Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection against scratches, which is great to have. There were absolutely no scratches on the screen after more than a couple of weeks of use. The screen doesn’t attract many smudge marks either, which is good.

You get five levels of brightness of which level 3 is bright enough indoors or in low light, but you need to push it to max under bright sunlight for optimal legibility; no auto brightness adjustment here. You can turn on the screen by flicking your wrist or by pressing one of the buttons; both work fine. Flick to wake feature can be turned off during your sleep hours or in a dark room like a theatre. Always-on display (AOD) is also available, but it takes a toll on the battery life. It’s best to leave it off and flick your wrist instead.

You get three or four watchfaces preinstalled on the watch and you have slots for installing quite a few of your choosing from the ProSpot app. I installed five of them and the watch did not complain. You get a decent collection of digital and analogue faces, and some with fitness data like steps count, heart rate, calories burned etc. The download and transfer process was fairly brisk.

Uncomplicated and responsive user interface, but the app needs some work

The user interface is quite simple and lag-free. Swiping down on the home screen shows a quick settings menu, while you can check notifications by swiping up. Swiping left or right lets you cycle through widgets like daily activity progress, health parameters, sleep or weather data etc. Clicking the top physical button brings up the apps drawer from where you can choose different functions of the watch. You can opt for a list or a dialpad type interface.

The top button can also be used to jump to the home screen from anywhere while the other physical button lists fitness activities when pressed. Before you start using this watch, you need to download and install the ProSpot app and sync the watch with it. It is only available for Android as of now. The app is fairly basic, which is good for beginners, but could have done with a bit more depth. It continues to demand too many permissions, some of them irrelevant, and refuses to function smoothly till all of them are granted.

Other than watch settings and watchface library, you get access to daily activity progress, workout data, heart rate, sleep data, SpO2 and stress levels. Tapping on them displays more information but with limited depth. Ironically, there are a couple of extra tidbits visible on the watch but not in the app like breakup of workouts in different heart rate zones. The app needs to be a bit more detailed with the analysis of health and fitness data.

Also, an old bug continues to exist where some of the fitness data vanishes from the watch if not synced frequently with the app. Another strange thing I noticed is that some data on the watch and the app state different things. For instance, the recovery time on the watch after a workout is always on 16 (no units stated), and it’s invariably zero on the watch. More stuff for the QC department to look into.

More than decent performance but with a few quirks

The Prowatch X can track different fitness activities ranging from walking, running, cycling, core training and yoga to pilates, dancing, cricket and more. During indoor workout tracking, occasionally the heart rate sensor stops working in the middle of a workout for no reason; probably a fault with our unit, but something the company should check on. The watch also offers to track swims, but as I mentioned earlier, with an IP68 rating, I wouldn’t advise going swimming with this watch, unless the company forgot to mention 3ATM or 5ATM water resistance rating which would make it swim-proof.

The Lava Prowatch X also has built-in GPS to track walks and runs more accurately; something missing in its predecessor. The accuracy is spot on with GPS on, while there is a 10 to 15% margin of error without it. Now, having a GPS module is a great thing in this budget but the one here is a bit temperamental. At times it takes 5 to 10 minutes to get a lock, despite updating the AGPS data from the app, and drains the battery more than the actual GPS usage does in half an hour.

On the bright side, once it gets a GPS lock, the connection stays strong as long as you are outdoors, and the distance tracking is accurate. The battery drain is also manageable with it knocking 7 to 8 points off per hour of GPS use (not counting the time and energy required to connect). The pedometer on this watch is pretty decent. The steps count is largely accurate and usually doesn’t register false steps even when in a train or a vehicle on a bumpy road.

The watch has a HX3690 PPG sensor that can monitor your heart rate all day. It can also monitor your stress levels at regular intervals based on heart rate variability. The SpO2 sensor on this watch does a good job in terms of speed and accuracy. You get a reading in 15 to 20 seconds if you keep your hand steady, which is at par with a clinical oximeter with a single point variance at most. You also get a one tap reading of your heart rate, stress and Oxygen levels at a go in about 35 seconds. Of course, these are just reference values and not meant to replace clinical instruments.

Sleep tracking can be a hit or a miss on this watch, especially the start of the sleep cycle. It would suggest I fell asleep an hour or two after I hit bed, which seemed a little off. The tracking did get better after the initial couple of attempts. It provides information about different sleep stages like light sleep, deep sleep, REM and awake time, the details of which are available in the ProSpot app. Also, make it a point to sync this watch daily with the app and transfer the health and fitness data. Else, some of it tends to go missing after a couple of days.

There’s Bluetooth calling and a bunch of extra sensors

Like most fitness watches these days, this Lava watch also supports Bluetooth calling feature. You can make and receive calls from the watch itself as long as it is synced with a smartphone with an active connection. The built-in speaker and mic do a decent job when indoors or in quieter places, but the speaker sounds a bit tinny. In noisy areas, you will need to hold the watch closer to your face for better call clarity.

You also get notifications and messages from various apps on your phone that you give permissions for. The messages are perfectly legible on the watch screen but you cannot reply back. Other than the above, you get the usual set of features like music controls, remote camera shutter, weather alerts and also a calculator. The watch also has a built-in altimeter, barometer and compass to capture more details of various activities.

Good battery backup with limited calling and GPS usage

The Lava Prowatch X has a 300 mAh battery that claims to last 8 to 10 days on a full charge with normal usage. And that claim is quite accurate, especially if you do not indulge in too much calling from the watch. During my testing it went on for a little over a week with 5 minutes of daily calling, screen brightness set to 3, notifications limited to SMS and email, three hour-long indoor workouts, two hours of total GPS usage, two SpO2 readings daily and five nights of sleep tracking, which is quite good.

It can even go beyond the stipulated 10 days if you do not indulge in any GPS usage or calling from the watch. It takes about an hour to charge the watch fully using the bundled charging cable that plugs into any standard USB-A charger. No complaints about that.

Price and Verdict: A good fitness watch that can be great with a few fixes

The Lava Prowatch X is priced at just Rs 3,999 (with silicone strap) and offers a 2-year warranty, including one time free watch replacement. The price is impressive for an elegant fitness watch with a metal alloy body, built-in GPS, a sharp AMOLED display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection, Bluetooth calling, fairly accurate health tracking, a bunch of extra sensors and good battery backup. The additional warranty is always welcome.

These are a wonderful set of the ingredients but a great dish is still a software update or two away. Yes, the watch is still very much buyable in its current state given its competitive pricing, but if the company actually manages to fix all its shortcomings that are largely software bugs than anything else, the Prowatch X can be arguably the best option in this segment. For now, that honour goes to the
Redmi Watch 5 Lite that offers pretty much all the key features of this Lava watch but in a rectangular form factor and for a few hundreds less.