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Mobvoi’s TicWatch Pro 3 announced with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 4100 chip

Mobvoi’s TicWatch Pro 3 announced with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 4100 chip

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Promising faster performance and more battery life

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The new smartwatch has a battery life of up to 45 days.
The new smartwatch has a battery life of up to 45 days.
Image: Mobvoi

The TicWatch Pro 3 is the latest smartwatch from Mobvoi and the first Wear OS smartwatch to use Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Wear 4100, which promises faster performance and better battery life. The new smartwatch also adds the ability to track blood oxygen levels, features apps like TicZen stress monitoring, and has a slimmer design. It’s available starting today for $299.99 (£289.99 / €299.99). 

The Pro 3’s standout spec is the Snapdragon Wear 4100 processor, which is the first major update Qualcomm has made to its wearable chipset since 2018’s Wear 3100. According to Qualcomm, the new chipset’s CPU and memory is 85 percent faster, its GPU is 2.5 times faster, and it consumes around 25 percent less power. Mobvoi has paired the chip with 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, and a bigger 577mAh battery compared to the original TicWatch Pro. (There technically wasn’t a TicWatch Pro 2, though Mobvoi released minor updates for the original Pro.)

The dual-display design returns from the TicWatch Pro.
The dual-display design returns from the TicWatch Pro.
Image: Mobvoi

The bigger battery combined with a more power-efficient chipset means Mobvoi is able to make big claims about the battery life of the TicWatch Pro 3. Like the original TicWatch Pro, the Pro 3 has two displays: an OLED and a low-power always-on FSTN display. The low power display sits on top and turns transparent when you’re using the main OLED display. You can toggle between the two with the flip of your wrist. 

The company says you’ll get up to 72 hours from the watch’s smart mode, or as much as 45 days if you use it in its “Essential mode,” which uses its low-power display and turns off most of the watch’s smart features (not including sleep, heart rate, and blood oxygen saturation monitoring, which continue to run). Despite the bigger battery, the TicWatch Pro 3 ends up being a little slimmer than the original TicWatch Pro. There’s no LTE support like we saw with the TicWatch Pro LTE.

On the software side, Mobvoi is introducing a range of new apps with the TicWatch Pro 3. There’s TicOxygen to keep track of your blood oxygen saturation levels, TicZen for measuring your stress, and TicBreathe to help manage your stress levels if they get too high. TicHearing is a new app that detects when your environment might be getting dangerously loud. Mobvoi says its TicPulse app now has better heart rate tracking, and TicSleep now works while the watch is in its low-power Essential mode.

The smartwatch can track a range of workouts.
The smartwatch can track a range of workouts.
Image: Mobvoi

TicExercise has also been updated and now supports over 10 workout modes. New modes include pool swimming, rowing, elliptical, mountain climbing, trail running, and aerobics, and Mobvoi says the watch can automatically identify which exercise you’re doing. The TicWatch Pro 3 has an IP68 water resistance rating, so you can take it into the pool with you, and it comes with a silicone wrist strap. We weren’t particularly fond of this fitness software back when we reviewed the TicWatch E2 and S2 because they didn’t offer much of an improvement over regular Google Fit, so we’ll see if these upgrades are enough to change our minds.

Of course, this being a Wear OS smartwatch, the TicWatch Pro 3 includes a standard range of Google features like support for Google Pay and Google Assistant.

While Apple’s smartwatches have felt polished and feature-complete for a few years now, their Wear OS competitors have struggled to directly compete. We’ll be putting the TicWatch Pro 3 through its paces in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for our full review.