When you see a smartwatch being sold for less than $50, the first impression is that it’s likely to be a crappy Chinese product. If that’s your opinion about U Watch U8, you should guess again. About 6 weeks ago, I was shopping online and saw this smartwatch and decided to give it a try. I bought it for about $53 then before the price crashed to around $30 a couple of weeks later. I had the impression it would be a very wacky product but ever since I started using it, I’ve been very impressed.
Uwatch U8 is made in China and does most things you would expect a smartwatch to do. However, it would be unfair to start comparing it with Apple Watch or Samsung Gear.
Quick Specifications
Display: 1.48″ Capacitive Touch Screen TFT LCD
Material : Steel + Silicon
Bluetooth Version: Bluetooth V3.0+EDR
Bluetooth Protocol: A2DP + HFP 1.5 + HS P 1.2
Range of Frequency: 2.4GHz spectrum
Ambient Noise: ≤75dB
Transmitting Range: ≥10m
Language Support: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Italian, German, Indonesian, Finnish, Thai, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Swedish
Charging Time: about 1 hour
Talk Time: about 3 hours
Music Play Time: about 6 hours
Power Supply: Built-in 230mAh rechargeable battery
Features
With the U8 smartwatch, you can receive all notifications right on your wrist. There’s no need to pull your phone out of the pocket to check those pesky notifications from Facebook and Twitter every now and then.
The smartwatch lets your receive messages and read them without checking your phone. It also synchronizes all your older messages.
With all your contacts synchronized also, you can make phone calls on the smartwatch through the in-built speaker and the call quality is quite okay. You can also check all your call logs.
The media controls on the watch lets you listen to music and skip tracks. When used to control your music player, the tracks play through the watch’s speaker.
This smartwatch also lets you take pictures remotely with your phone camera.
There are other features too you may not find particularly useful unless you really need them. These are features like Barometer for pressure and temperature measurement, Altimeter to measure altitude and Pedometer.
How to get started
This short video takes you through how to get started and a few things the U8 smartwatch can do:
Verdict
Pros: Cheap, easy to setup and use. Loaded with nice features and offers value for money.
Cons: The user interface is okay, it’s only that the pixels on the display can be seen.
For a budget smartwatch, it’s really performs well. The battery can last up to three days and it charges full in about one hour. It’s definitely a Smartwatch I would recommend.
Price
I bought it on a Chinese shopping website for $53 though the price has considerably crashed since then. Some now sell it for less than $30. However, it’s now available in Nigeria on Konga for about ₦14,000. Buy Now
