A Beautiful little smartwatch packed with brilliant features, but can it go toe-to-toe with others in the market?

 

Who is ZEPP?

Before we go into the review, we thought it’d be best to give a brief background on ZEPP as a company. Starting out as an American company based out of San Jose California, Zepp specialised in sports tracking making a name for themselves amongst amateurs and pro-athletes for their advanced multi-sport sensor technology. They had hardware and software to help track Baseball, Golf and Tennis motion to name a few.

Since then, Zepp was acquired by Huami, makers of the Amazfit smartwatches and smart bracelets. Fast forward today and together Huami technology launch the Zepp E. The first smartwatch bearing the Zepp name.

 

Design

The Zepp E actually comes in two designs to cater to a larger audience. The Zepp E and Zepp E Circle and for the past week, we’ve been reviewing the square edition.

Straight out of the box, you’d feel as though you’ve seen this watch somewhere before. Its resemblance is very similar to another very popular smartwatch bearing an apple logo but on the inside, they are very different.

“Stylish inside and out” is the brand’s slogan and honestly, we believe it. This watch looks and feels really premium.

It’s ultraslim unibody design coupled with the 3D edge display really do harmonise together created a beautiful watch that’s also really comfortable to wear with it being only 9mm thick.

The most eye-catching part of this watch is its screen. It has a 1.65″ AMOLED display creating 341 pixels per inch (which is more than the Apple watch series 6). It’s a stunning screen to look at and its animated screens are seem fluid and really responsive when flicking through them.

On the side of the watch, you’re met with just one button keeping the look of the watch very clean and minimalistic and the watch itself is really intuitive and easy to use based on that. What the button cant do, your gestures will be able to.

The one problem we did have with the Square version is that it does come across pretty small for the male wrist. at 35mm it would be far more suited as a female timepiece and we’d likely opt for the circle variant as that one comes in at 42mm.

 

 

 

Features & Functionality

The Zepp E is a true fitness watch at heart. Out of the box, you have 11 sports modes to choose from when tracking your daily activity, more than enough for the daily and recreational user. More advanced sports fanatics might find this a little bit frustrating however as there is no option to add more which we’ll touch on in the next segment.

The addition of an on-board SPo2 monitor is a cool addition to have. It essentially measures your blood oxygen saturation to give real-time results after high-intensity sports. Of course, you can measure your SPo2 at anytime its just a matter of if you really wanted to. The reading itself is a manual reading and it would have been good to perhaps have this information displayed to us at the end of the day in the app for example as an average.

The same would go for the stress monitor. The visualisation and the data around it were awesome but we just couldn’t come around to thinking let alone acting on measuring our stress when we were actually feeling it. As its a manual reading we would have liked it to alert us to perhaps perform breathing activities to keep our body at bay.

Unfortunately, some features that are missing from the Zepp are an onboard speaker/microphone to take calls and access voice controls and an in-built GPS chip. This means to access any data GPS related you’d still need your phone on you in some capacity.

One feature that Zepp have added on here is PAI which stands for Personal Activity Intelligence. Essentially all collates all of your fitness and health metrics into one score giving you a birds-eye view of your health in a quick snapshot that’s very easy to understand. According to Zepp, it’s important to keep your PAI score “above 100 to avoid risking death by cardiovascular disease and increase life expectancy”.

 

 

Operating System and App

Unlike the Apple Watch and other smartwatches running Googles Android WearOS, The Zepp is very similar to that of Huawei and Honor in that they do not have access to the two biggest app stores on the market right now.

The Zepp uses its own in-house software which means you cannot add third-party apps and you are very limited to the functionality given to you out of the box.

The positives of the OS however is that it’s brilliantly designed, lightning-quick and very energy efficient. We were easily getting 1 week worth of watch time on a charge with fairly heavy use. Impressive. Zepp says on their site that using it as a “basic” watch will actually give you 15 days.

As for the app, you can set up your watch directly from the Zepp app which can be downloaded on both iOS and Android.

Inside the app is where you’ll be able to get a better more granular view of your data. Like every smartwatch the more data it collects the more it’s able to assist you on your wellness over time. We were using the app on iOS and we loved the simplicity of it. It’s very easy to navigate through, easy on the eye and very informative.

In-app, you’re able to control everything from your notifications and your watch face. It’s fair to say there is a watch face for everyone in the Zepps library and if there isn’t you can always add a custom one from a personal picture.

We particularly liked the sleep app. It’s good to see Zepp have gone into detail about the importance of sleep and the effect it has on your body and it even suggests to take regular naps.

 

In the Box

• Zepp Smart Watch
• Magnetic Charging base with 2 pin pogo charger
• User manual

Verdict

After over a weeks wear, we’re mixed on our views on the Zepp E., on one hand, its fair to say it’s one of the best-looking smartwatches out right now and its display and user experience are brilliant and simple. On the other hand, we became very frustrated with its limitations on both the GPS and applications front.

There’s no denying Zepp have done an amazing job at creating their own watch OS, but we would have liked to be able to have the ability to up the smarts and turn it on and off on top creating a more personalised device.

Given Zepp’s history in the sporting sector, we would have loved to have seen all of that transfer across into this wearable. Whilst it may not be today it’s going to very interesting to see what they do next and we’ll certainly be keeping a close eye.

 

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