Anyone use <$100 Chinese Android watches?
 

Has anyone bought the cheap off-brand Chinese smart watches from Aliexpress, Fasttech, Gearbest, etc? Curious if there's any that are usable or if you need to stick with Samsung, LG, Huawei, Asus.

Looking for a cheap one to try out. Don't need a lot of features, I just want to use it to change music tracks in Spotify/Google Music, see messages, and alert when I'm too far from my phone.

you get what you pay for.

if you point is to spent $100 to forget about the idea of using a smart watch than you should "try" those watches out.

like any piece of smart gear its useless without constant update and support to stay relevant.

any bug you have on the watch from these manufacture will not be fix, there is be a lot of shit that plain doesn't work. and you will be left wondering wtf do ppl wear these things.

Compare it to something say like samsung or apple watch is pointless.

you mind as well get the g shock "smart watch"

the only 2 Chinese smart watch that you should try are Ticwatch and Amazfit

Ticwatch - I tried the ticwatch 2, sometimes they get promotion and price drops to $100. It has their own custom android rom and I like you can insert a sim card and start calling without your phone beside. Battery is so so which can last only a day, but overall I like it more than my moto360 gen1

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Real life screen brightness
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Amazfit - It is Xiaomi sub-brand, also $100 and use their own custom android rom, no bright colour screen, but the watch itself can last for 6 days before recharging. The brezel is ceramic, so it is scratch resistance.

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Real life screen brightness
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I have a Pebble Classic I don't need I can sell for cheap... In the box and all that.

Only issue is that there are no updates anymore, but it does everything you mentioned.

https://www.imacwear.com/imacwear-m8/

I used this when I went on a trip to HK. Got myself a micro SIM at that time and acted as an independent phone on my wrist. It was ok for making calls and has bluetooth/wifi/4g (i think) but anything more than calling that requires you to type on it was nearly impossible. YouTube actually ran on it LOL. when i got it, it was around $150. didn't have to carry my phone with me. It took a micro SD card and bluetooth music played fine, but battery life was absolute shit when you used it to do any media playback.

I'd only recommend it if you didn't need maps or anything that requires inputs. As a phone on the wrist, it's good since there's a built in speaker and you can use a bluetooth headset with it.

i really like the moto 360 gen 2 and this one
https://vantagesmartwatches.com/coll...age-smartwatch

something about having a circular bezel makes it look original

Thank you for all the useful replies.

I'm now looking deeper into all the models from Ticwatch and Amazfit, as well as the Kingwear KW88 and a few others mentioned here.