Now, following its launch, Titan has a new entrant in its smartwatch lineup. It’s called the Titan Smart Pro, and it comes with a bunch of features, such as built-in GPS, SpO2, body temperature monitoring, heart-rate monitoring, sleep monitoring, and an AMOLED screen, all packaged in a traditional watch design. But does the Titan Smart Pro have what it takes to compete with other smartwatches in its segment? Let’s dive in and find out in our Titan Smart Pro review.
Titan Smart Pro: Design, Build, and Fit
At first glance, the Titan Smart Pro looks reminiscent of a traditional watch. However, its round shape gives it a rather distinct appeal and makes it stand out from other smartwatches on the market. If you admire classic watches, you’ll surely like this design. At 39.1 grams, the Titan Smart Pro comes across as a reasonably lightweight smartwatch. It’s got a solid aluminum case, measuring 12mm, which feels well constructed and wears small on the wrist. On the right, it has two pushbuttons: a menu button (at the top) and a home/power button (at the bottom). The menu button opens the app menu and also acts as a back button, whereas the home button opens up activity modes. Plus, if you wish to go directly to the home/watch face, the home button can help you do that too. Both buttons jut out a bit, which further lends the watch a classic appearance, and we like that they have a good sense of tactility.
Continuing with the classic watch aesthetics, the Titan Smart Pro uses a silicone band with a tang buckle to strap onto the wrist. We think this is the most secure mechanism out there as it ensures that the watch stays on your wrist even when you’re running or exercising. As for the strap itself, the silicone band feels good quality and is comfortable enough to wear for long hours; we didn’t experience any skin irritation wearing them during our testing. Besides, the band is also swappable, and the mechanism for attaching and removing it from the watch is quite easy as well. So should you wish to personalize the watch, you can swap the band with the one you like easily. Moving to the back of the Titan Smart Pro, you get a polycarbonate case cover. It’s got a raised center module to house different sensors on the watch along with the charging pins. While this module bump barely elevates from the surface, we noticed it leaves impressions on the wrist after wearing the watch for long hours. Last but certainly not least, the watch also comes with a 5ATM rating (i.e., it’s water-resistant up to 50 meters for 10 minutes), which checks off another essential smartwatch feature and makes it suitable for everyday wear.
Titan Smart Pro: Display
Talking about the Smart Pro’s most significant highlight—the display—Titan is using a 1.19-inch (390×390 pixels) AMOLED display on its latest smartwatch. This is an upgrade from the LCD screen on its previous offering and brings sharper texts and increased contrast, not to mention good outdoor visibility. However, what strikes rather oddly about this screen is its thick bezel. While this isn’t apparently noticeable as the black theme on the watch manages to blend in with the bezel quite well, you start noticing the bezel the moment you scroll through a list or apply a lighter-hue watch face. We feel these bezels were shrunk down a bit; the watch would’ve had more screen estate, allowing it to display more content on the screen and improve the navigation experience.
Speaking of navigation experience, the Titan Smart Pro uses various gestures to help you navigate its menu system. Unfortunately, although the screen is decent at responding to these touches, it sometimes falters and feels slow when scrolling through a list of menus. Furthermore, the screen struggles even more if you got greasy/sweaty hands. Aside from that, the Titan Smart Pro also comes with Gorilla Glass 3 to protect the display from scratches. Having used the watch every day for a little over a couple of weeks, we’ll say the Gorilla Glass protection has managed to keep the screen in good condition. We didn’t have any noticeable scratches on our unit’s display as of drafting this review.
Titan Smart Pro: Performance
The Titan Smart Pro uses Bluetooth 5.0 for connectivity. It’s compatible with both Android and iOS. However, during our time with the watch, we had trouble connecting the watch to the Android devices we tried testing it with in the first go. Plus, its companion app (Titan Smart Pro), which brings all the fitness and activity data together, also felt unpolished on Android. However, once connected, we didn’t experience any issues with the app, and it worked fine for the most part. Similarly, the watch also offered a good experience, owing to a bunch of features it packs to help you accomplish various tasks. One such feature, which is also a highlight of the Titan Smart Pro, is the built-in GPS that allows you to map your runs without having to carry a smartphone. We found the accuracy of the GPS to be decent (and not the best) in our testing, as it occasionally had problems on narrow streets with buildings on either side. Likewise, the Smart Pro also features an altimeter and a barometer to assist you in determining the altitude (from the sea level) and the atmospheric pressure of a location, respectively. So if you go hiking or trekking, this feature can be of great use. Adding to the list of utilitarian features, the watch even includes a compass app, which helps you identify directions right from the wrist. When it comes to fitness and activity tracking, the Titan Smart Pro includes 14 different sports modes, such as yoga, walking, cycling, swimming, and climbing. Most of these activity tracking tasks are handled well by the watch, and on some of them, you even get to set a goal for yourself. For instance, if you plan on covering a certain distance with your outdoor runs, you can set “distance” as your goal for outdoor runs. Similarly, you may choose to set your goal to steps, time, or calories, depending on your requirements.
In terms of reporting activity data, the Titan Smart Pro provides a bunch of details related to the activity you’re monitoring. For instance, with outdoor running, the watch shows you your pace, heart rate, distance traveled, frequency, and calories, right on your wrist. That way, you can analyze your workouts better and modify your approach, if required. The Smart Pro also provides step counting and heart rate monitoring, moving on to other key features. However, we aren’t delighted with the watch in terms of these offerings. First, we found the Titan Smart Pro’s pedometer to be generally off by a few steps on several occasions. We tested this by manually counting the steps with the watch tied to our wrist and found that the watch underrecorded steps in normal mode (i.e., when we didn’t enable the indoor/outdoor walking mode). However, this difference in steps was reduced when we enabled one of these walking modes on the watch. But we definitely feel this needs a fix via a software update. Similarly, the heart rate monitoring wasn’t very consistent either. For example, we noticed that the watch sometimes showed an elevated heart rate even when we were resting, whereas other times—like once during an active walking session—the watch showed a heart rate between 84-88bpm compared to the 97bpm rating on our Fitbit Charge 3.
What works well on the Smart Pro, though, is the body temperature and SpO2 (or blood oxygen saturation) monitoring. We used body temperature monitoring to check the temperature while resting and post-workout and referenced its readings with a thermometer to ensure its accuracy. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the readings were very close, contrary to what we thought initially. Likewise, the SpO2 readings were also accurate, and we have no complaints with it either. The Titan Smart Pro also includes sleep tracking and stress tracking mode to top off the feature list. Although we didn’t test out sleep tracking extensively—since we found the watch a little uncomfortable to wear at night—we were happy with the tracking; it comprised sufficient data about the different sleep stages and how the sleep was spread across them. On the other hand, stress tracking felt more gimmicky—as is the case with most smartwatches—and continued to hover in a fixed range.
Titan Smart Pro: Software and Features
Titan is using its proprietary operating system on the Smart Pro. It’s the same software used on its previous smartwatch, the Titan Smart Touch, but with a few visual and functional changes. As part of this change, the watch’s interface looks cleaner now, and the animations don’t feel as janky as last time (like many had complained about). However, it retains most of the features and apps from the previous version. As such, you get multiple brightness and haptic settings, a flashlight (that turns the screen into a bright light source), a phone finder, and a wide selection of watch faces. Unfortunately, while features like the phone finder and flashlight are pretty helpful, we found the haptic vibration of the watch to be unrefined: it gave us an impression that something was loose on the inside.
Talking about functionality, Titan bundles a bunch of apps, such as Timer, Reminders, Music, and Camera, on the Smart Pro to help you accomplish more right from your wrist. Of these, the Reminders app is quite a useful one. It allows you to create up to 10 reminders—including a custom reminder—and you can even set daily reminders for the entire week to avoid missing out on what’s important on your agenda. Similarly, it’s also handy to have a camera control app on the smartwatch, as it enables you to take photos on your device hands-free without needing to click the shutter on your phone. Even though these apps add to Smart Pro’s usability, we still find its software to be quite basic in terms of core “smartwatch functionality”. For one, it doesn’t have interactive notifications, so you can only view the incoming notifications but not respond to them. Then, there’s the lack of ability to connect Bluetooth headphones/earphones to listen to music, which kind of also makes the music control app less useful as you don’t get to use it when it makes the most sense. Similarly, aside from the pre-installed apps, the Titan Smart Pro doesn’t allow you to install third-party apps. So if you use apps like Nike Training or Strava, you won’t be able to use them on the watch. Speaking of health and fitness data, the Titan Smart Pro’s companion app is also very barebones. Besides offering basic functionality and showing fitness and activity data, it doesn’t give any insights into this data. For this reason, if you wish to use the watch for tracking your health and activities, you are likely to be dissatisfied.
Titan Smart Pro: Battery
The Titan Smart Pro houses a 260mAh battery. This is significantly on the lower side compared to most other smartwatches in the market that come with at least a 350mAh capacity battery. But despite its smaller capacity, Titan says this battery should last up to 14 days on a single charge. We found this to be pretty accurate: the battery lasted us 13 days using one charge (without GPS and AoD, with medium brightness setting) during our testing. However, the mileage fell to 9 days when we used the GPS and had AoD enabled on some days. Talking about charging, the Titan Smart Pro bundles a circular charging puck (with pogo pins) that magnetically snaps onto the back of the watch to charge its battery. It takes the charger close to roughly over an hour and a half to charge the battery from 0 to 100%.
Titan Smart Pro: Verdict
At Rs 11,995, the Titan Smart Pro feels a little overpriced for what it offers. While it’s built well and has a good appearance that’s sure to appeal to anyone looking to purchase their first smartwatch, its operating system is too limited and lacks essential “smartwatch-specific features”, making it a tough recommendation for such a high price—especially when there are smartwatches out there that can do more at a relatively lower price point. If you have a budget of around Rs 10,000, you can check out the Amazfit GTS 2 Mini, which features a good screen and has a built-in GPS, 24/7 fitness tracking, and support for third-party apps like Strava. Another good option is the Mi Watch Revolve Active, which gives you up to two weeks of battery life with a good display, built-in GPS, and a bunch of activity modes. In case you’re willing to spend up to Rs 15,000, you can consider the likes of the OnePlus Watch, Fitbit Versa 2, and Huawei Watch GT 2. Buy Titan Smart Pro
