Lava recently entered the smartwatch space with the launch of its Prowatch series of smartwatches – Prowatch ZN and VN being the first two. The Prowatch ZN is the higher-end one that’s priced at Rs. 2,599 for the silicon variant and Rs. 2,999 for the metallic strap variant. Does it pack enough to be a contender in this already crowded segment? Let’s try and check:
The first thing you might notice about the Prowatch ZN is that it’s lightweight and the silicon strap is comfortable to wear along. Throughout my usage, I didn’t once feel any discomfort or irritation while having the watch on my wrist. The watch features a 1.43-inch circular display (metal dial) with Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 coating on top. The right side has two physical buttons – both of which don’t exactly feel the nicest set of buttons on a smartwatch when you press these but they are responsive and work reliably enough. It’s an IP68 water and dust-resistant smartwatch with corrosive-free warranty of 1 year from the company (for the metallic variant).
The 1.43-inch (466x466) AMOLED display is just about bright enough to be usable under direct sunlight and handles text and UI elements fine. It’s a 60Hz display and is not a very sharp display but it’s good enough for the price tag and to not be a hurdle in your user experience – whether for reading notifictions or quick short replies to text messages. The Prowatch ZN is equipped with Realtek’s RTL8763EWE-VP chipset and 32MB RAM. There’s also 4GB of internal storage. The watch runs on Lava’s own proprietry operating system and requires ProSpot app on your smartphone to setup and sync data and notifications. General performance on this smartwatch is not bad at all – you can change watch faces without any issues, close and open pre-installed apps without any bugs noticeable. Animations are generally smooth but can be drop a few frames once in a while, but it’s not deal breaker. You can choose from 150 watchfaces, some are really suitable and good looking for this watch’s aesthetics with some other useful details also shown. This watch has SpO2, heart rate monitor, sleep monitoring and stress measurement along with the activity tracker. The fitness tracking on this budget smartwatch is actually not that off in terms of accuracy. When checked against a much higher priced Apple Watch Series 7 and Ultrahuman Ring Air, the Prowatch ZN was in the ballpark of 10%-15% quite a few times for steps measuring and Spo2 against an Spo2 sensor. Stress measurement notifications aren;t as prompt, as say, the onePlus Watch 2, but of course that one is priced 10 times this, so it’s not a fair comparison. So, for fitness it;’s basically good enough for step tracking, and maybe odd Spo2 measurement, but don’t rely on it for the latter completely.
The Prowatch ZN also features Bluetooth calling, so you can make and receive calls using the in-built mic and it works decently, howsoever awkward it might look to others around you, if you really want to use it.
Powered by a 350mAh battery unit, the Prowatch lasted 4-5 days on most full charges, and if always-on display for switched on, it lasted a little over 2 days, which is better than what most smartwatches can claim these days. You can charge the Prowatch ZN from 1% to full in a little over an hour without any heating issues to worry about.
All in all, Lava’s first take on a smartwatch does seem quite promising and value for money for this price tag. It doesn’t have the smoothest or most feature rich OS in place, but the Prowatch has a solid battery life, decent build quality, good display and is not bad for step counting either.
