After showing off two new watches at CES 2019 earlier this month, Mobvoi is excited to announce the local availability of the new TicWatch E2 (Express) and TicWatch S2 (Sport).
Both devices are now available via Mobvoi’s own online store, and via Amazon Australia as follows:
- Mobvoi.com: TicWatch E2 / TicWatch S2
- Amazon AU: TicWatch E2 / TicWatch S2
It’s not just new watches, though. Mobvoi is announcing the new TicMotion suite of proactive fitness features. Not content with just counting steps or calories, TicMotion utilises Mobvoi’s AI prowess to make the watches more useful.
The two headline features are swim monitoring and analysis, and fully automated activity recognition:
- Swim monitoring allows the watches to utilise learning algorithms to differentiate between common swim strokes, counting laps and strokes seamlessly while you focus on swimming your laps. Key performance metrics – such as total swim time, lap time and more are generated immediately after you finish up.
- AI algorithms monitor your activities 24 hours a day, whether you’re running or sleeping, to generate behaviour-specific analysis ready for your use.
Both watches are functionally similar, but the TicWatch S2 is the stronger of the two, designed to comply with the well-known MIL-STD-810G standard. Other new features include:
- 5 ATM of water proof rating, allowing swimmers to use the watches up to 50m below the surface. Chances are you’ll perish before your watch at this depth, but this is great news for divers.
- 30% battery increase should see a quoted battery life of 2 days (depending on usage, of course).
- The replacement of MediaTek as the processor supplier, moving to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 2100 platform.
Unfortunately that last point is a bit of a sore one; while Qualcomm undoubtedly make a better and faster wearable processor, the 2100 version is still a few years old. Wear 3100 is out, and while it doesn’t offer extra processing power, it is more power efficient, and it’s a shame not to have used the most recent hardware available.
The other point to note is the lack of NFC on both models; Google Pay is one of the most popular uses of Wear OS devices, and unfortunately you won’t be able to use Mobvoi’s new watches in this way.
Still, at the budget price, Mobvoi are likely onto a winner despite these two minor points of note. Check out the links to buy on Amazon above.
When you can get a ticwatch pro and a ticband for $311 with NFC and all the bells and whistles, unless you’re a swimmer why would you bother?
They’re good value on Amazon:
E2: $238.99
S2: $282.99
Question: do these have the feature the previous TicWatch had where you could use a 2nd screen with limited display to extend the battery life to a few days? That was a great feature and I’m hoping it’s on these models, too.
“at the budget price”
What budget price? I’ve seen price not mentioned in a few articles and reviews here when it was known, just something that would make it easier to get all the facts here.
“TicMotion utilises Mobvoi’s AI prowess” – are they know for their work in AI..? News to me! Perhaps I’ve not had my finger on the pulse.