Realme Watch 2 Pro review: The ideal budget smartwatch

The Realme Watch 2 Pro has a big colourful touchscreen display. (Image credit: Ankita Garg/ Express image)

Realme has played it safe by offering a standard design – a square display with a bezel around it. You can easily swap straps as per your preference. The smartwatch is IP68 rated, so it can handle water splashes but avoid wearing this wearable while swimming.

The Realme Watch 2 Pro sports a 1.75-inch touchscreen display, which is pretty responsive. I had no issues swiping through different screens. It has a sharp and bright enough display; however, the sunlight eligibility is not that great. During my usage period, I didn’t notice any scratches on the screen even after dropping the watch. All the messages are displayed on the watch in big font size, so you will be able to read them easily when you are on a run.

The Realme Watch 2 Pro is comfortable enough to wear all day. (Image credit: Ankita Garg/ Express image)

Before diving into the performance part, I would like to mention that one shouldn’t take a budget smartwatch’s data as sacrosanct. These are good enough to give you a general idea of your health and can be considered as indicators.

The Realme Watch 2 Pro can monitor your SpO2 (or Blood oxygen levels). The device showed the same result as on the Oximeter during my usage period, which doesn’t really happen with most of the smartwatches.

The Realme Watch 2 Pro can monitor your heart rate. (Image credit: Ankita Garg/ Express image)

It can continuously monitor your heart rate and the data is reasonably in line with some of the smartwatches. I didn’t notice irregular heart rate readings at any point. You get an option to change heart rate reading time, but the app only displays data on an hourly basis, which is disappointing. The watch also doesn’t notify when the heart rate zone is high or low even after making changes in the settings section. The same is also the case during a workout.

The good thing is that the watch can detect when I was not wearing it, which confirms that it doesn’t report false SpO2 or heart rate data, unlike some of the budget smartwatches. It also didn’t register my steps when I was travelling in a car. The results seemed close to accurate most of the time. I counted 300 steps and the watch recorded 305 steps. There is a built-in GPS as well, so your distance travelled data will be almost authentic. However, the Realme Watch 2 Pro often showed “GPS connecting” for outdoor activities for a longer time, which is again disappointing.

Sleep tracking is also available and you get detailed data on light, deep, and REM sleep cycles. Moreover, with the 24-hour heart rate monitoring, the watch even reports your heart rate readings over the course of your sleep. However, there is no sleep assessment. The app doesn’t offer insights on how one can improve overall sleep or why REM or deep sleep is essential. I did get accurate sleep data.

The Realme Watch 2 Pro can measure your SpO2 and sleeping patterns. (Image credit: Ankita Garg/ Express image)

I liked the fact Realme lets you re-arrange apps and tiles on watch, which makes it easier to access my desired tile or any other content. The company’s Realme Link app offers all the relevant data including health rate, sleep information, SpO2 readings, as well as your workouts in a very colourful and attractive way. You get thousands of unique watch faces, which is great but you only get to download seven designs at a time. Thankfully, you can remove the old ones and add the new watch faces.

Realme claims that the Watch 2 Pro will deliver two weeks of battery life and this is pretty much on point as long as you don’t use the “Raise to Wake” feature and too much GPS exercise tracking. If you’re tracking a one-hour run every day, using music control, checking notifications, and monitoring heart rate, then don’t expect more than five days of battery life. But, this is still good as a lot of watches fail to offer more than 3 days of battery life.

The Realme Watch 2 Pro comes with silicon straps. (Image credit: Ankita Garg/ Express image)

Realme Watch 2 Pro: What is not good?

Most of the Realme watches offer a water reminder feature, which is good but the issue is they never really send an alert on time. The same is also the case with sedimentary and meditation reminders.

Furthermore, the watch displays only 6-7 notifications and automatically clears your old notifications (messages) to make space for new messages, which shouldn’t happen. During a workout, the watch doesn’t let you change the music when it is tracking an activity. The smartwatch lets you reject calls, which in my opinion this isn’t required.

There is no ambient sensor, so you will have to adjust brightness levels in different lighting conditions, which could be annoying at times. The Always-on Display (AOD) feature is also missing. Realme probably skipped it to offer better battery life, but the company should have given it as an option.

Realme Watch 2 Pro: Should you buy it?

Realme Watch 2 Pro is an all-rounder smartwatch under the Rs 5,000 price segment. Battery life is one of its strong suits. Those who are looking for a basic health-tracking wearable that can track your daily activities, control music and show notifications, can consider buying this watch. Alternatively, there is also Xiaomi’s Mi band 5, but this one has a very small display.