Xiaohei watch is the third generation of WeLoop's smart watch product, which has always been selling on the bright screen and the furious endurance. In the generation of Xiaohei 3, heart rate detection and color screen have been added, and the endurance has been improved to 45 days.
After all, it is the third generation product. It should be a product with high degree of completion, but the performance of the machine is very distinctive. On Xiaohei 3, it is estimated that both advantages and disadvantages will bring a lot of thinking to ordinary users and smart watch manufacturers. I hope this article can provide you with some useful information in addition to the product Xiaohei 3.
Packaging and accessories
The first and second generation of Xiaohei were packed in paper boxes and plastic boxes respectively, while the third generation returned to paper box packaging again. The very flat box was thought to be a smart bracelet when it was first picked up, and there was relevant manufacturing information on the back of the package.
The finishing touch of the packaging is to carve out the instruction envelope of the brand logo, and the machine and accessories are on the plastic tray. What is worth complaining about is that the clamping position of the charging base is extremely tight, and it has to be pulled out with a little effort.
The contents include: instruction manual, upper and lower watch bands, charging line and charging base, totally 5 pieces.
The magnetic charging base adopts the common mirco USB interface, and the computer interface or mobile phone charger can be used directly. Its suction is very strong, but its alignment ability is average. If you put it casually, you will have to manually push it to the reserved position. The overall matte feel is good, but there is no anti slip treatment on the back. It is easy to slide on the table. When charging, be careful not to push the watch out by mistake.
Appearance and workmanship
Little Black 1 and Little Black 2
Compared with the polished pebble shape of the first generation and the square appearance of the second generation, the small black 3 is like a hybrid version of the previous generation. The biggest feature of the machine is that the whole body has radians, a color ink screen has been changed, and the body buttons are reduced to two. although The small black 3 is still made of plastic, and the electronic/sports watch still smells strong, and There is no obvious change in screen proportion However, its appearance and brushed border texture have significantly improved its appearance. It must be the most beautiful product in this series.
The machine supports the waterproof level of 5ATM, so it is not a problem to wear swimming or clean the machine directly with detergent (the official manual also mentioned many times). The heart rate sensor on the back is an important selling point of the small black 3. The sensor rarely has two bulges, and it also has a wearing sensor. If it is not covered/worn, it will not start the heart rate sensor, leaving precious power for the machine. In addition, the charging contact is specially designed to be placed on both sides. I don't know whether it is to avoid the direct contact of the hand or to consider the magnetic adsorption.
The fuselage has only two solid buttons, with concave and concentric circles asking for directions. There are two levels of paragraph feeling when pressing. The first level is to prevent false touch, and the second level is the key stroke of the key, which results in the overall key stroke being too long, and it is a little hard to press.
Direct comparison with Android smart watches
The Xiaohei 3 uses a 20mm universal watchband, which can be replaced by itself. The overall design is also simple. In terms of overall size, the Xiaohei 3 is close to the Apple Watch on the 42mm dial, with obvious thickness advantages.
Wearing comfort
The overall wearing feel/comfort of the small black 3 is low, which is not as good as many heavy similar products. The 36g body is lighter, but it is encumbered by the material and design of the strap. Three factors affecting hand feel:
Weight and weight distribution: This mainly affects the drag feeling when swinging and turning the wrist. The lighter the weight, the more uniform the distribution will be. The small black 3 has a body weight of only 36g, which is a little lighter than the normal Android smart watches of 40-50g;
Shape: The part that fits the wrist is sanded and has its own radian. It fits the wrist more closely, and the heart rate sensor bulges more obviously. To a certain extent, it has less contact area, and the air permeability will be better. The foreign body feeling will be lighter;
Band: The black watchband for official use is generally made of materials. The main problem is that the friction is too large. The strap is thin and slightly hard, with a slight overall concave and slot on the inner side. The buckle of the strap has a bayonet for clamping, which is not set by many smart watches. When the watch strap is just taken out, it feels that the surface treatment is a bit "oily" and smooth, but the surface is too fragile. It can be scratched directly by the watch buckle and the desktop. Daily wearing typing can make the position touching the desktop covered with scratches.
In addition to being ugly, the friction of the watch strap is too great. It is hard to wear the watch strap through the watch ring with a falcon. Even if you sweat slightly, it will stick to the skin sticky, with poor permeability and obvious foreign body feeling. In addition, the characteristic of almost no displacement leads to a greater sense of drag when shaking hands than expected. This is one of the silicone watchbands with the worst wearing experience that the author has ever encountered. It is recommended that users replace them by themselves.
screen
The main selling points of Xiaohei Generation 1 in that year were the Memory LCD screen and the endurance. The advantage of the former was that it was similar to e-ink and did not emit light, but the refresh rate could reach 60Hz. Thanks to the huge power consumption advantage of this screen, Xiaohei's endurance is far away from its peers. In Xiaohei 3, the color screen is upgraded, which is still the brand of low power consumption.
Brightness: The small black screen does not light up, and "the stronger the stronger" in the sunlight, the readability in the daytime and indoor environment is first-class, and it can always light up, and the experience is the same as that of a normal electronic watch. There is backlight in dark environment, and the light color is slightly blue. Maybe it's because I can't read my watch at midnight. The backlight is very weak, but it must be enough;
Fineness: The screen PPI of the 3rd generation machines is low, barely enough to display about 5 lines of text information. A little closer, you can see the obvious "big pixel fruit";
Color&visual angle: This kind of screen is essentially a liquid crystal screen, which cannot achieve the same visual angle as the e-ink screen of the Kindle. Whether the backlight is turned on or not, there will be obvious brightness decline and color deviation when the backlight is turned on more than 45 degrees, which is very similar to the TN screen.
Glass&Reflective: The light transmittance is good, and there is no obvious reflection in sunlight. Officially, Xiaohei 3 is made of special glass with an oil repellent coating on the surface, which has obvious anti fingerprint effect.
Basic hardware
Touch: This is the first time that the Xiaohei watch series uses a touch screen. It only supports single point touch. The touch response speed is normal, and the corner touch is also relatively sensitive. However, because of the power saving lock screen setting mentioned later, there is often a problem that the touch does not respond, but the pot is not backed by the touch screen;
Vibration: The strength is weak, and it is enough to make a vibration notice, but it is not enough to vibrate the alarm clock. Moreover, the alarm clock only vibrates several times in a row, and it is impossible to shake normal people out of sleep;
Sound: There are no speakers and microphones, so there will be no sound in the notification push, and there will be no advanced functions such as call forwarding;
Configuration and smoothness: W The eLoop official did not explain the machine performance configuration, but the small black used the embedded system seems to have no pressure in front of the current hardware, and the application opening and page switching are very fast.
interactive
All previous Xiaohei watches are mainly operated by pressing keys, while Xiaohei 3 has added a touch screen. The addition of touch screen allows Xiaohei 3 to save a physical key, but it can be seen that the official Weloop is still digesting the features of the newly added touch screen, and the actual operation efficiency of Xiaohei 3 is not as good as that of the previous generation. Now you have to press keys+touch screen to complete all operations, and you cannot complete all operations without changing your hand posture.
Key: The buttons on the left side of the machine are Back, and the buttons on the right side are Confirm. When selecting the target, you have to move your finger to click on the screen. On the balance of touch screen or button, the official Weloop is obviously more inclined to touch screen.
Touch: The system has not yet fully adapted to the touch screen features. Although the touch screen is the main feature, the high-frequency actions such as Xiaohei 3 unlocking the screen (it can also be unlocked if you raise your hand to light up), entering the function list, and returning to the clock desktop need to return to the button for intervention, resulting in a much worse experience than the normal touch screen. In addition, the UI itself is not uniform. In fitness, music, stopwatch and other function applications, the return key in the lower left corner is used, which does not support the right slide back of a real smart watch, but the left slide back is supported in message push, system settings and other pages.
As there are only two physical buttons left on the hardware, the later improvement can only be touch screen optimization. However, for this reason, it is necessary to add the double click screen unlocking function first, otherwise, with the current availability of "raise your hand", there is basically no way. However, from the perspective of users, the author would rather sacrifice 50% of the endurance time for double click wake-up
System and app
With the current system, the Xiaohei 3 is more like an intelligent bracelet, and its intelligence is not even as advanced as that of Samsung Gear Fit and other smart bracelets. Weloop's bracelet and watch embedded systems cannot install applications by themselves, and future function additions can only be completed through system upgrades. The overall function is almost the same as that of your own bracelet, while the dial resource, one of the important selling points of the smart watch, has not been supplemented, and its functionality is relatively poor among similar products.
Swipe the clock home page up and down to switch between clock, weather, step counting and business card QR code
Only 3 dials at present
Function list
Countdown, stopwatch, heart rate detection function page
On the main interface of the clock, you can view the step counting statistics, weather and QR code business cards of the day. You can access the function list through the button on the right The functions include the following 9:
Message push: The card format shows a list of the latest 7 or 8 message push details, and supports user-defined receive push applications. However, it only reads the messages in the notification bar of the mobile phone directly, and can't respond, delay or close the alarm clock/reminder, delete the notification and other interactive actions. It still stays at the level of the ordinary smart bracelet, which can only be used to quickly check the verification code;
Heart rate monitoring: There are two types: resting and movement. After opening, continuous measurement will be carried out, but the latter is specifically for regular swing movements such as running, and algorithm correction will be carried out. The specific performance will be described in detail below;
Running training: Real time heart rate detection, distance, track, step number recording, setting and data richness are still professional:
Music control: It has the functions of reading playlists (Netease Cloud Music+Note5 can't read) and pausing, but it can't quickly cut songs, and its availability is average;
Stopwatch and count down;
Find your phone: Control your phone to play a piece of music. However, the phone will not vibrate or force the volume up. If the phone is accidentally muted or the volume is very low, this function will not work;
Replace the dial: There are only 3 built-in dials, which are much weaker than the previous generation in terms of resources, and need to be improved in terms of software;
Basic settings: There are four, including Do Not Disturb switch, device Bluetooth and firmware information, factory reset and shutdown, and no one will come in.
In terms of mobile phone apps, Weloop's bracelet and watch use the same app, which is designed around fitness and sports monitoring. In terms of functions, there are two more customized QR code business cards (which convert names and phone numbers into QR codes, but do not support WeChat) and remote cameras that cannot be completed by the watch itself, but their practical value is not high. There are more detailed system settings in the app, including backlight, flip screen, long sitting reminder, and loss prevention (mobile phone and watch are immediately reminded when disconnected), but the overall function is still very small.
Raise your hand and make it bright Screen unlocking
Smart watch is also a watch. Time is the most essential requirement, followed by message push, step counting heart rate, sleep monitoring and dial changing, and then music playing, phone searching and other small functions. The design of the small black 3 screen that never goes out is very strong in the case of sufficient light, but in the weak light, you still have to raise your hand to wake up the machine and turn on the backlight.
In order to prevent accidental touch and save power, Xiaohei 3 has added the extremely rare concept of "screen lock" in the field of smart watches. Although the problem of false touch has been solved perfectly, the setting of screen lock has greatly reduced the touch screen experience of the machine. Whether the backlight and touch screen are turned on or not corresponds to the three states of the small black 3:
Lock: Like ordinary watches, it only displays time, and any touch screen operation is invalid;
Unlocking: After unlocking by raising the hand or clicking the key, you can slide up and down to view the weather and step statistics, but you need to click the button to enter the function list;
Semi locking: The clock desktop will lock automatically 15 seconds after no operation, but in the function list, the machine is still in a semi locked state (the backlight is off but the touch screen is on). If the machine does not operate for a few seconds, it will enter the "semi locked state". It can only operate normally after clicking "touch screen unlocking" once. Many users feel that the touch is not sensitive, and it is estimated that this setting has not been found. Although it is extremely anti accidental touch and power saving, the author also agrees to cancel this setting. After all, he thinks that his experience of not lighting the screen is much worse than that of false touch
In addition, the function of Xiaohei 3 is also one of the biggest problems in the whole machine, and the key points of the assessment are as follows:
Wake up speed: This is the biggest problem in the whole wake-up experience. From identifying actions to lighting up the screen, it takes more than 1 second at the fastest. The wake-up speed is quite slow, and it is also the last level in the machine I have encountered. It is better to press the button directly when you wait for the hand to light up;
Hand posture requirements: The trigger probability of the back rotation of the stationary horizontal wrist is the highest, and the horizontal back and forth tilt of about 45 degrees can be recognized. However, the most commonly used action of standing up to look at the watch (drop the hand and then raise the hand) can not wake up the machine, which makes people quite speechless. When walking on the road at night, the chance of lifting the hand to look at the watch is up to 80%, which is absolutely unique in the field of smart watches
Speed requirements : It is impossible to experience the slow rotation and wake-up experience of the Apple Watch, but it can also wake up by turning the wrist at normal speed, and the performance is OK.
When the availability is almost zero, the author suggests that we should form the habit of manually lighting the screen, otherwise the experience is really bad.
Step counting and sleep monitoring
WeLoop's step counting and sleep monitoring performance has always been very high in China. In addition, the so-called "nine axis sensor" is used this time, so the author's own expectations are relatively high. The daily data of its mobile app is displayed in time lines. There are detail pages for heart rate, sleep and sports games, which will summarize the status of each period. In terms of the readability of statistical data on the home page, WeLoop is still worth learning from domestic peers. However, this version of firmware/app has monthly statistical data that cannot view the number of specific days, and there is a problem of inconsistent numbers. I hope the official can solve this problem as soon as possible.
Steps: The number of steps is accurate, but the distance (calculated according to the user's height) is about 10% smaller. It can be cheated by keyboard input and daily waving, but these data will be counted into the category of "low amount of movement", which solves the precision problem of action filtering tactfully.
Sleep monitoring: The recording error of the time points of falling asleep and waking up is within 10 minutes, and the performance is excellent. Because the sensitivity is adjusted higher, the nighttime data map will be much more complex than its competitors. However, the problem is that it is impossible to view the data of each period, while the data table of competitors of the same kind can see the period of each state when clicking the bar chart. Weloop does not display details, wasting a lot of very detailed data statistics.
Heart rate and exercise
The heart rate part is the most unexpected part of Xiaohei 3. The professionalism of its automatic heart rate detection and movement statistics data is beyond the reach of many domestic rivals due to power consumption and accuracy problems. It is equipped with a wearing sensor. It will only work when the skin, cloth and other objects are blocked. If there is no blocking or metal and plastic blocking, it will stop working (it may be judged according to the different reflective rates of different objects).
Heart rate accuracy: At rest, the heart rate detection value will be several times lower than that of self counting and similar products, but the fluctuation amplitude is uniform and small, so it has little impact on actual use. It is commendable that its heart rate data is also available during exercise, and it will not be as easily without data as Xiaomi Bracelet 2. In addition, for repetitive sports such as running, it will have a unified algorithm to correct heart rate data, and perform well in accuracy and trend recording.
Automatic heart rate detection: In the non exercise state, Xiaohei 3 will automatically monitor the heart rate every half an hour, and finally generate a daily heart rate change chart. For similar products, the endurance pressure is generally recorded in hours. Only fitbit and other foreign products will use similar frequency for heart rate recording. Basically, the heart rate drops after a temporary sleep (the author usually goes to bed at about 3 o'clock), and the heart rate steadily rises from getting up to night. For athletes, patients and other users who have specific needs for heart rate tracking, this is also a very useful reference, even if it cannot be used as a medical basis. However, I hope that the app will be able to change to a sliding jump date. Now, it can only enter the daily information flow, and it is difficult to compare data horizontally.
Sports statistics: When the sport mode is turned on, the app will call the GPS information of the phone and record the steps, heart rate and other data. The positioning accuracy of GPS varies from phone to phone, but in terms of data display form, the app of weloop is definitely worth liking. Speed and distance charts can be manually moved to view specific values. The step frequency curve and heart rate interval values are very close to those of foreign brands. For domestic products, Weloop is the only one that has achieved this level.
Endurance
The endurance is the common selling point of Xiaohei watches of all generations. From the 3-week endurance of the first generation, to the 1-week endurance of the second generation, and then to the 45 day endurance of Xiaohei 3, the increase of the endurance is simply not according to the routine. The Xiaohei 3 is definitely the most ferocious smart watch with the longest endurance in history. Of course, the price is that its function is similar to that of an intelligent bracelet.
In terms of demand, in fact, the 3-week battery life of the early generation has made users forget about the charger, while the 45 day battery life of the Xiaohei 3 has far exceeded the demand. Even if a charging reminder pops up after the power is less than 15%, the charger will not be needed for another week of business trip... It is similar to the illusion of non electronic products of the Kindle.
It is actually worn for five consecutive days (including sleeping), during which a total of one hour of exercise mode is used to maintain connection and push. The total power loss is 9%, and the endurance is brutal. According to this calculation, it is not a problem for the machine to run for 10 hours in continuous motion mode.
summary
As mentioned at the beginning, the Xiaohei 3 is a smart watch with distinctive advantages and disadvantages:
There are obviously improved appearance design and good weight control, but there are also problems of poor wearing comfort caused by poor selection of self strap materials;
The ever bright screen is very suitable for making smart watches, but it is rare to have a color screen, and the dial resources have not yet caught up;
Finally, touch screen has been added, but the supporting system function UI has not been kept up. The "semi lock screen" setting and poor availability of "hands up and light up" have wasted touch screen and backlight function points in one breath;
Heart rate and sleep monitoring data are detailed and intuitive, but the details cannot be viewed;
In China, the automatic heart rate monitoring and brutal endurance that can be crowned emperor level are far away from domestic rivals, but it is also a practical problem that the name of a smart watch cannot open the gap with the function of the bracelet (during the test, even the pen writer has repeatedly sighed that the experience would be more perfect if it was made into a hand loop).
It is up to the readers to judge which features meet their own needs, but the hole that Xiaohei 3 stepped into the touch screen is worth the attention of the industry insiders... In addition, At noon on September 19, WeLoop sent a text message to the first batch of users, saying that sales would be suspended in Xiaohei 3, and provided corresponding compensation measures for users.
In fact, it is a common practice for many crowdfunding and domestic manufacturers to release products before they reach the optimal level of completion, which may be due to the node of annual update time. However, at the node where the product has just started to be distributed and publicized, it takes a lot of courage to decide to stop sales and refine again, especially for such a small smart product manufacturer. No matter what the final result of Xiaohei 3 is, as half of the industry, we should salute the manufacturers who are still working hard. The screenshot of the official SMS page after the jump:
