TicWatch E3 review: Almost as well-equipped as Mobvoi's TicWatch Pro 3 top smartwatch

The TicWatch E3 isn't really the Mobvoi flagship, but the TicWatch E family belongs more to the upper mid-range, which is able to communicate with the three satellite navigation systems GPS, GLONASS, and Beidou, for example. The successor of the TicWatch E2 from 2019 now uses Qualcomm's current Snapdragon Wear 4100 platform similar to the current flagship, the TicWatch Pro 3. In addition, the working memory and storage also have the same sizes with 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB ROM respectively. 

With a diagonal of about 44 mm (~1.7 in), the TicWatch E3 is smaller, and in contrast to the TicWatch Pro 3, the IP68 certified case is made from polycarbonate. Only the classic fastener of the 20 mm silicone rubber watch band is made from metal. 

In contrast to the flagship, the E3 lacks an automatic brightness sensor, but instead the brightness can be manually adjusted in 5 steps. In our test, the second step was sufficient indoors, but outdoors we needed at least the fourth step, depending on the weather conditions.

Like most WearOS wearables, the Mobvoi smartwatch also has NFC, a speaker and microphone for Google Pay and the Google Assistant, and is able to connect to the WLAN. Compared to the TicWatch E2 predecessor, the PPG sensor of the E3 is now also able to measure the blood oxygen saturation. 

The operation follows the usual standard: vertical gestures open the notification list and a menu with quick settings such as adjusting the brightness. In addition, if you double press the top button, the brightness is briefly increased to the maximum. 

A horizontal swipe gesture to the right opens the Google Assistant, and swiping to the left will show up to ten widgets in a row. The top button opens the app list, and the bottom button opens an app that you can configure yourself. You can move all the apps and widgets, and also delete or add widgets. 

The calculator, timer, notes, weather information, and a connection to the smartphone calendar are standard under WearOS. However, you cannot change or add appointments. Using the alarms widget, you can setup more than ten alarms, choosing between sound or vibration for each of them separately.

In addition to the Google apps for health management, Mobvoi has also installed some of their own apps such as TicExercise for sports, TicZen for stress monitoring, TicBreathe with breathing exercises for relaxation, or TicHearing to analyze the surrounding sounds.

A longer press on the top button or a swiping gesture to the right starts the Google Assistant. You can dictate your queries using the microphone. The responses will initially appear as text on the display. If you then don't go back directly but wait for a brief moment, there will be an additional acoustic response. In our test, this differed slightly from the text on the display, so the Assistant did not just read the response from the display. 

The health tracker is able to measure your blood oxygen saturation, heart rate, and regularity of the heart beat around the clock, if this is what you need. These are are indicators for your wellbeing. Mobvoi generates the corresponding diagrams for these on the watch as well as in the app on the smartphone.  

Optionally, the TicWatch E3 can record your heart rate and blood oxygen saturation at night, expanding the diagrams in your sleep protocol. The sleep protocol displays your sleep phases, comparing the ratios of the four sleep phases through the night. You can also limit the time period of sleep tracking in order to save some battery life, since it will otherwise also register and track your power nap during the day. 

To save battery life, you can also automatically activate an "essential" mode at night, where the watch continues to track your sleep and heart rate, but not the blood oxygen saturation. If you do this, you should know your sleep habits and also be aware that the TicWatch E3 performs a restart to come back from essential mode, which means that the recordings are interrupted. During our testing, an early change at 5 am led to an interruption of our sleep protocol, splitting it into the time before the restart and another hour-and-a-half afterwards. 

The two screenshots on the left show a sleep protocol for the essential mode and the two screenshots on the right and those of the watch below show a regular protocol.

You can activate automatic activity recognition for running, walking, and biking. Optionally, the watch will then either display a notification to start the activity or automatically start it. In that case, it will not record the route but still record the heart rate, step frequency and length, and the speed. 

While the step count outside the workout was far from the actual step count, during the workout, the sport tracker recorded the step frequency accurately. The GPS also worked well during the test. The run afterwards was also recorded by a Garmin sport watch on our other wrist. After tapping twice on the TicWatch E3 display, it recorded a manual lap at the same time as the kilometer signal from the Garmin Venu 2s. The distances of each lap were almost exactly the same as the km rhythm of the Venu 2s, as you can see in the third screen of the protocol. 

In the direct comparison, the rest of the data was also identical to a large extent. The large deviation in the calorie consumption can be traced back to some wrong information in the Mobvoi app: you must explicitly activate the synchronization of personal information with the Mobvoi servers using the app. After reinstalling the app, we only did this after the run was recorded, so that the determined calorie consumption as well as VO2max maximum oxygen consumption were based on wrong information on the gender, size, and weight. 

You can adjust the size of the pool for your swim training. At the beginning of the swimming workout, the E3 automatically locks the display, and after the end, the water is expelled. Those who enjoy training with Strava can find Strava for WearOS in the Play Store.

In the browser benchmarks, the difference to the similarly equipped TicWatch Pro 3 is small as expected. The Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 4100 platform is not only superior to the older Qualcomm SoCs, but also scores better than the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 with Samsung's Exynos 9110 and the Apple Watch Series 6 with the Apple S6.

As an alternative to the black band of our test unit, Mobvoi also offers the TicWatch E3 with a Neon Yellow or Ashy Blue watch band. The recommended purchase price is 199 Euros (~$238). In the US, you can find it at Amazon for $199.