As a concept, WatchOut’s watch and earbuds hybrid may prove a seminal moment

Indian tech start-up WatchOut has written a new template to meld smartwatches and wireless earbuds, into one

In isolation, smartwatches and true wireless earbuds continue to evolve. Alongside, it is more affordable too. Little surprise, they’re selling in big numbers. Here’s an illustration. India’s wearable market grew 34% in 2023 compared with 2022, shipping 134.2 million wearables through the year, as per research firm IDC, or International Data Corporation. Alongside, their average selling price declined by 15.4%, now around $21.2 (that’s around ₹1,700) from $25. Designs, software and reduced compromises (features, quality and longevity, though arguably), underlying themes. Mumbai based Indian tech start-up WatchOut’s take on convergence of these two gadgets, is a pivotal point, as it competes with other Indian tech start-ups, Boat, Noise and Fire-Boltt (the top three, in terms of market share).

This hybrid, for which the company believes the ideal audience are “Gen Z youngsters”, is priced at ₹4,999. (Vishal Mathur | HT Photo)

The WatchOut WearPods Smartwatch, although the name is a mouthful, is as hybrid as it could have been. True wireless earbuds in a smartwatch. I have not seen anything like this yet, and as intriguing as the idea is, it will require refinement on a much higher level for both separate experiences to work as well as they’re supposed to, and when they must, come together seamlessly.

This hybrid, for which the company believes the ideal audience are “Gen Z youngsters”, is priced at ₹4,999. For two devices in one, and with no direct competition, I’m not entirely sure what customers would make of it.

A rugged, affordable smartwatch is still rare

For the most part, WatchOut have got the composition right, but there is much room for build on consistency. For starters, the smartwatch isn’t as thick or chunky as I’d initially expected it to be, considering it also doubles up as a charging and storage case for wireless earbuds.

A reason for that, the design of the earbuds themselves – incredibly compact in size, an evolution that will surely resonate with more brands as they get back to the drawing board for their next updates. The watch has a square-ish design with symmetrically chopped edges and they’re clearly going for a rugged personality here (exposed screws, when done well, have the potential to enhance the look). Unlike this combo proposition, the rugged smartwatch aspect has figured prominently for Indian watch makers. There are the Fire-Boltt Expedition and Quest watches (both cost around ₹2,000), whilst Noise’s options are Force (again, around ₹1,900) or the Force Plus (that’s around ₹2,200).

For a fairly big watch (it’s around 48.5mm vertically), this still sits fairly easily on your wrist. Impressive battery stamina too – drains around 10% every 10 hours of daily use as a notification hub, but when not using the watch’s speaker for calls or music. It is a 1.93-inch display (larger than any of the rugged watch alternatives I’ve spoken about), and that extra real estate gives it a positive footprint if you like big watches. That said, this screen could have done a bit more in terms of vividness, to go with the really good illumination it can achieve. No auto-brightness option though, but its usable even at the lowest brightness levels.

The WatchOut WearPods Smartwatch, as a watch, ticks off most boxes on a checklist you’d expect from something you’d wear on the wrist. For customisation enthusiasts, there are a plethora of watch faces to choose from. It’ll pair and sync notifications and calls from your phone (in my experience, there’s a certain consistency between Android and iPhone, something most smartwatches don’t do as well). Health and wellness tracking metrics too, including heart rate, sleep tracking, steps and a bunch of pre-configured activities.

The V Band app (available for iPhones and Android) holds a lot of data that you can ponder over to arrive at activity and health trends. Yet, this app has many layers in the interface, something that needs to be ironed out with time. The watch claims to also do blood sugar and blood pressure monitoring, but as is a standard warning with any such wearable, these aren’t medical-grade devices and any data obtained from these must be verified with a doctor in case of any warnings.

On the watch, the software you’ll interface with has a certain refinement to it in terms of usability and ease of navigation. Some interface elements do feel somewhat sluggish (the swipe inwards from the left of the home screen, for example), something that could be fixed with updates. Many app icons (recorder and settings, for instance) have a fair resemblance to Apple’s watchOS interface, though that’s in no way a criticism – they’re intuitive with identification, even for someone who has never used an Apple Watch. Perplexing is the fact that most of the quick glance screens (swipe down on watch face, for instance) do not list the battery level in percentage. That’ll simply confuse some users.

Earbuds find a home inside a watch?

This is the aspect crucial to the WatchOut WearPods Smartwatch’s appeal. Can one device take care of the separate requirements of two? While WatchOut doesn’t detail the exact dimensions of audio drivers in each ear, they do confirm these are graphene-augmented drivers. The question really is, how does the reduction in size and the simple guidelines of physics dictating good sound, weigh?

There are two ways to look at how these earbuds perform. Undeniably, they can get fairly loud, and whilst very clean at lower and mid-level volumes, they do retain a certain chunk of that as you push the volume at 70% or higher. Its creditable, considering miniaturisation of audio tech is playing an important role here. Secondly, this is almost a neutral sound signature, with some leaning towards (no, wrong guess) sharper vocals. That’s almost surprising, in a country where bass heavy sound is preferred by a fairly vocal demographic of affordable wireless earbuds buyers.

There is a fair bit of low frequency, but largely, it’s a higher frequency leaning that’s apparent the more you’ll listen to these earbuds. While the smartwatch aspect is well sorted with the V Band app that gives you the data and a bunch of options to work with, there’s precious little tweaking available for the earbuds experience. The app needs to expand to include the wireless earbuds functionality (such as equaliser tuning or a glance at the battery level, for instance). Speaking of which, the buds can get close to 8.5 hours of runtime, before you need to charge them again.

Two ways to get music streaming going. First is the more convenient route, via an app on your phone (Apple Music, Spotify etc.). Or there’s 4GB space (actual usable space is a bit lesser; that’s how storage works) on the WatchOut WearPods Smartwatch itself – for that, follow an old-school route of transferring music from a PC or a Mac, by connecting the watch to it. If you’re playing from the watch, do choose earbuds as the output device on the watch itself.

Pairing the WatchOut WearPods Smartwatch earbuds needs some smoothening too. On the iPhone, for instance, I could only see the “R” or “L” buds, one at a time for pairing, though both were sitting adjacent in close proximity. Secondly, even after the buds were docked back into the watch case (they should power off immediately), they still remained connected to the phone (a bit unexpected; required a manual power down of each bud). That behaviour was also replicated on Android phones, pointing to an underlying firmware behaviour.

While WatchOut has largely sorted the design and audio quality aspects of the earbuds in this melding of two different devices, a bit more needs to be done to improve the earbuds management – needs an app, an option to tweak sound and battery monitoring. The WatchOut WearPods Smartwatch itself is as good as a rugged smartwatch (and there aren’t many of those, mind you) gets in this price range. It ticks off the checklist of a plethora of features that users would want, as well as basics of comfort (strap quality, weight and tactile feedback from physical buttons). Think of this as a first generation hybrid device, and from this base, there is confidence things will get even better.