I ordered the Ruimen smart watch as a backup for my Samsung Galaxy 5 smart watch. I wanted to see what you got for a watch that is 1/10 the cost. ($30+ to $300+) I expected junk, but I got a beauty instead.
First off, let me say the Ruimen does not have all the whistles and bells that my Samsung watch has. But what it does have is a lot.
I mostly just track steps as I want to walk 8,000 steps a day. Being the nerd I am, I wore both watches for 3 days to see how the step count went. To my surprise, the 1st day the difference was only 0.8%. Second day was 0.6% different Third day was 1.7% different. So both watch tracked very closely to one and another. So I would say the Ruimen was just as accurate as the Samsung watch.
Things I like about the Ruimen…
Start up time. It takes 5 seconds to boot up from off. My Samsung takes 2 agonizingly slow minutes… Come on Samsung, you can do better than that.
BPM. You get a constant beats per minute with the Ruimen. I even put on a watch face that showed bpm continuously. The Samsung you had to be in a sport tracking mode or go to a specific app on the phone to see bpm.
5 day battery life. The Samsung gives me 30 hours at the most, so I am left having to charge it every night. Ironically you can have it track your sleeping but that doesn't work when it is on the charging stand at night.
Email display. The Ruimen instantly showed on my screen when I got a text or email. (Although the font was very tiny for these old eyes.) Samsung would check every 15 minutes or so then tell me (but with bigger font that I could read easier.)
Price – The Ruimen is 1/10th the price of the Samsung. As far as value (benefits / cost) the Ruimen is a clear winner.
Walking app (when it worked.) GloryFit uses GPS to track you walking and put it on a map. Samsung uses an archaic system of asking how tall you are, then it estimates your stride length and uses that to calculate distance (steps x stride length). I have a short waist and long legs. My wife has a Garmin Lilly which uses GPS to track distance. I am consistently 20% short on my distance when we walk together using Samsung. GloryFit nailed the distance.
Here is what I don't like about the Ruimen watch.
At first I thought there were only 4 watch faces on it. But through the GloryFit app, you have a 100 watch faces to choose from. The picture shown in this review is one of them. The disadvantage is you can only load ONE optional watch face at a time. So it you want to change the watch face, you need to go to GloryFit and change it there. Takes less than 1 minute to change the watch face. Samsung allows you to download many more to your watch. And you have a ton more 3rd party watch faces to can add to the Samsung.
I have some issues with the GloryFit fitness tracker app. The installation instructions were for an older version of Android. The instructions ask you to find a place to have the GloryFit app load at watch startup. It is not in Android now. But no worries, it happens automatically when you load the app onto your phone.
I also had some connectivity issues when I tried one of the 100+ sports app settings. I did get the walk feature to work finally, and it tracked my walk via GPS perfectly. Other times it wouldn't connect to my watch. Don't know why.
Samsung has a lot more apps that work on that watch an Reimen. Most I don't use.
In summary, the Ruimen is a much better value that the Samsung if money is an issue. But if you want all the whistles and bells, I still like my Samsung and will continue to wear it. The Ruimen is going to be my trusty backup and I will wear it when I travel or are out in harsh environments.
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