WeLoop Hey 3S Fitness Watch

At first, I wanted to title this review something like “yet another smartwatch,” but that doesn’t quite fit what I’m reviewing here. “Fitness tracker” doesn’t seem quite right either. That’s because this watch isn’t really “smart” yet, but it’s clearly more than just a fitness tracker. So today’s review is about a fitness watch from WeLoop.



Specifications
Step counting
Heart rate monitoring
Sleep monitoring
Alarm
Water-resistant (you can dive with the watch to a depth of up to 50 meters)
30-day battery life
Magnetic charger included
Screen: 1.28 inches, 176x176 pixels, color.
Synchronization: Android and iOS via Bluetooth 4.2.
Dimensions: 46.21x35.66x11.15 mm
Weight: 28 grams.

The specifications also mentioned the following:

I'll rant about the SMS feature later, but I never did figure out how to control the player. Maybe the description was simply wrong, since this was during the launch period.

The watch comes in an unusual double box: a regular outer box and what looks more like a gift box inside. It looks quite neat, and includes some basic information.


Everything inside is neatly arranged in its own compartment, and the instructions are in a separate envelope.


The package includes:
1. WeLoop Hey 3S fitness watch
2. Charging cradle
3. USB-microUSB cable
4. Strap
5. Quick-start guide
6. Full manual


The first thing that gave me pause was that the quick-start guide is entirely in Chinese, despite having lots of pictures.


1. Fortunately, the full manual at least has an English version. I can only dream of Russian. :(
2. The USB-microUSB cable is pretty standard, maybe a little nicer-looking than usual, mainly because it's flat.
3, 4. I ordered the watch in black and gray. In practice, the color option refers to the strap color. The store may throw in a bonus strap in a different color, in addition to the main one. Fitting it is easy: push the slider near the pin, insert the strap, then release the slider. That's it. The mounting width is 20 mm.
5, 6. The charging cradle has four contacts that connect to the watch. All four are used for charging, so they're essentially duplicated. There's a fairly powerful magnet inside, and since the watch only needs charging occasionally, when it's not busy charging it collects all the metal objects on my desk. :)


The watch is available in three color options. Though, to be precise, the only difference is the strap color. The store may include a bonus strap in a different color along with the main one.
I'm a fairly conservative person, so I went with black and gray.


For some reason, when I ordered it, I subconsciously expected the watch to be big. In reality, I'd say it's medium-sized—slightly larger than what I'm used to, but not so large that it gets annoying. Still, it won't look great or feel comfortable on a small wrist. More on that later.


There was a protective film on the watch, but it was applied backwards—you can tell from the position of the buttons and labels. The watch is the right way up when the buttons are below the center.
One thing I can say is that the glass doesn't show smudges much. Fingerprints can remain on it, but they wipe off easily with a shirt sleeve, so the watch usually looks perfectly fine.


The manufacturer's logo is on the back, along with a note that the maximum pressure rating is 5 atmospheres. The watch is said to be suitable for use underwater—or, more specifically, for swimming—but I wouldn't take it for a deep dive.


The watch is controlled with two buttons, with a minimal set of functions -
Left button: cancel. It also opens a menu showing the battery charge percentage, operating mode (night/day), and connection status.
Right button: opens a menu where you can select the operating mode and access the basic settings.

The buttons are fairly stiff, but their large diameter makes them easy to use. You won't press one by accident, and when you do press it, you get a clear tactile click.


The heart rate sensor is also on the back. It's inactive in normal mode and works in step-counter mode and so on. If you take the watch off, you can see very bright green flashes for a short time.
Simply put, the photo shows three windows: the outer ones are bright LEDs, and the one in the middle is a photodetector. The most common wavelength is 525 nm. Similar sensors are used in comparable devices these days. If you want the details, it's easier to read about it separately


Yes, my hunch was right: the watch is entirely in Chinese. First thought: I'm screwed. Second: I'll have to learn Chinese. Third: no, I'll try Google first.


That last option worked. Google led me to 4pda, where quite a few people had already run into the same problems. It turned out to be almost ridiculously simple, and I also found out that:
1. All these watches come with Chinese as the default language.
2. The only way to switch them to a reasonably understandable language is through their own app.
3. Of all the available languages, English is the easiest to understand.
4. They apparently do make a Russian version too, but at this rate I'll probably learn Chinese first.

Anyway, download the Weloop app from Google Play. Besides, without it the watch is nothing more than.... watch.
We update the watch firmware from the app and, while we're at it, choose the language for the interface. In my case, I chose English.


That's it. There's not much text here, but English is much easier to understand.


The watch has a square screen with a 1.28-inch (32 mm) diagonal and a resolution of 176x176 pixels.
The screen is backlit. The backlight turns on when you press either button or move your hand. It stays on for only a few seconds, and you can also disable it during the day.
Everything is clearly visible on the screen in daylight because it uses reflected light. In fact, even dim lighting is enough to make out what's displayed, and the backlight is really only needed in near-total darkness.
You can change the main screen layout. The default one is shown above. I chose a more convenient layout, with the hours and minutes displayed in the usual way rather than one above the other. The digits are large and easy to read at a glance.
1. Main screen. It shows the current time, Bluetooth connection, "night" mode, the number of steps taken that day, and the temperature. I couldn't get the temperature to show, though. The watch is supposed to get it from the smartphone, but after trying three different models, I still got nothing.
2. Swipe up to switch to the additional screen, which shows the day's activity.
3. Press the left button to open the information screen, which shows the connection status, battery charge, and day/night operating mode.
4. The right button opens all the watch controls. First screen.
5. Second screen.
6. Third screen, with just a small settings menu.


When the battery runs low, the watch switches to a kind of power-saving mode: Bluetooth and GPS turn off, and pressing either button brings up an empty battery icon. This happens at around 4-5% charge. If the watch was recording a track at the time, it simply ends the recording, and you'll see what's shown below.
A quick note on battery life. The claimed battery life for this watch is up to 30 days. GPS and the heart rate sensor are the biggest power consumers, and they often run together. I used the watch quite a lot and regularly (every day, in other words), and in the most demanding mode it used about 35-40% in 4 hours of continuous GPS and heart rate sensor operation.
In normal mode, the battery barely drains, and I can well believe it would last 30 days. But what's the point of the watch then?
With my usual routine and time spent walking outdoors (about 1-2 hours a day), a charge lasted me 6-7 days, even though I turned on GPS every time.


Let's go through the watch's functions. First screen.
1. The watch can receive SMS messages from the paired phone. Unfortunately, only English text displays correctly; Russian comes out as gibberish. The watch also vibrates when there's an incoming call and displays the caller's number (just the number). It does this before the phone starts ringing, which is a little confusing.
In my opinion, this feature isn't very useful.


2. Heart rate measurement. There are two operating modes: at rest and during activity.
At rest, it draws a graph without showing the actual heart rate.
For active workouts, there's a separate mode launched with the GO button. It displays the actual heart rate, the time since the mode started, and an estimated range shown as several colored bars. If I remember correctly, yellow is 140, purple is 170, and red is around 200. It responds with a noticeable delay: I put the watch on my wrist, got a reading, put it on the table, and had plenty of time to take a photo.


3. Pedometer mode.
Since the watch has GPS, there are two modes: one for outdoors and one for indoors.
GPS sensitivity is quite high. I suspect the receiver also tries to work in the background, because if you start the watch after spending some time outdoors, it gets a fix faster than if you start it just after leaving home.
Here's how it works:
Turn on the mode.
The watch searches for satellites. Indoors, it sees one or two; outdoors, 6-8.
After about 20-30 seconds, there's a short beep and vibration, and the button to start the mode appears.

The screen shows the elapsed time, an estimated heart rate, the actual heart rate, and the distance traveled in 10-meter increments. There's also a small clock at the top, with the satellite signal strength to its right.

The "indoors" mode is almost identical. The only difference is that it uses the accelerometer instead of GPS data, converting steps into meters.

A brief digression here. In addition to counting the distance traveled, the watch records a track, which you can later view on a map in the software.
There are a few other things to note. For example, when you're traveling on public transport, the watch can easily pick up a satellite, but it may calculate all sorts of nonsense because it doesn't understand that a person is unlikely to be running at 60 km/h.
As for losing the signal, the watch handles this very well, but there are two scenarios:
1. Your connected smartphone is within range: everything works fine. While the watch can see a satellite, it uses GPS; when the signal is lost, it counts steps.
2. You left your smartphone at home. The watch loses the satellite signal (for example, when you go down into the subway) and counts correctly. Then you come back outside and, say, it adds 6 km to the result. To be fair to the programmers, the final step count will still be correct; it's just the distance in kilometers that will be higher.
If the watch can't see a satellite for a long time, it starts vibrating about once every five minutes to remind the user to switch to another mode.

In any case, I can say that I tried both counting steps and comparing the two modes, and the accuracy is more than adequate. The difference over 3,000 steps was around 100–150, even when I kept my hands in my pockets, carried a load, and so on.

At the end, it displays the final result. It also shows a brief summary for every kilometer completed, along with the previous kilometer's results, and lets you know with a short beep and a vibration.


4. Cycling.
For the most part, this is very similar to the previous mode, with a few differences:
1. It displays your current speed. I tested it up to 102 km/h, and the difference from the speedometer was about 1 km/h. Though in this case, I'm more inclined to trust the watch than the speedometer.
2. The distance is displayed in 100 m increments rather than 10 m. That makes sense: covering 100 km (99.99) in a day is very difficult, but cycling that far is no problem.
3. The time since the start of the ride is shown on an additional screen, since most of the main screen is taken up by the speed reading.
There's vibration here too, but if I remember correctly (I didn't time it), it happens every 5 km rather than every 1 km as in the “walking” mode.


The second screen of modes.
1. Pool.
It's hard for me to say anything specific about this mode; I can only show you what it does. No, I can swim, and I even used to do underwater swimming, but I haven't been to a pool in many years (though I'd be happy to go). I don't really want to jump into a river when the air temperature is below zero, and there's not much room in the bathtub. The most I did was toss the watch into water to check its water resistance, but the bathtub is far too shallow for that. I doubt anyone will dive very deep with it, and it should be perfectly fine for a pool.
Basically, you first choose the lane length and start the session. Then you get three result screens showing the “distance covered,” the time taken, the number of laps, arm strokes (splashes), and calories burned.
When you're done, it displays the swim results.
There are different swimming styles, so I'm not sure how well the device works in this mode.


2. Stopwatch. I think this one is self-explanatory.


3. Timer. This one is also pretty straightforward. The current time is displayed at the top.


4. Watch face options. There are two: the default one and an additional one you can download. If you download the same one as the default (which is possible), you'll have two identical faces :)


The third screen is the settings menu.
Though calling it a menu is probably a bit grand; it's more of a little menu.
1. The first two items.
2. Turn on “night” mode.
3. Information about the serial number and firmware version.
4. The other two items are self-explanatory.


Besides the above, there are a few other things that can appear on the display, but I didn't photograph them because they only show up occasionally:
1. A notification that the satellite signal has been lost.
2. If you sit still for a long time, an icon of a person appears with the message: “You've been sitting too long. You should take a walk” (loose translation).
3. A similar icon, but with a message about a new daily record.
4. There's also an alarm clock. In this case, the watch doesn't beep; it vibrates.

That's all for the watch description for now. Next, I'll describe the software.

Before I get into the details, a few things to note:
1. The watch works without the software, but it's not much use. More precisely, without the software, it's just an advanced watch.
2. The software is in English.
3. Everything works through the “cloud,” so to use the software, you need a watch connected via Bluetooth and a smartphone with internet access. Nothing works without internet.
4. You have to register to use the software: enter your email address and create a password. If you install the software on a second smartphone, you can log in without any problems by entering your password, but access on the first phone will be disabled, and you'll have to enter your password again to log in to the software. In other words, The app remembers the password for only one smartphone.

To install the app, I first went to the app store and searched for it by the manufacturer's name. There’s only one app, so you won’t get confused.
After installation, you’ll be prompted to link your account to an email address and create a password.


Next, you’ll be asked a long list of questions. In addition to your name, you’ll need to enter your height and weight. At the very end, you’ll be asked to set your typical step-count target. I chose the default option: 10,000 steps.
After that, you’ll land in the app’s main screen, but since there’s no history yet, it won’t show any data.


Once the app is installed, you need to connect the watch to it. You can choose from three available models; in my case, it’s the one at the top. The watch can also be paired with only one smartphone at a time. To switch to another phone, you first need to disconnect it from the previous app.


Let’s go to the watch settings. The first thing I did was update the firmware. After that, a language selection option appeared in the settings list. I chose English, and that was it.


There are loads of watch faces to choose from, but only a few are actually decent, at least in my opinion.
Another update arrived a while later, but as far as I can tell, it was just cosmetic—fixing minor bugs.


There aren’t many app settings. You can set the start and end times for “night mode” and set an alarm. I don’t need the first one, but the second could come in handy.


My first tests. When I got home, I had no trouble getting the route, distance, step count, speed graph, and heart rate data.


Another test. This time, I happened to glance at the watch from time to time and noticed that my heart rate briefly climbed to 200, then suddenly dropped to 120. The data was probably wrong, since the app showed a peak of 150.


You can view weekly statistics. The two screenshots on the left are from the very beginning of the watch test, and the ones on the right are from now.


This was a test simulating a bike ride. Since I don’t have a bicycle, I tested it in the car instead—especially since I had a convenient opportunity to go for a drive.
The app displays the route, top speed, and speed over the last kilometer, as well as the time taken to cover each kilometer. It also shows a speed graph and a corresponding heart rate graph. I think this feature is very useful.


My stats so far. You can see that I used the watch almost every day for a month. That gave me plenty of time to put it through its paces and draw some conclusions.
The calendar shows a circular chart indicating your actual activity relative to the 10,000-step target. A full circle means I walked 10,000 steps or more, a half circle means around 5,000, and so on.
Tap a particular day to see all the stats for that day: how much you walked, rode, slept, or sat.


A few final words about the looks, ergonomics, and my overall impressions after a month of use.

I’m not fussy when it comes to watches. Basic Q&Q watches are perfectly fine for me: all I need is accurate time, and I only have to change the battery every three years. By the way, my Q&Q watches keep time exceptionally well, gaining about 5 seconds a month. I reset them once a year, even though they’re already about 17 years old.
The watch under review is noticeably lighter—38 grams versus 66—and a little larger, but just as thick. The stated weight was 28 grams, but I think that’s without the strap.


Speaking of the strap: the watch sits on my wrist like it was made for it. For the first couple of days, though, I could feel the heart rate sensor and was about to complain about it, but then I stopped noticing it. It’s worth noting that this watch is designed to be worn around the clock as a fitness tracker. I mostly wore it outdoors, though—I just can’t wear a watch at home, that’s all. It annoys me. But outside, “no watch, no pants.”
The rubber strap makes the watch look much cheaper than it actually is. I don’t know why the manufacturer didn’t use a proper metal strap.


The clasp. It’s awkward, though maybe that’s just a matter of getting used to it. For example, I’m used to a folding clasp, not this kind like you get on a belt. With mine, I adjusted the clasp to fit my wrist once, and that was it.
Also, for the heart rate sensor to work properly, the watch needs to fit snugly on your wrist, whereas I’m used to wearing my strap fairly loose.
And third, the awkward “bezel,” i.e. the part of the strap that the loose “tail” threads through. It’s hard to slide along the strap because rubber is moving against rubber. Somehow, though, it always ends up near the buckle, so I have to bend the tail to thread it through.
Overall, it’s inconvenient. The first thing (and probably the only thing) I’d replace on this watch is the strap.


So, what’s the verdict? First, to answer the question: “Kirich, why did you even get these? You’re not an athlete.” That’s true, I’m not an athlete, so I got them purely out of curiosity. I can say without a doubt that my curiosity has been more than satisfied. I used the watch for almost a month, and for me personally, it’s simply a very interesting gadget. I might keep wearing it, or I might switch back to my previous watch. The tracker is the most useful feature for me.

Now, about the watch itself. It doesn’t have many features: there’s no SIM card slot, no Android, and no way to watch movies or play games. But there are some advantages, too. The modest set of features it does have works reliably, and the battery life lets it run for 10–12 hours under the heaviest load (GPS + heart rate sensor + Bluetooth). If you don’t need the track, you can turn it off to extend battery life.
The watch also counts your steps in the background. It’s rated for up to 30 days of battery life, which seems entirely realistic to me—maybe a little less, but certainly not just 1–2 days like “smart” watches.
One thing I found inconvenient is that if you start step-counting, cycling, or a similar mode, the current time is displayed only in tiny digits. In other words, the activity can’t run in the background.
Step-counting accuracy is fine. The watch’s timekeeping accuracy doesn’t matter, since it syncs with your smartphone anyway.
The screen deserves a special mention: it’s sharp, easy to see in the dark with the backlight on, and perfectly readable during the day, whether in bright sunshine or at dusk.
I was also impressed by the GPS sensitivity. It even works in “difficult” locations.

I wasn’t too keen on the strap, either in terms of comfort or appearance. The colored strap looks a little out of place against the watch’s understated design.
I could also complain that an internet connection is required for syncing, and I never managed to find out how much data the watch itself can store.

And, of course, there’s the price. I understand that compact devices usually cost more than standard ones, but this watch still costs as much as a pretty decent smartphone, even if it does have GPS. I think it’s really for someone who knows why they need it and will use at least 80–90% of its features, even if not all of them. Maybe I’m wrong.

That’s all for now. As usual, I’m looking forward to your questions, and I hope you found the review useful.

The store offered a discount if you buy the item without paying for it and message the seller with nopending. The price will then be reduced to $97.