It has been a while since we reviewed fitness tracker here. The wearable segment has seen steady growth with many brands jumping into the mix. One such brand is LCARE which has been in the market since 2017. Their newest offering the LCARE Watch build upon the last generation watch and provides an added array of features.
The main highlights of the LCARE Watch are its ability to not only monitor heart rate but capture your Blood Pressure (BP) information as well. In addition to this, you also get a host of workouts tracking, sleep tracking just to name a few. We have been using the watch for upwards of a week now. The LCARE Watch promises a lot, but does it deliver? We found out in our review.
Key Specifications
- Bluetooth connectivity
- Dynamic heart rate and BP tracking
- Sleep tracking
- IP67 rating
- OLED display
Box Contents
A complete list of items you get inside the box:
- LCARE Watch
- Proprietary charger
There is no user manual inside the package, instead, you get a QR printed on the box using which you can access the e-User manual and other important info.
Design
The tracker has a traditional watch-like design opposed to a wristband-style fitness tracker. The tracker is made out of plastic in its entirety with the OLED on top. The straps are made out of high-quality soft-touch non-allergic silicon materials. The straps are attached to the frame via two screws on either side since replaceable straps are not readily available at the moment, you ought to be careful with them. That being said, they are very sturdy and easily hold for a long time.
Coming to the OLED display on the front, it is not the best display we have seen on a tracker but gets the job done. There is no touch support like the earlier model had instead, you get a capacitive button under the screen to interact with the UI. The button is clearly marked in white color and we feel like it could have been a little muted since at times it makes the product look a bit cheap.
On the bottom side, you will find the heart rate sensor which is capable of taking Blood pressure readings as well. There are no buttons, making the construction the airtight. The watch comes with IP67 dust and water resistance, meaning the product can withstand some splashes of water but don’t try to take it for a swim.
Performance
Perhaps the most important aspect of a tracker is the accuracy of its readings and the LCARE watch passes that test in some regards. The tracker is capable to track a host of metrics ranging from Heart rate, Blood Pressure (BP), sleep pattern, calorie count etc. The UI on the tracker itself is not the best in the business but gets the job done. The whole UI can we navigated using taps and long presses on the touch button. To complement the tracker, there is an app available on both iOS & Android platforms.
The app lets you set up the tracker in a few minutes and you are good to go. The app doesn’t have the flashiest graphics instead relies on plain and simple ones. On the main screen, you will find today’s data with the option to see the past two days of data. For more detailed information, you just need to tap the variable, i.e. Step counter, sleep, heart rate or BP and the app will present you the data in a graphical form. There is no form of integration between Apple Health or Google Fit, so that can be worked upon in the future.
Coming to the accuracy part, for our tests, we put the tracker against some of the popular ones in the market. When it came to step counting, the tracker was a little off and had an inaccuracy of 1-2% which can be improved with firmware updates. Sleep tracking was on point and the app had a very detailed analysis of the sleeping pattern.
The tracker has dynamic heart rate monitoring, meaning the tracker takes a reading every couple of minutes and comes in handy during workouts. We found that the tacker has some inaccuracies when it comes to resting heart rate but the readings are accurate during intense workouts. This issue impacted the Blood pressure monitoring as well making it completely unreliable. This can be fixed with a firmware update and we hope the brand makes it their priority.
Other than this you get usual features like SMS alerts, call notifications etc. which are notified via small vibrations. You also get workout modes but they are limited since there is no built-in GPS making the readings inaccurate. Talking about the battery, the watch lasted for a little more than 4 days in our tests and the band took 1½ hour to get charged using the supplied proprietary clip charger.
Pricing
LCARE Watch fitness tracker – INR 3,495
Pros
- Bright display
- Sturdy design
- Decent battery life
Cons
- Inconsistent heart rate measurements
- App needs work
Verdict – Should you go for it?
Priced at INR 3,500 the LCARE Watch is on the pricier end of the spectrum. It has a different design which is opposite of the mainstream. There are some positives like the design and build, near accurate step tracking, dynamic heart rate monitoring and sleep tracking. That being said, the tracker needs to work in areas like heart rate accuracy, app integrations.
There isn’t a lot of competition in this price segment making LCARE Watch the only product. If you are in the market for basic parameter tracking. Then there are a bunch of really got tracker under the 3k mark like the Mi Band 3, Honor Band 4, Lenovo HX-03F which provide the same set of features minus Blood Pressure tracking a fraction of cost.
