truke, the Indian startup brand known for its truly wireless buds has now tried its hands in the wearables segment as well. One of their first products is a smartwatch, called Horizon. This comes in at a time when the wearable scene is hot and filled up to the brain with too many options.
The truke Horizon comes with a large squared-out display, rugged look and feel, and is packed with all the class-leading sensors. The watch comes at a retail price of INR 3,499 with three color options. So should you invest in the truke Horizon as your next smartwatch? Let’s find out in our full review.
Key Specifications
- Display – 1.69-inch (280×240 resolution) LCD panel
- 20+ tracking modes
- 24/7 Heart rate sensor
- SpO2 monitoring
- Bluetooth 5.0
- IP68 rating
- Up to 7 days of battery life
Box Contents
A complete list of items you get inside the box:
- Truke Horizon Smartwatch
- Charging Cradle
- User instruction manual
Design & Display
The truke Horizon smartwatch follows in the footsteps of the Apple Watch and comes in a long squared-out form factor. The watch is tall and packs in a large 1.69-inch LCD panel. The watch is available in three color options, Black, Red & Army Green. Right from the get-go, the truke Horizon feels like something that is made for hardcore users. For someone who is outdoors a lot, there are two-tone touches, no matter which color you go with, and the cherry on top are the thick silicon straps that are color matched with the watch.
As mentioned above, the watch comes with a 1.69-inch LCD panel with a resolution of 280×240. This is not the most pixel-dense display but gets the job done. The watch gets a single button on the right side, used to wake the display and navigate the menu. The straps are non-removable, something we wished is worked upon in the next iteration. On flipping the watch, we get to see the HR sensor suite and the dual pogo-pins used for charging.
Software & Performance
The truke Horizon smartwatch runs on a custom real-time OS (RTOS) by truke. RTOS are usually stripped-down operating systems that are mainly seen on fitness trackers and smartwatches in the budget segment and do not require much processing power. They are good for lightweight devices mostly.
The setup process is mostly straightforward, and we will stress the word ‘mostly’. Like most smartwatches, this one too comes with a companion app that does all the heavy lifting. But unlike other smartwatches, we do not get the truke companion app on the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Instead, a QR code is supplied within the retail package and on the very first boot of the watch, that guides you to a website from where the app can be downloaded. This process does not inspire much confidence, but it is the only way you can get the companion app for this watch.
Once you are done with the app installation, from there on the process of making a user account and then pairing the watch to the phone and the app is simple. The app has neatly laid out menus and data metric points and lets you access historical data for most metrics. There is a 24/7 heart rate monitor, a SpO2 monitor, stress detection, and more. In times of COVID, these extra sensors are a must-have, and most of them have been implemented quite well here.
Coming to the performance, during our limited testing, we found the sleep and heart rate tracking results reasonably accurate. The watch registered the rest quite well and even detected irregular sleep patterns with ease. The heart rate monitoring, stress detection, SpO2 monitoring algorithms have been refined so much by now, that these sensors mostly have a 98%+ accuracy level now. The watch comes juiced by a 300mAh battery which gave us a week worth of use. It took us a little over 110 minutes to top up the watch using the supplied magnetic charger.
