I tried a few cheap smartwatches to get a feel for how good they can actually be. I first tried out the 116Plus at about $15 you can find this at a number of different etailers and I tried the Yoho M3 at about $10.

A few problems I ran into with the 116plus

  • Very generous with the steps. I found I was getting 60-70 steps counted every time I tied my shoes and pretty much any action with my hands
  • It didn’t quite know what sleep was. I found it to be very erratic on when it thinks I went to sleep and when I woke up, making it not as helpful
  • The charging was neat because it just plugs directly into a USB A port and charges. This prevented me from having a proprietary charging cable only used for this one thing. The issue I had is that it required to be propped up and held at a very specific angle in order to get power

A few problems I ran into with the Yoho M3

  • I didn’t get very far with the Yoho M3 as the problem I ran into was it would lose the Bluetooth connection every night and if I got too far from the phone. Each time it would happen I needed to manually resync the device to the phone or as far as reinstalling the application and start all over. I was only able to tolerate the device for 2 weeks before I was done and had to take it off.

 

Yoho M3

116Plus

For my money, it isn’t worth it for either of these devices. Every cheap device I’ve come by just isn’t worth the hassle and inaccuracies to bother. If you are just looking for a basic watch that tells time, it works well enough. If you want anything else, you should spend a bit more.