Popglory is a budget smartwatch brand that’s been growing in popularity. Their signature P22 smartwatch is slim, stylish, and suitable for both men and women. Is this smartwatch an absolute bargain or should it be avoided? I decided to purchase it and over the past week, I’ve been putting it through its paces to find out.
Overall Verdict
The Popglory is a stylish square smartwatch that offers great value for money at less than $50. It has a premium finish, a nice weight balance, and I found it to be comfortable to wear. If you’re looking for a basic watch that tells the time and tracks your daily fitness goals such as step count, this is ideal and it has an excellent battery life too.
However, if you’re hoping to get more out of your smartwatch such as controlling your music, using it to receive notifications, and tracking your workouts, I’d recommend looking at something like the Ticwatch E2 which runs WearOS and has more useful features.
| PROS | CONS |
| ✅ Lightweight and comfortable to wear | ❌Limited set of features |
| ✅ Great price | ❌Notification mirroring very poor and unintuitive |
| ✅ Selection of over 100 watch faces to choose from | ❌Music player basic and hidden within the main menu |
| ✅Battery will easily last 10 days with regular use |
Popglory Smartwatch Review
Popglory is a budget smartwatch brand based in China. Their signature device is the P22 smartwatch which is sold in Europe and North America. The watch runs a proprietary operating system that offers basic features and excellent battery life. The biggest selling point is the price of the watch which costs me less than $50 (bought in April of 2021).
🏆 #1 Best Overall
- Heart Rate and Sleep Monitoring: The Fitness Tracker monitors your heart rate automatically all day, and you can select manual mode through the App. The fitness Watch also monitors your sleep at night, providing a detailed analysis of your sleep quality (deep sleep, light sleep, awake time). It is a health advisor for women men in daily life.
- Multi Sport Modes with Activity Tracking: The fitness tracker features 9 sport modes like running, walking and more. Additionally, the activity tracker records daily steps, calories burned, walking distance and active time throughout the day. You can also set a daily steps goals through the App to track your progress.
- Smart Notification Reminder: You can get SMS messages, and SNS notifications directly on your wrist including Facebook, Twitter, Gmail ect. You won't miss any important calls and message and stay updated. Please note: the smart watch can not make calls or text.
- Long Battery Life and IP68 Waterproof: This smart watch only requires 2 hours of charging and can be used for 5-7 days continuously, IP68 waterproof rating can withstand daily sweat, washing hands and rainy day, allowing you to fully enjoy your workouts.
- More Functions & Compatibility: Fitness watch comes with multiple smart functions such as stopwatch, alarm clock, breathing guide and sedentary alert, enhancing convenience to your daily routine. The tracker is compatible with iPhone Android Phones which run on iOS 8.0 or Android OS 4.0 & Bluetooth 4.0 or above. Please note that it is not compatible with tablets or computers.
What’s In The Box
As soon as I received the Popglory P22, I could tell that it was a budget smartwatch. It arrived in a very cheap-looking box that still has all the stickers on the back from the watch’s origin in China. The unboxing experience was not enjoyable at all.
Inside the box were the quick start instructions and the magnetic clip-on charger. The charger has a USB on the end and doesn’t come with a wall adaptor so ensure you have one free to use with the watch. Luckily, I have a few spares lying around.
Design & Build Quality
I’m a fan of the way this watch looks. The body is made from metal with a silver finish that makes it look like the Apple Watch.
It’s fairly lightweight at 43g and has an excellent weight balance between the case and strap that feels premium and durable.
The watch is far smaller than most in this price range so it was very comfortable to wear and would be suitable for both men and women.
The strap is made from silicone rubber and was also very comfortable. There are several different color straps to choose from, including pink, green, and black. The pink strap is also available with a gold finish case.
The watch has an IP67 rating which means it can be submerged up to 1m in water. Whilst I didn’t use it for swimming, it meant that I didn’t need to worry about getting it wet in the shower or washing my hands.
Display
The watch has a 1.4“ TFT color display touchscreen with a resolution of 240×240 pixels. The screen does not go to the edges of the watch so there is a large bezel around the outside. The bezel is larger along the bottom edge than the top which impacts the design.
There are 5 brightness settings, however, I found the first 4 settings to be too dim so left it on full brightness for the duration of my testing. Even still, the battery life was impressive which I’ll come on to later.
The watch does not have an always-on display, however, the lift to wake feature worked well, usually bringing up the watch face within a second or two of lifting my wrist. The watch is initially set to stay on for 5 seconds before timing out, although you can update this between 5-20 seconds within the app.
Rank #2
- Personalized Watch Faces with Practical Tools: The fitness watch for women comes with theme dials and you can personalize the watch face to your liking and customize the display content. Brightness adjustment make you an optiomal experience based on environment change. The smartwatch features practical tools such as stopwatch, timer, music control, breathing training, night mode, alarm clock and wrist up awake, giving more convenience and fun to your life.
- Healthy Monitor on Your Wrist: The smartwatch monitors your heart rate in real time and you can view recorded data on the watch or App. Our watch also allows for manual detection of blood oxygen. Besides, the fitness watch tracks your sleep status automatically, including light sleep, deep sleep and awake time, helping you develop healthy sleep habits and improve sleep quality.
- Multiple Sport Modes with Waterproof: Our fitness watch is equipped with 10 different sports modes suan as yoga, walking, running, ect, tracking automatically your steps, distance, calorie burn, and activity time. The smartwatch also can track your outdoor workout route if connected with your smartphone's GPS. The sport watch features IP68 waterproof rating, ensuring that it can withstand sweat, hand washing, or rain in daily life, and is also suitable for swimming and diving.
- Get Notified on Smartwatches: The smart watch receives incoming call and notifications from SMS, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp etc, This helps you stay up-to-date and avoid missing important information. (The watch can not make calls or text back). The watch also has a sedentary reminder function and you can create reminders for drinking water, meetings, dinners, appointments and more in the alarm settings, enjoying a healthier lifestyle and a well-planned schedule.
- Long-lasting battery and Extensive Compatibility: The smart watch will take 2 hours to charge and last for up to 7 days of continuous use or 30 days standby time. The watch is compatible with smartphones that run on iOS 10.0 or Android OS 5.0 and have Bluetooth 4.0 or higher. Please note that it is not compatible with tablets or computers.
Features
Now let’s take a look at the main features of the Popglory P22. The watch connects to your phone via Bluetooth 4.0 which is a slightly older version than most smartwatches, although I had no problems with maintaining a connection to my phone.
The watch has sensors for monitoring your heart rate, blood pressure, and blood oxygen. These sensors will come on automatically during workouts (more on this below) or can be spot-checked via the main menu. There is also the option for continuous heart rate monitoring which will take regular measurements.
Whilst the heart rate monitor seemed useful, the blood pressure and blood oxygen measurements weren’t consistent so I’d question the accuracy of these.
Also in the main menu, you’ll find the remote camera shutter which would be ideal for use whilst traveling, and the media player. The media player is limited to play/pause and skip back/forward. It’s also hidden at the bottom of the menu so takes a while to reach. I wouldn’t recommend this watch if controlling your music is important to you.
When you swipe down from the top, the quick settings menu has a few useful features including ‘find my phone’ and weather forecast (the weather location can be set in the app). There is also a handy torch feature that turns the screen a bright white to help you see in the dark, I found this very useful when taking the bins out at night!
Software Experience
User Interface
The watch runs a proprietary operating system. The interface is very basic so I did not have any difficulty understanding how to use it. Between the touch screen and the single button on the right-hand side, I was able to reach most features within 2 or 3 taps.
Swiping left or right from the home screen will cycle through various health and fitness screens to see how you are performing against your daily targets. Swiping up will bring up the main menu, whereas swiping down reaches the quick setting menu.
There is no quick way to reach your notifications other than going to the main menu and choosing the messages icon. This is an unusual layout for a smartwatch and makes it difficult to reach such a key function. The music player is also only accessible through the main menu.
Watch Face
There are more than 100 different watch faces available which can be downloaded from the app to the watch. The first download takes a few minutes, but once on the watch, you can quickly switch between the various faces.
It’s not possible to customize the widgets on the screen so you’ll need to choose a watch face that already has the widgets you are looking for. I like the default watch face best as it clearly shows the time alongside your daily fitness goals.
Rank #3
- 【24/7 Heart Rate Monitor 】This blood pressure watch supports real-time dynamic heart rate, blood oxygen, blood pressure ,Sleep Tracking,temperature monitoring so you can know more about your physical condition.
- 【Sleep Tracking 】The Smart watches monitors your sleep and analyzes your sleep quality through Deep Sleep, Light Sleep, Awake stage, gives you a nightly sleep score in the app, leading a healthy lifestyle.
- 【25 Sport Modes Activity Tracker】you can select any number of sports modes in the app as your exclusive sports mode to record your sports data.can record all daily health data such as steps, distance, and calorie consumption in the App "Keep Health"
- 【1.10 inch AMOLED HD Touchscreen】 The durable stainless steel frame of C60 pairs flawlessly with the Skin-friendly fitness straps, while its 1.10 inch AMOLED HD Touch Color Screen design and multitude of invigorating watch faces blow you away any moment
- 【Smart Functions】An easy-to-use activity fitness tracker with various intelligent features. Including Call & Message Reminder,Remote Photograph, Drink Water Reminder, Sedentary Reminder, Female Health,Family Health, Alarm Clock, Stopwatch, Find Device, etc
Buttons
There is only one button on the watch which acts as a back button or you can long-press it to return to the home screen.
There’s no crown dial or scrolling bezel as you’ll find on some smartwatches. The user interface isn’t too complicated to navigate so the single button seems appropriate.
Notifications
I found the notification mirroring to be very poor. Despite allowing all the relevant permissions and enabling notifications in the smartphone app. I still only receive notifications from a select few apps.
The notifications are also difficult to reach, you have to go into the main menu and select messages to view a feed. Once you have done this, it still only displays the three most recent notifications and even then it only displays a small portion of the notification and there is no interaction.
If you’re hoping to read messages or check emails on your wrist, the Popglory P22 is not a good pick for this.
The watch will alert you when you have a phone call and advise who it is, however with no microphone or speaker it’s not possible to receive them through the watch. You can decline them but will need to get your phone out to accept them.
Health & Fitness Tracking
Health Tracking
One of the main benefits of this smartwatch is tracking your daily fitness goals, including steps, distance walked, and calories burned. Some watch faces have widgets to show these, alternatively, you can swipe left or right to cycle through these.
There is an option to set reminders to move, however, you cannot customize the duration of inactivity that triggers the reminder or the schedule. There is no drink reminders as most other smartwatches have.
The watch also tracks your sleep, giving you a total sleeping score and breaking this down into light and deep sleep. You cannot see your sleep cycles as with more premium smartwatches, however, it does give you a sleep score based on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Score which looks at time asleep, how often you woke up, and deepness of sleep.
Rank #4
- Multi-Functional Sports Tracking & 100+ Sport Modes:The fitness watch is equipped with more than 100 sports modes, such as walking, running, swimming, hiking, cycling, mountaineering, yoga, etc. Accurately record all-day activities, this fitness tracker for men and women is waterproof with an IP68 rating, you can safely wear it for swimming, washing hands and showering. However, it is not recommended to use it in hot water (sauna) or sea water (diving).
- All Day Health Monitoring:This smartwatch for Android and Iphone (Please note: it requires iOS 9.0 and above and Android 6.0 operating system) is equipped with advanced sensors that provide insights to help you better understand your health and adjust your lifestyle. It not only can monitors your health indicators (heart rate, blood oxygen, sleep), but also records women's menstrual period. It can also automatically monitor your sleep status and provide a comprehensive sleep quality analysis to help you have a better sleep.
- Smart Notifications & Bluetooth Calling:Make and receive calls directly from your smartwatch with SMS and calling features through the built-in microphone. Stay connected to SMS and app messages (text, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) and never miss anything important. The AI Voice feature on this smartwatch lets you free your hands to control music playback, check the weather, set alarms, timers, and more by just speaking into your watch (message replies are not supported).
- Variety of Watch Faces & Customization Options:This multifunctional smartwatch is equipped with a 1.27-inch round full touch screen, which brings you a refined visual experience and a better appearance experience. You can upload your favorite pictures as the watch face. It contains many daily practical functions that you can choose by yourself, such as message reminders, weather forecasts, music control, stress monitoring, alarm settings, stopwatch, timer, sedentary reminders, breathing guidance, raise to wake, find phone, adjustable brightness, etc.
- Worry-free after-sales services:KEEPONFIT smartwatch supports SMS and call functions, and is seamlessly compatible with most iOS 9.0 and above and Android 6.0 and above smartphones (only for smartphones, not for PC, laptop or iPad), plz make sure download the VeryFit App and turn the bluetooth on before you connect it to your phone.Making it a great gift for boyfriends and girlfriends! We are committed to providing you with the best service, if you have any questions, please feel free to let us know, our professional technical team will serve you within 24 hours!
Fitness Tracking
As well as tracking your progress against daily fitness goals, the watch can track 7 specific sports, these are walking, running, cycling, skipping, badminton, basketball, and football.
When tracking, you’ll see time, calories burned, and distance traveled for each. The downside to this feature is that you cannot use the watch for anything else simultaneously, this was very annoying as I often like to use my smartwatch to change songs whilst cycling or running but this was not possible.
Smartphone App
The watch connects to the HeroBandIII app which is available for both Android and iPhone. I found the settings easy to navigate, however, the fitness tracking data is displayed in a complex way considering how basic the information is.
It’s not possible to see your fitness goals by week or month as other smartwatch companion apps tend to allow and there’s no integration with any other apps such as Strava or Google Fit.
Battery Life
Being a basic smartwatch, the battery life is very impressive despite only being a small 180mAh battery. After a week of use, the battery indicator is still at about 75% battery so I expect it will last far longer than the 10 days battery life claimed by Popglory.
I’m not alone in experiencing this, some users on Amazon have claimed up to 3 weeks on a single charge.
💰 Best Value
- 【Superb Visual Experience & Effortless Operation】Diving into the latest 1.58'' ultra high resolution display technology, every interaction on the fitness watch is a visual delight with vibrant colors and crisp clarity. Its always on display clock makes the time conveniently visible. Experience convenience like never before with the intuitive full touch controls and the side button, switch between apps, and customize settings with seamless precision.
- 【Comprehensive 24/7 Health Monitoring】The fitness watches for women and men packs 24/7 heart rate, 24/7 blood pressure and blood oxygen monitors. You could check those real-time health metrics anytime, anywhere on your wrist and view the data record in the App. The heart rate monitor watch also tracks different sleep stages for light and deep sleep,and the time when you wake up, helps you to get a better understanding of your sleep quality.
- 【120+ exercise modes & All-Day Activity Tracking】There are more than 120 exercise modes available in the activity trackers and smartwatches, covering almost all daily sports activities you can imagine, gives you new ways to train and advanced metrics for more information about your workout performance. The all-day activity tracking feature monitors your steps, distance, and calories burned all the day, so you can see how much progress you've made towards your fitness goals.
- 【Messages & Incoming Calls Notification】With this smart watch fitness trackers for iPhone and android phones, you can receive notifications for incoming calls and read messages directly from your wrist without taking out your phone. Never miss a beat, stay in touch with loved ones, and stay informed of important updates wherever you are.
- 【Essential Assistant for Daily Life】The fitness watches for women and men provide you with more features including drinking water and sedentary reminder, women's menstrual period reminder, breath training, real-time weather display, remote camera shooting, music control,timer, stopwatch, finding phone, alarm clock, making it a considerate life assistant. With the GPS connectivity, you could get a map of your workout route in the app for outdoor activity by connecting to your phone GPS.
Verdict
So, is the Popglory any good? If you’re looking for a basic smartwatch that’s comfortable to wear, tells the time, and tracks your progress towards daily fitness goals, then this sub-$50 watch offers great value. I was particularly impressed by the battery life which barely changed during my week of testing.
However, beyond these basic features that even a fitness tracker would have, it doesn’t deliver. The notification mirroring is very poor and often misses key notifications, the music player is hidden within the menu and offers only basic controls, and without any GPS the sports tracking feature is nothing to shout about.
To get the most out of a smartwatch, I would recommend you look at something like the Ticwatch E2 which isn’t too much more expensive. It has GPS, the ability to install third-party apps like Spotify, and integration with a range of other services such as Google Fit.