Ticwatch Atlas: Outdoor-Smartwatch mit Wear OS im Test
The Ticwatch Atlas can withstand a lot, but also cuts a fine figure in a civilian environment. The battery lasts a long time, but the app is a pain in the neck.
The Ticwatch Atlas is at home outdoors, as its appearance makes clear. The smartwatch, which currently costs around 270 euros, has a robust case made of stainless steel, aluminum and nylon, while the strap is made of fluororubber. The standard width of 24 millimetres gives the watch access to a wide range of straps in all price categories. The Atlas is a rather large watch and looks very bulky on thin arms. It is not overly comfortable to wear, but at least it is around two millimetres thinner than the Garmin Fenix 8.
The Wear OS operating system comes from Google, and Mobvoi, the manufacturer of the Ticwatch, has not made any major changes. This is not absolutely necessary, as the navigation and design of the system are tried and tested and useful in everyday use. The controls with touchscreen, rotating and pressable crown and second button are child's play, although the second button was not necessarily needed.
Notifications from messengers can not only be read with Wear OS, but also answered with emojis, voice dictation or typed texts. The latter is the least fun on the tiny watch display. The Ticwatch can also make phone calls thanks to its built-in microphone and loudspeaker. This doesn't work too badly, even if the sound is a little tinny and the speaker in the watch is not particularly loud. In everyday life, however, telephony via the watch remains a gimmick.
With the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 from Qualcomm and 2 GB of RAM, the watch runs pleasantly smoothly. A layer of sapphire glass protects the display from scratches. The OLED screen itself is 1.43 inches in size, with a maximum brightness of 453 cd/m2. This makes the watch easy to read, even when the sun is shining. The brightness is adjusted automatically or manually in three stages. However, the watch always has to be woken up manually, and the preset always-on display in the style of a digital watch is very pale in "Ultra Low Power" mode. Switching the always-on display to normal OLED mode significantly shortens the runtime. The Ticwatch does not support mobile communications or WLAN on bands other than 2.4 GHz. However, Bluetooth, NFC for payment and GPS are on board.
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