I wouldn’t bother buying this smart watch, even if it’s cheap

Fitness and health have always been a passion of mine. Ever since I was a kid and inspired to start training after watching Dragon Ball, I’ve spent the last 20 or so years on a fitness journey full of ups and downs. After 20 or so years, I have finally found what works for me to be happy and healthy. Fitness devices have never been part of that formula, and I was never once tempted to use one.

For one, I didn’t believe most of what they claimed to do would be accurate, and I also had no need for any outside push to motivate me to be active. Still, I understand I am in a small minority, so I was willing to give one a shot to see if it could be of benefit to others.

Our editors kept seeing this smartwatch all over TikTok pitched as a budget Apple Watch look-alike, and wanted to put it to the test to see if it was just a great deal, or if the price tag came with a huge loss of quality despite its trending status. To cut to the chase — if you’re in the market for a fitness device, save yourself the money you’d spend on this, and just use some free apps on your phone.

After wearing the Doviico fitness watch consistently for the past week, I can safely say that I would not recommend it to almost anyone without major caveats, despite the incredibly low price. It isn’t just that it provides mostly poor data, or the fact that half of it isn’t even relevant to helping someone maintain or improve their health, but how it can so easily encourage a poor relationship with fitness by focusing almost exclusively on one aspect of it.

Doviico fitness watch

Do not recommend

If you’re just starting on your fitness journey, getting the Doviico fitness watch is a step in the wrong direction. There’s nothing it can offer you can’t already get on your smartphone for free.

Pros

• Can remind you to drink water
• Mostly accurate step counter

Cons

• Innacurate heart rate monitor
• Overestimates calories burned
• No options to track weight training
• Can’t start workouts on the watch

Price, availability, and specs

The Doviico fitness watch is typically available on Amazon for $19.59. It is eligible for free shipping if you are an Amazon Prime subscriber.

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What I liked about the Doviico fitness watch

Reminders to stay hydrated

Honestly, I struggled to come up with anything I actually found useful about the Doviico. The only two positives I was able to come up with are that it is decently accurate at counting steps while walking outdoors and on a treadmill, but not perfect. In both scenarios, I counted 100 steps and compared it to what the watch told me and found it to be over by around five steps each time, which isn’t all that bad considering.

However, I knew it was always 500 or so steps off for the day because it didn’t read any steps taken too close together. For me, that is when I pace between sets at the gym. I’m guessing that’s because it calculates if I’m walking or not based on my GPS, and I wasn’t moving far enough.

The other benefit is the ability to program reminders to drink water. I didn’t use this feature myself since I drink so much water I can never be more than 20 minutes away from the bathroom, but it is a plus for people who are chronically dehydrated and need an outside reminder. That said, you can just as easily set recurring reminders on your phone to achieve the same result.

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What I didn’t like about the Doviico fitness watch

Fitness is more than just cardio

All my complaints about the Doviico fitness watch come down to how it can so easily establish bad habits in people. Fitness is a journey comprised of many parts, but also isn’t a straight line. This watch only highlights one aspect and does so in a way that can set you up for failure if taken as the only thing to focus on.

The greatest issue I have is that this watch only has settings to monitor you running, cycling, or walking. Cardio is very important, but doing nothing but cardio can easily become detrimental to your health and set you up for weight problems later if you burn out on it. There is a minor section only on the app with a total of nine sample strength training workouts, but even those are labeled with how many calories they burn. There’s not even an option to input your own workouts to track manually. It is all about burning calories and nothing else.

Just like your gym’s treadmill, elliptical, cycle, or any other cardio machine, this watch vastly overestimates how many calories you burn during activity. I have pinned my diet down to a science over the years to know exactly how many calories I need to gain, maintain, or lose weight. If I were to believe how many calories this device told me I burned in a day (which doesn’t even track weight training) and ate according to that number, I would probably gain two pounds or more per week.

It is also a major pain when you can’t start any “workout” on the watch itself and need to do so on the app on your phone. I want my phone as far away from me as possible when training to avoid being distracted, so most of the time I didn’t even bother starting it.

In terms of other data points, the only other metric you may find useful is heart rate, but my experience indicated whatever method it is using to track my BPM was incredibly off. First thing in the morning, when my heart rate was lowest, I felt my pulse and counted a full 60 seconds to get a reading, and then looked at what my watch said. The difference was over 60 BPM, and it was never much better in any other tests.

Other metrics like your O2, blood pressure, and stress (whatever that means) aren’t valuable to the average person even if they are accurate — which I highly doubt.

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Should you buy the Doviico fitness watch?

Not fit for fitness

I’m not anti-cardio, and anything that encourages more movement in people is a positive. However, I can’t recommend a device that so heavily incentivizes cardio and burning calories above anything else when I know just how damaging that can be both physically and mentally — even at such a low price-point.

No smartwatch or fitness device will ever be able to provide everything a person needs to have a balanced lifestyle of cardio, weight training, diet, hydration, sleep, and stress, so I’m not judging it for failing in that. What I can judge it by is teaching bad habits by omitting the bigger picture.