The Fire-Boltt Beast Smartwatch Review: A Budget Apple Watch Look-Alike?
The Apple Watch Series 6 is arguably the best smartwatch money can buy, but its exorbitant price and iPhone-only compatibility make it inaccessible to many. Thankfully, the smartwatch and fitness tracker market has exploded with affordable options, like the Fire-Boltt Beast, a ₹3,999 smartwatch that boldly borrows design cues from the Apple Watch. With features like SpO2 and heart rate tracking, the Fire-Boltt Beast promises a lot for its price. But how does it stack up in the real world? Let’s dive in.
Fire-Boltt Beast Design: Apple Watch Inspiration Meets Budget Construction
The 1.69-inch screen of the Beast closely resembles the 44mm variants of the Apple Watch Series 6 and Apple Watch SE, giving it a sleek, modern look. While it sports a metal frame, the area around the rear sensors is made of plastic, a common compromise in budget wearables.
Other notable design differences include traditional-looking lugs and straps, contact points for magnetic charging at the back, a rotating dial on the right side, and a screen that doesn’t quite align perfectly with the watch face. These may seem like minor imperfections, but they serve as reminders of the price point.
The included black rubber strap is comfortable enough, but you can easily swap it out for aftermarket straps. I found the Fire-Boltt Beast to be comfortable for continuous wear, even during workouts and sleep. However, the large 1.69-inch screen, despite its claimed 500 nits of brightness, doesn’t fully cover the watch face. This leaves a noticeable strip of unlit space at the bottom, which is especially prominent with watch faces that don’t have a black background.
The Beast comes in three colors: black, blue, and pink. I prefer the black option, which boasts a sophisticated brushed finish that makes it look more expensive than it truly is. The rotating dial, which doubles as a button, provides satisfying feedback with each turn.
Fire-Boltt Beast Software, Interface, and App: The Apple Watch Look & Feel on a Budget
The Fire-Boltt Beast runs on custom software with a user interface heavily inspired by Apple’s watchOS. Key elements like the bubble-style app drawer, the control center with its icons, and some of the watch faces are unmistakably Apple-esque. Other watch faces borrow from designs seen on smartwatches and fitness trackers from Amazfit and Xiaomi.
Scrolling through the saved watch faces on the homescreen is done by rotating the dial, and pressing it turns the screen on or off. Navigating the interface is a bit of a mixed bag. Swiping left to right pulls up the app drawer in bubble view, while swiping from up to down accesses the control center. Swiping from down to up brings you back to the app drawer in list view, and swiping from right to left reveals fitness and biometric data like steps, sleep hours, heart rate, and weather.
However, I found the responsiveness to be somewhat inconsistent. The Fire-Boltt Beast sometimes misinterprets swipes, leading to unexpected screen openings. The screen also lacks tap-to-wake functionality; you must either press the dial or use the wrist raise gesture, which unfortunately, didn’t always work reliably for me.
The built-in apps feel oddly designed with subpar fonts, and you cannot install additional apps. The Fire-Boltt Beast works with the Da Fit app, available for both iOS and Android, which syncs and charts fitness data, pushes notifications, and lets you customize settings, watch faces, DND mode, and alarms.
While the app is well-designed and easy to use, the watch only allows you to store one non-default watch face at a time. However, downloading additional watch faces is quick and seamless. Throughout my review period, the connection between my Android smartphone and the Fire-Boltt Beast remained stable.
Fire-Boltt Beast Performance and Battery Life: Device Agnostic with Some Quirks
Unlike many smartwatches from brands that also manufacture smartphones, the Fire-Boltt Beast is device agnostic, working seamlessly with Android, iOS, and even on its own. During my review, I paired it with an Android smartphone and encountered no issues with notification alerts, fitness data synchronization, or other functions relying on the Bluetooth connection.
However, the Fire-Boltt Beast skips the traditional pairing process on startup. It boots normally, giving full access to on-device features right away. This initially made me think the review unit had been used, but the packaging was pristine. I had to consult the included pamphlet for pairing instructions, which proved simple enough.
While pairing isn’t necessary, you can use the Fire-Boltt Beast without a smartphone or a constant Bluetooth connection. The pre-installed watch faces display dynamic information like steps, distance, and date, but some faces have static and non-functional complications, especially those mimicking the Apple Watch design.
The Fire-Boltt Beast boasts an impressive eight-day battery life, but my real-world experience yielded a much lower figure. With regular fitness monitoring, notifications, and sleep tracking, I got around three days of use per charge. Thankfully, the smartwatch charges quickly, reaching full capacity in under two hours when connected to my laptop.
Fitness Tracking: A Solid Performance for the Price
The Fire-Boltt Beast offers step, heart rate, SpO2, and blood pressure tracking. Of these, step, heart rate, and SpO2 tracking proved reliable in my testing. When manually counting 1,000 steps, the Beast measured 1,028, resulting in an error margin of only around 3 percent. Compared to an Apple Watch Series 5 over 4,000 steps, the Beast measured a mere 200 steps more.
Heart rate and SpO2 tracking were also accurate when compared against the Apple Watch Series 5 and a fingertip oxygen saturation monitor. It takes about a minute for the watch to provide an accurate heart rate reading, initially showing surprisingly low levels after workouts. However, it eventually adjusted to the correct heart rate, likely due to sweat affecting the sensor.
While the Beast claims to measure blood pressure, I wouldn’t rely heavily on these readings as they rely on the sensor at the bottom of the watch. They appear to be rough estimates rather than the more precise readings obtainable from dedicated monitors. Sleep tracking is also included, offering basic yet decent information for the price.
Additional Features: A Mix of Useful and Unimpressive Apps
Beyond fitness tracking, the Fire-Boltt Beast offers several additional features:
- Shutter: This app lets you use the smartwatch to control your paired smartphone’s camera shutter, which is convenient for tripods and stands.
- Music: Allows you to control music playback on your paired smartphone.
- Flashlight: Turns the watch screen bright white for illumination in dark environments.
- Stopwatch, Alarm, and Timer: These standard apps function as expected.
- Breathe: An attempt to replicate the soothing Breathe app on the Apple Watch. However, the Fire-Boltt Beast’s version feels awkward and lacks the effectiveness of the original.
Verdict: A Decent Budget Option with Apple Watch Aspirations
It’s not surprising to see manufacturers take inspiration from Apple’s design and software. The Fire-Boltt Beast bears a strong resemblance to the Apple Watch, but it’s readily distinguishable to those familiar with the latter. From a distance or to the untrained eye, it could easily pass as an Apple Watch, which is a good thing considering its good looks.
Functionally, the Fire-Boltt Beast is a budget smartwatch, but that’s not a detriment. For ₹3,999, it delivers decent step, heart rate, and SpO2 tracking, along with other useful features. While I found some watch faces and the overall navigation a bit clunky, the experience is satisfactory for the price.
Ultimately, the Fire-Boltt Beast is a solid choice for those looking for an affordable smartwatch with basic fitness tracking and some smartwatch features. While it doesn’t quite reach the level of sophistication and polish found in its Apple Watch namesake, it’s a good value proposition for budget-conscious consumers who value aesthetics and basic functionality.
