The KUMI GW5 smartwatch offers a budget-friendly, feature-rich option for those looking for a smartwatch alternative. The lightweight GW5 features a 1.39” touch screen, voice assistant support, health and fitness monitoring and Bluetooth-enabled calling. With a focus on fitness and health, the IP68 waterproof-rated GW5 works hard to offer a competitor to many major brands.
The GW5 has a streamlined, sleek look, offering a minimalist approach to design. Two small buttons on the watch’s right side offer the only variation in the otherwise completely rounded face. The upper works as the major navigation button used to open the main app menu and doubles as a back button. The lower operates the screen on/off functionality, making it easy to turn the screen off to preserve battery life when it is not in use. While the overall build quality feels solid, the included rubber wrist strap and bubbly face do take away from an otherwise premium-feeling device.
The GW5 does offer a screen “raise to wake” feature making it easy to quickly glance at the face. As for the 1.39” touch screen, it offers a full-colour display with gesture control. Swiping up, for example, takes you to the watch settings, while swiping down takes you to the latest notifications. The KUMI GW5 smartwatch’s UI is intuitive and easy to navigate, with the option to add shortcuts, change many of the UI settings and swap out watch faces with ease.
The GW5 also comes equipped with a host of sensors to monitor blood pressure, blood oxygen and heart rate. This, of course, accompanies the standard step counter, built-in microphone and speaker, giving you the option to manage calls from the watch itself. Additionally, the smartwatch can manage music on your phone, control photo-taking via Bluetooth and it supports a “find my phone” app all of which work seamlessly with the KUMI app.
“The KUMI GW5 smartwatch’s UI is intuitive and easy to navigate, with the option to add shortcuts, change many of the UI settings and swap out watch faces with ease.”
As for functions, the GW5 has a surprisingly robust offering on this front. Many of the standard features, including a stopwatch, voice assistant, health/exercise monitoring and sleep recording, are all available with no additional setup required. What is more impressive is how many things the KUMI GW5 smartwatch can manage and control. Sedentary and drink reminders for the health conscious are available, along with over 100 different preprogrammed exercise monitoring options.
Many of these features work quite well. The step counter, for instance, was quite accurate when compared with my Samsung Frontier 3, being within ten steps of each other in testing. Heart rate monitoring, likewise, was quick to measure and impressively accurate, something other watches I’ve tested tend to struggle with. The most impressive, though, was the sleep monitoring, which was consistently solid in its reporting.
One of the areas in which the GW5 could use some more refining is its ability to initiate functions on the phone from the watch. While it can manage a call that is in progress, even directing the audio to the watch, it cannot initiate a call itself. Likewise, music control is limited to after music has already been started on the phone. While the control post-activation is nice, it would have been a huge win for the GW5 to see full control over application initiation.
Messaging is another example of this. While you can preview a message, there is no way to view the whole message or respond from the watch. You are limited to notifications and previews. Even the aforementioned camera control must be initiated from within the KUMI app before the watch can assist. With that being said, all of the features that the GW5 does offer work exceptionally well. In testing, there were never any missed notifications, dropped calls or issues with controlling music. It simply felt limited in what it could control.
The KUMI site states a 5-7 day average usage. In testing, the average uptime was closer to 3.5 days. Charging, however, was right in line with the 2-hour charge time that KUMI reports. While the fast charging is quite impressive, the charger itself has some design flaws.
The GW5 leverages a small, magnetically attached USB charger that links up with two contacts on the back of the watch. While it connects easily and immediately begins charging, there are two issues. For starters, the magnetic connection is easily disrupted, and more than once, a slight bump dislodged it from the watch. Second, which comes as a result of the first issue, the watch has to be laid face down to prevent a disconnect. This leaves the watch face much more vulnerable to scratches. A simple redesign or even a charging base would easily resolve this concern.
While many of the watch settings can be managed from the GW5, gaining full access to everything it has to offer requires the accompanying KUMI phone App. Available on both the Play and App Store, the KUMI app is a fairly easy-to-use piece of software. The device management, including all settings for all of the watch apps, is managed from the KUMI app.
Detailed sports tracking and features are also managed here, allowing you to leverage the phone’s GPS for tracking. Additionally, all of the detailed health information is nicely laid out and easy to read from the main tab of the app. Finally, KUMI has included an impressive array of free watch faces from which users can pick.
Overall, the KUMI GW5 is a pretty impressive smartwatch, especially considering its price point. It offers some solid health and notifications features, has some solid reporting tools, and the accompanying app helps bolster its capabilities. While it could use some refinement in design and application capability, at $39.99 USD, it’s a solid option to consider.
- [Make/Answer Call] The smartwatch supports making and answering calls via Bluetooth connection with your phone. Further, you can receive SMS, TEXT, and APP notifications(Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc), and you won’t miss important calls from your lover/friend while working out or driving. Our Kumi smartwatch makes calls more convenient and efficient
- [Comprehensive Health Monitoring] The smart watches for men excels in monitoring various health aspects, including heart rate, blood pressure, and blood oxygen levels. It alerts you to high heart rates and provides a deeper insight into your sleep quality. Furthermore, you can view weekly reports in the app
