Lembird Free O2 smartwatch review: Elegant, but off-target

There’s a new kind of wearable tech that companies are investing heavily on — smartwatches that look like traditional watches. Very recently, Elephone made headlines with their rendition of a ‘traditional watch with a smart heart’; the Lembird Free O2 smartwatch is just another.

I’ll be honest, the Free O2 is among the best looking smartwatches I’ve come across. At $100, it isn’t particularly expensive as well.

However, given the nature of the watch, it lacks a lot of features compared to any ‘regular’ smartwatch that doesn’t look to pull off the ‘traditional’ (i.e., mechanical) look.

I used the Lembird Free O2 for quite a while. It comes with two sets of straps — leather and stainless steel, both of which look very elegant for a $100 watch. However, since the gadget is made to track your fitness and other data, it makes the stainless steel strap pretty non-usable… unless you don’t mind the watch acting as a ‘dumb’ one.

To set up the fitness tracking and other features, you’re required to download the ‘Hifit’ app which doesn’t appear to be available on the Google Play store. You can download it by scanning a QR code printed on the box (and embedded below).

It comes with an elegant charging dock, along with some other tools for making the stainless steel strap ready to use… and of course, a USB cable.

Box contents 

While the device itself is great to look at (in my opinion), it doesn’t do its job as a fitness tracker very well. It isn’t the most comfortable thing to wear during your jogs, and definitely something you want to get rid of before getting to bed (there’s sleep tracking as well). This is in high contrast to the Xiaomi Mi Band Pulse 1s.

To check just how accurate the Lembird Free O2 smartwatch is, I went out for my run with the smartwatch around, and recorded the run on Strava as well (which uses GPS, so there’s no question about its accuracy). To my disappointment, the Free O2 was way off target.

I ran 3.1 km (2 miles), but the smartwatch measured it only as 0.93 miles. To test how accurate sleep tracking was, I let the smartwatch on my wrist while going to bed (not all of you are going to want to do that). But even before I got to my bed, the Hifit app recorded 1.5 hours of light and 0.5 hours of deep sleep.

The app itself isn’t very intuitive also. You have to first register with the servers using your email ID or phone number, and then create your profile (by entering your gender, weight, etc.). The worst part — you have to manually trigger a sync (with the smartwatch’s recorded data) each time, which is a bummer.

Battery life has been satisfactory. Despite not having vibration features and a display, the Free O2 doesn’t quite last as long as the Mi Band, but the 85mAh battery won’t make you look for the charging cradle at the end of each day.

Lembird Free O2: Picture Gallery

In all, I’m disappointed to say that the Lembird Free O2 is a no-go, unless you don’t care about it’s smart features (which I think you would).

Nonetheless, should you be interested in getting one, order one from Geekbuying, which is the shop that sent us one for the purpose of this review.