There are a lot of fitness trackers that double up reasonably well as smartwatches, and many smartwatches include enough health and fitness tracking functionality to make them usable as fitness trackers. Indeed, the lines that once firmly divided smartwatches and fitness trackers have blurred considerably; most devices are now a healthy blend of both. This has made the budget smartwatch segment particularly interesting, as various brands such as Fire-Boltt, Noise, Zebronics, Realme, and Xiaomi now have interesting options for less than Rs. 5,000.
The product I’m reviewing here is a smartwatch in the traditional sense, but has fitness and health tracking features that could set it apart from the competition. The NoiseFit Active smartwatch is priced at Rs. 3,999 in India, and has useful features such as heart rate and blood oxygen tracking, exercise and sleep monitoring, and the ability to show notifications from your smartphone right on your wrist. Is this the best affordable smartwatch you can buy right now? Find out in this review.
The NoiseFit Active has 5ATM water resistance, so you don’t need to worry about most forms of water exposure
NoiseFit Active design
The NoiseFit Active has a round dial with a 1.28-inch TFT-LCD touch screen. The smooth matte finish of the dial and plain black border keep the focus on what’s on the screen itself. There are two buttons on the right side. The upper button is for power, to open the app menu, and go home, while the lower one opens and activates the workout modes. Other than this, navigation is entirely touch-based, with swipes and taps to move around and select specific options.
The bottom of the watch has the contact points for the charger and the optical sensor for heart rate and SpO2 measurements. The casing is made of plastic, which also keeps the NoiseFit Active light and comfortable, weighing just 45g. The smartwatch is 5ATM water resistant, and can therefore be worn safely in most water exposure situations.
While my rose gold review unit looked decent enough, the grey, black and blue colour options look a bit better in my opinion. You get a 22mm rubber watch strap included with the watch; it’s comfortable, completely waterproof, and can be replaced with any standard 22mm strap fairly easily.
The display has a resolution of 240×240 pixels, and can be woken with a wrist-lift gesture or by pressing one of the buttons; oddly, tapping the screen doesn’t work. The smartwatch uses Bluetooth 5 for connectivity, and supports smartphones running iOS 9 and above, or Android 4.4 and above.
The included charging cable latches onto the charging points on the NoiseFit Active magnetically, but doesn’t stay in place very securely; even the slightest movement can knock the charger out of place, and so I had to handle the watch carefully when it was charging. The other end plugs into a USB Type-A port, and can thus be used with most of your existing chargers, and even computers.
NoiseFit Active software, interface, and app
Like many of the budget smartwatches available today, the NoiseFit Active runs a custom operating system that is designed to work with its round screen and controls. It has a simple interface, and all apps and screens can be reached with a few button presses or swipes from the home screen. The UI includes a notification drawer, a quick settings shade, charts for fitness parameters, and an exercise tracking menu. The app drawer shows a few preinstalled apps for the various tracking functions on the NoiseFit Active.
There’s also a ‘Breathe’ app for guided breathing, and basic tools such as a stopwatch, timer, alarm clock, music remote, weather report, phone finder, and the Settings menu for the smartwatch. You can’t install any additional apps on the device, but the NoiseFit Active can read and display notifications from a number of apps on your smartphone, including WhatsApp, Gmail, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, to name a few.