Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 ReviewReview/comparison: The Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 is my second Mobvoi Ticwatch; the first was a Ticwatch Pro 3 Ultra.The feel of it: The Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 seems very similar to my Ticwatch Pro 3 Ultra in the size and the feeling of wearing it. The band feels comfortable and the watch body feels like it is the right size for a man's watch.Spec comparison: Ticwatch Pro 3 Ultra vs Ticwatch Pro 5Ram: 1 Gb vs 2 Gb (Ticwatch Pro 5 should run faster)ROM: 8 Gb vs 32 Gb (Ticwatch Pro 5 should store more stuff)Battery: 577 mAh vs 628 mAh = 8.8% delta (Ticwatch Pro 5 should last longer)Size: 47.0 x 48.0 x 12.3 mm (Pro 3 Ultra) vs 50.1 x 48.0 x 12.2 mm (Pro 5)It looks like the Ticwatch Pro 5 is about the same size as the Ticwatch Pro 3 Ultra except the Ticwatch Pro 5 has the crown that sticks out on the right side producing the 50.1 mm width.Weight: 41.0 grams vs 44.3 grams. Ticwatch Pro 5 weighs 8% more.Wrist band size: 22 m vs 24 mm. Why did Mobvoi change the band size? I have no idea.Finally a second color available! When I bought my Ticwatch Pro 3 Ultra it was only available in black. Now the Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5 is available in black or a sandstone color.Sandstone and black strap: I was surprised the sandstone color really refers to the color of the watch band; not the watch body itself. The band has a black clasp that contrasts nicely with the sandstone strap. There is a sandstone strap keeper band that keeps the strap from flapping after the clasp and I wonder if that would have looked better if it was also black? There seem to be more holes on the band that are closer together and I am happy with the way that the band fits now. I always felt my old watch the holes were too far apart and I always felt like the band was either too tight or too loose.Gold body: The watch itself is mostly a muted gold color with a shiny gold strip around the bezel. I thought the watch would be sandstone color but it is really gold. The bezel face has a knurl pattern that catches and reflects light and looks fancy. I like the color but it surprised me because some of the Mobvoi photos on their website the watch body appears silver colored to me. Buyer beware that this watch body looks gold. That said I’m impressed how much cooler this watch looks than the all black color. With certain watch faces/colors it looks much more upscale.Color Update: My wife says the body doesn’t look gold to her. She says it looks like metallic sandstone and matches the band pretty well.Red crown stripe: I was surprised to see that the rotating crown also has a red accent on it. I wasn't expecting to see any red color on the watch.Screen: the screen looks slightly larger (old watch was 1.4 in 454x454 326 ppi, New watch 1.43 in 466x466 326 ppi) and brighter? But when using the always on display the screen auto dims too much when in sleep mode. My old watch would be about twice as bright in sleep mode. The screen seems more responsive than my old watch too. It is easier for me to push on screen buttons without accidentally pushing the wrong thing.Setting up the watch:The set up seemed easier without the separate WearOS app we used to have to install on our phones.I got a notification about Essential mode that couldn’t be dismissed. I had to at least go into Essential mode settings and look around. I found that I needed to adjust the start and stop times of the automatic essential mode to match my personal schedule versus the schedule set at the factory.App and OS updates: I needed to update 12 apps including Wear OS from within the Google Play store on the watch.Essential mode: The Essential mode screen that can save power is amazing! The Mobvoi website describes this as ‘Two watches in one’ and I agree; it does feel like you can transform the watch into a different watch! Sometimes I like the look of a basic LCD watch. It is much more visible in sunlight than the always-on display. I wish there was a way that I could have always on display on when I'm in a building but automatically switch to the essential mode display when I'm outside. I found myself switching this manually a lot on my old watch. I see that there is an automatic adaptive brightness setting so I know the watch has a light sensor. It would be nice if the sensor was reading daylight if it would switch to essential mode and when it senses less light switch back to the always-on display.Essential mode Use Case 1: Camping away from power sources but need time, date, long battery life, etc.Essential mode Use Case 2: Situations where I don't want it to look like I'm wearing a smartwatch or don’t want the distractions of a smartwatch.Essential mode now has…modes! Essential mode used to be just one screen with very little available data. Now Essential Mode has multiple screens of data that you can scroll through with the crown! Big improvement and much appreciated! The Mobvoi website says, “switchable tiles such as heart rate, blood oxygen, calories, and a compass.” This is actually pretty awesome that you view so much data in super low power mode.Tilt-to-wake: The twist your wrist to wake the screen seems much more responsive than my old watch. It works incredibly well and is very sensitive. I think it works perfectly and I kind of super love it.Giant settings shortcut menu: There are now 14 customizable icons in the new settings menu! I don't even know what they all do. My old watch only had 6 icons that couldn’t be changed.Rotating crown dial: The rotating crown really makes this watch so much nicer to navigate. The scrolling animations associated with the rotating crown are really smooth and look great.The app drawer: The circular app drawer with circular icons is gone and now replaced with pill shaped icons that scroll vertically. You can’t scroll around the bottom to the top; only up and down. It’s a little boring but it’s legible and it works.Recent apps (Top button): This seems like it is just the app drawer filtered by ‘recent’ instead of ‘alphabetical. So maybe a little redundant since pushing the crown button one time opens the alphabetical app drawer and double tapping the crown opens the most recently used app.Recent app (Double tap crown button): This seems like a good idea to be able to access the recent app so easily.Button change: The Ticwatch Pro 3 Ultra had 2 buttons that looked like rotating crowns. The lower button would always get accidentally pressed when doing pushups so I'm glad that button is relocated. Will the new crown button get accidentally depressed when doing push ups insatead? I'm wondering if I will miss the ability to program one button to a favorite app? I used to have that button set to launch the Stocard app to show my planet fitness scan code since that works so much better and faster than the planet fitness app. It looks like it is technically possible to remap buttons by sideloading apps. https://github.com/TransitNow/wearos-btn-remap/Compass: The Ticwatch Pro 5 has a working compass. I went outside to avoid any possible interference and was easily able to calibrate the compass using the figure 8 motion shown on the watch screen. The compass is really neat and I’m sure I’ll use it from time to time. The Ticwatch Pro 3 Ultra had a compass at the time of its release but by the time I bought the Ticwatch Pro 3 Ultra the compass feature had been taken away never to return. Mobvoi said this was due to a conflict with Google software. I wonder if that kind of thing will happen again? Will the Ticwatch Pro 5 will lose its compass functionality over time?Facer app: I was surprised Facer let me install it and use my account on a second watch without disconnecting the first watch. Heart rate monitor seems to work better with Facer. My old watch didn't do a good job monitoring my heart rate and displaying that data when using the Facer app.Weather app: The Weather app and it’s Tile did not work on my watch when I first tried it. I tried ensuring location was set to on for both watch and phone, watch reboots, and other Google search solutions to no avail. I finally gave up and installed the Accuweather app. Accuweather asked several permissions questions and worked. This seems to have also healed the Google weather app because it now works as well. This also caused all the weather related data to show up on my Facer watch face.One Tap Measurement app: One tap health measurement is cool to watch. With one tap it measures heart rate, blood oxygen, respiratory rate and stress. If you want to add ‘Heart Health’ as a 5th metric as shown on the Mobvoi website launch the TicPulse app, scroll down to Heart Health and tap the ‘Measure’ button.Wear OS updates: The Ticwatch Pro 5 first shipped August 16th 2023 with Wear OS 3.5 (which was released October 2022). This means Mobvoi had Wear OS 3.5 for 10 months and couldn’t have the watch ready for Wear OS 4 (which came out July 2023, one month before the Ticwatch Pro 5 was released). The Ticwatch Pro 3 Ultra was slated to get Wear OS 3 but it has not gotten it for over a year past when Mobvoi promised to release it. This makes me doubt that Mobvoi will be able to upgrade the operating system of this watch to Wear OS 4 in a reasonable time frame. Mobvoi user groups constantly complain about this and I am doubting that they will be happy with the update schedule for this new watch. If you demand timely Wear OS and security updates you would probably be better off with a Google Pixel Watch or a Samsung Galaxy watch.Google assistant or the lack thereof: The Ticwatch Pro 3 Ultra came with Google Assistant as standard software. I was able to launch it using one of the buttons on the side of the watch and I could send texts or make phone calls or turn the lights on and off at my house using voice command. As time went by the ability to make phone calls or send texts was taken away and I could only use a limited set of Google Assistant commands. Even worse the Google Assistant was eventually removed completely and I could launch it but it no longer had any functions. Today when I launch Google Assistant it just says, “Google Assistant is not available for this version.” The Ticwatch Pro 5 does not have Google Assistant at all. I wonder if Google Assistant will be available again once the watch gets Wear OS 4? Some people have said they don't care if Google Assistant isn't available on the watch because they never used it but I really liked it and used it all the time. There is a youtube video where it is shown how to sideload Google Assistant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqnD2iWeQBIGoogle, Do no evil: Google has released its Pixel 1 watch and now it's Pixel 2 watch and all of the features ‘magically’ work; whereas they are ‘somehow’ blocked on other manufacturer’s watches. This is unfair to handicap other manufacturers and keep all of the best features for yourself. It is short-sighted for Google to behave this way and I'm sure companies like Mobvoi don't appreciate it. If Google wants Wear OS to grow and gain market share it needs to treat all its manufacturers equally and fairly.Soarking Charger 3 stand not compatible: The Ticwatch Pro 5 does charge on the Soarking charger 3 and the charging screen looks way better than the old one. It displays the charge in percentage with hundreds of a percent which is entertaining to watch. However, it seems the health sensor on the back of the Ticwatch Pro 5 is larger than the Ticwatch Pro 3 Ultra and the new watch doesn’t fit on the charger stand very well. It doesn’t seat on the charger as well as the Ticwatch Pro 3 Ultra did. Soarking has updated their charger stand design. It used to be called the ‘3 Charger stand’ but it is now called the ‘5/3’ charger stand. It looks like the cutout in the stand has been enlarged to fit the Ticwatch Pro 5.Pixel Buds Pro and Multi Point Technology: I connected my pixel Bud Pro headphones to this watch which worked well. Using the Pixel Buds Pro multi point technology should ease the transition from phone audio to watch audio. The Ticwatch Pro 3 Ultra was a pain to switch headphone audio from phone to watch until I got the Pixel Buds Pro headphones and enabled multi point.Conclusions:Is it worth buying this watch versus a Google or Samsung watch? It depends how much that Essential mode LCD screen and the resultant extended battery life is worth to you in comparison to Google's Pixel Watch OS and Security updates because you are literally making that trade off when you purchase a watch from Mobvoi. Knowing yourself well enough to pick a smartwatch that has the features you need and will have use cases for helps to make this decision. I think this will be a great watch for me as long as updates come in a reasonable rate and features don’t start disappearing.Is the Ticwatch Pro 5 really an upgrade over Ticwatch Pro 3 Ultra? With the additions of gmail, calendar, rotating crown, larger battery, more responsive screen, better looking Sandstone color, 2X RAM, 4X ROM, Wear OS 3.5, noticeably faster operation, faster battery charging, much improved Essential modes with multiple data modes, working compass, and less change of Google disabling features for the time being I think the Pro 5 is a tangible upgrade over the Pro 3 Ultra.You may need new watch bands and a new stand charger if you are upgrading from a Ticwatch Pro 3 Ultra since the older accessories may not be compatible.