Review: The Cheap Smartwatch Mibro Watch C4 - Worst at Almost Everything

I am testing the watch thoroughly for over a month and continuously checking with the manufacturer who gets the opportunity to double-check all the oddities I encounter. I first test with an Android phone and then with an iPhone, and I make sure to update the watch with the latest available software. Four updates come during the test period, but none of them affect the function in any particularly noticeable way. All the problems I will mention have occurred more than once, so I am sure they are recurring and not just odd one-time events.

No newcomer

We are familiar with Mibro from before, even though it is a manufacturer that has flown a bit under the radar. In fact, we tested one of their watches a little more than a year ago, complained about bugs and poor translation, so when a new, even cheaper watch from the same manufacturer appeared and we were told that translation and bugs would be fixed, I looked forward to testing it. Generally, my impression is that there is quite little difference between smartwatches in different price ranges, measurement results usually stay within a margin of error of a few percent, and if there is an option for 500 kronor, it seemed like an attractive choice for someone wanting to try out their first smartwatch.

I couldn't have been more wrong. The watch is supposed to have good battery life, be able to measure exercise, sleep, and health, function as an extension of your mobile phone with calls and messages, and thus have overcome previous models' extensive bugs and incomprehensible or downright incorrect translations. The only one of my expectations and the manufacturer's promises it lives up to is the battery life. Everything else is almost laughably bad.

The test begins with me downloading the Mibro Fit app to my Android phone and creating an account. When I choose a password, or rather let Android create a secure password the system suggests, I can't proceed. I click frantically but nothing happens. No error message or explanation. After initially contacting the manufacturer about the problem, I am advised to try a less advanced password without special characters, and then it works.

Disturbs at night and doesn't measure

There are some walks with the watch and general health measurements that, for example, remind me to move if I've been still for a long time. Then I go to bed. During the night, I'm still disturbed by the screen lighting up, but I don't think much about it, other than wondering why. The next night, I make sure to activate the do not disturb mode in addition to the sleep mode. Then I don't think much more about it.

When I go into the app after a couple of days to see what conclusions the watch has drawn after my first nights with it on my arm, I see that the watch claims I slept from 23-14 the first night, which is not accurate at all. Since I got up at 07 and was very active after that, I really don't understand how the watch could interpret that as sleep. I also woke up twice during the night and noted the times to double-check afterward, and during both of those periods, the watch firmly claims that I was in deep sleep. The response I get from the manufacturer regarding the sleep measurement is that “C4 is a simple entry-level product and therefore has limitations in its sleep measurement.” The following two nights, despite sleeping with it, the watch did not register any sleep at all.

Confusing Errors

Other oddities I immediately notice are that the app on the phone and the interface on the watch have a long list of language errors. Instructions are often very difficult to understand because the translation is wrong, and directly on the start screen, for example, "blood pressure" and "training record" are displayed. Both of these are misleading and outright incorrect. Training record is actually all your training history, and blood pressure is not blood pressure at all because the watch cannot measure it, but "stress."

The start screen in the app is supposed to provide an overview of all measurements and your health, but very often shows errors. My weight is indicated on the start screen, for example, as 55 kilos, but when I click there to go to the weight, the more correct 85 kilos is displayed. Along with a warning that I have gained 30 kilos since yesterday. I receive this warning every day.

Incorrect training route

I am also deeply disappointed with the training measurement. In the watch, when I start a workout, a red arrow is displayed to confirm that the watch has found its position. According to the manufacturer, it should do this with the help of the phone, as the watch itself only has a pedometer and no GPS. Yet, I only occasionally get a drawn route, even when I have the phone with me during the workout. And in cases where a route is calculated and drawn, it is often incorrect and does not match the path I have moved. If I don't have the phone with me, I get a warning and a gray arrow on the watch's screen instead. To investigate more thoroughly, I put on another smartwatch on the other arm and walk 1 kilometer. It takes about 12 minutes, but when the other watch says 1 km, the Mibro Watch C4 says I have walked 480 meters. There are other times when the Mibro watch gives more accurate results, but often they seem more or less completely made up, random. Additionally, I am astonished that the watch, based on my health and what it has measured, thinks that my body requires over a day's rest to recover after a leisurely 1 km walk. After a 6-kilometer run, it thinks I need a whole week's rest to be able to perform again.

Now, of course, I wonder how this watch can even be on the market. But it is. The watch is already being sold in stores, so the sample I am testing is not an unfinished pre-production model; it is the same as what is sold in stores today and has been for a couple of months. I am advised by the manufacturer to reset the watch, which I do, but it doesn't really change anything.

I continue to measure both training and sleep, while comparing with the Oura Ring 4 and Apple Watch, and then the Mibro Watch C4 shows a completely different curve compared to the other two. It is possible to have the workouts sent to the Strava training app automatically, but even the few times Mibro manages to create a route on the map of where I have walked or run, it fails to include that information to Strava.

I am also testing, as mentioned, with the watch connected to both Android and an iPhone. I can receive notifications from the phone directly to the watch with both phones, but it is not possible to reply from the watch. In Android, the connection with the watch works well, but in iPhone, I frequently get messages that the connection has been broken and the watch needs to be reconnected.

500 kronor may seem cheap for a smartwatch, but when the watch in question is as terrible as this one, it is far too expensive.