mifone l58 smartwatch review

The smartwatch market is becoming more and more affordable with the recent influx of budget devices. Those who don’t want to spend upwards of $300 have the option of sacrificing features for a lower price. Smartwatches have matured to the point that even cheaper options like the Mifone are viable.

Basic/entry level smartwatches sometimes make the mistake of sacrificing design when trying to cut costs, and most of the time, this is a mistake. Without killer specs to push the product to the forefront, a low cost just isn’t going to cut it. Something that is cheap, doesn’t have killer specs and doesn’t look elegant definitely isn’t going to attract any attention at all.

Enter the Mifone L58 smartwatch. It doesn’t have killer specs, but it is “killer cheap”. Starting at just $17, it costs the same as two Venti lattes. And it looks pretty good. So without further ado, let’s get into the review of the Mifone L58 smartwatch.

Design and Materials

The online photos that the Mifone released actually look a tiny bit different than the product does in real life. The online photos taken do look better than the product in real life, mainly because the glass is more domed than the photos suggest. It does give it a kind of retro 1920s UFO look, but regardless it still looks a lot better than your average fitness band and looks like an actual watch. It’s pretty well made, the watch body is made out of CnC’ed aluminum and feels pretty decent. The watch band is fluoroelastomer, which is the default rubber material for watch straps, but feels pretty good. It’s also IP67 waterproof, which means dust tight and waterproof up to 1m underwater, as the entire watch is fully sealed without any need for flaps to cover ports. I didn’t have a 1 meter deep bucket, but I dropped it into a cup of water and it still functions. The charging port is located on the bottom of the watch and there is a charger included in the package. The charger is magnetic and snaps on to the watch without a need for plugging in, which is a really nice touch by the manufacturer. There is no power button, and just one capacitive area right around here that cycles through all the required info. Overall this smartwatch is one of the few smart devices that is decent looking, and it’s well made.

This watch is incredibly light, weighing in at around 30g, mostly due to the relatively lightweight aluminum and rubber strap. I don’t find weight to be that much of an issue but as someone with smaller hands and wrists, high end smartwatches are mostly too big for me, and that includes the Apple Watch, the Huawei Watch and the LG G Watch Urbane. This watch fits me perfectly, but if you are a petite person, I suspect this might still be a little too large for you.

Display

 The panel is a little misleading. While the entire watch face is black, only the middle square is the actual OLED panel. I had hoped the entire thing was a screen, but big round OLEDs probably cost too much for the $16 price tag. You can see the screen in almost all conditions, except in bright sunlight, in which case you almost can’t see the screen at all. Resolution also isn’t that high, but it’s high enough to form icons. I doubt many people will be impressed by the screen at all, as this screen just isn’t that good, but it’s justified for the low price tag.

Battery

We have a Li-polymer battery with a capacity of 120 mAh, that can be charged to 100% around 2 hours. Battery life is good. I tried running down the battery and it took me about 4 days of intensive use before the battery died. A week of normal use seems attainable, however the manufacturer’s estimate of 1 month of standby, that seems a little farfetched. Let’s move on to talk about the software.

Features

Everything software related is taken care of by the companion app which you can download and install from the Apple App store and Google play store . The app itself is a mix of Chinese and English, but should be easy enough to figure out. Even the Bluetooth pairing is done within the app, and if you kill the app the Bluetooth connection breaks. Once paired, you can receive notifications and transfer fitness data to the phone.

Functionality here isn’t groundbreaking and definitely doesn’t measure up to a full featured smartwatch, and just remember that we’re talking about a $16 smartwatch. However, you can expect something on the level of fitness band functionalities.

First off, we have the health/sport related functions, this function set is a standard feature in any smartwatch/fitness band. This group of features consists of the calorie tracker, a pedometer, and the trajectory record; this will help you out a lot when you’re done with an exercise session, allowing you to know how many calories were burnt in that session and, in case that you were using the treadmill, it will tell us the exact distance that we traveled. I found the pedometer pretty accurate, but the calorie tracker, not so much.

It also features sleep monitor; but I don’t sleep with smartwatches so I didn’t use it then.

This smartwatch will let us know when we’re being called, and thanks to the caller ID, we can see the name of the person who’s calling us as long as we have them in our phonebook. It will also let us know when we have an SMS or any other kind of message on our phone. However, the info on each notification is pretty sparse, it only shows you who messaged you and does not show you the message itself.

There is also a remote camera feature where tapping on the watch snaps a photo on your phone, not that useful, but pretty cool.

Specifications

Hardware	Brand: MIFONE Bluetooth version: Bluetooth 4.0 RAM: 64MB ROM: 128MB Waterproof: Yes IP rating: IP67
Functions	Bluetooth calling: Caller’s name display,Phone call reminder Messaging: Message reminder Health tracker: Pedometer,Sleep monitor Remote control function: Remote Camera Notification: Yes Notification type: We-chat Anti-lost: Yes Alert type: Vibration Locking screen : 1 Other function: Alarm
Screen	Screen: OLED Screen resolution: 64 x 48 Screen size: 0.66 inch Operating mode: Touch Screen
Battery	Type of battery: Li-polymer Battery Battery Capacity: 120mAh Charging time: About 2hours Standby time: About 30 Days
General	People: Female table,Male table
Dial and Band	Shape of the dial: Round Case material: Aluminum Band material: Fluoroelastomer
Features	Compatible OS: Android,IOS Compatibility: Android 4.0 – 6.0 and iOS 7.0 – 9.3 system Language: Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch,English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian,Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese,Romanian,Russian,Simplified Chinese,Slovak, Slovenia, Spanish, Swedish, Thai,Traditional Chinese,Turkish,Ukrainian,Vietnamese Available color: Black,White
Weight and Size	Dial size: 4 x 0.68 cm / 1.57 x 0.27 inches Band size: 22.8 x 1.8 cm / 8.98 x 0.71 inches Product size (L x W x H): 22.80 x 4.00 x 0.68 cm / 8.98 x 1.57 x 0.27 inches Package size (L x W x H): 8.50 x 8.50 x 4.50 cm / 3.35 x 3.35 x 1.77 inches Product weight: 0.030 kg Package weight: 0.090 kg
Package Contents	Package Contents: 1 x MiFone L58 Smart Watch, 1 x Magnetic Buckle Charging Cable, 1 x Chinese-English User Manual