Metal case and AMOLED display: $50 Haylou Solar 5 smart watch review

By: Nickolay Polovinkin | 08.11.2024, 12:18

Haylou's newest product, the Solar 5, is a rare combination of features: what was in previous versions has been improved, and what was not - added. Haylou Solar 5 review shows that the room for innovation is not large, they are limited to the bar "up to 49 dollars". But even more so, you can hardly expect to find a watch with a music player, voice recorder, games and NFC tag support in this budget. Of course, on board there is what is already demanded: a full gentleman's set of tracked body parameters, a lot of sports modes and call management. And it's all packed into a nice and clever interface, so the hardware keeps up with the spectacular IP68 water-resistant metal case. Perhaps this model is one of the best options among inexpensive smart watches for the undemanding user who doesn't need specific applications, GPS, WI-Fi and other attributes of higher price categories. Of course, there are nuances, we'll tell you about them now too.

4 reasons to buy the Haylou Solar 5:

Solid appearance, especially with a metal bracelet, as well as IP68 waterproofing;
Tracking of all major health parameters (heart rate, oxygen, stress, sleep);
more than a hundred supported sport modes with a user-friendly interface and the possibility of exporting to Strava;
inbuilt memory and the functions it provides: audio player, voice recorder and small photo storage.

3 reasons not to buy the Haylou Solar 5:

the large case makes the watch uncomfortable to wear on a thin wrist;
you want a watch with GPS for offline activities or NFC for contactless payments;
you need to track your swim workouts.

What's in the box?

The Haylou Solar 5 is available in several packages, which differ in the colour of the watch case (black or silver), as well as the straps. In our case, the silver watch came with a metal bracelet, a replacement silicone strap, a bracelet adjustment tool, a charging cable, and a minimal paper manual. The included bracelet adjustment tool is handy because the bracelet is designed for the widest possible wrist and in the vast majority of cases needs to be shortened. To make the bracelet shorter, just press out the fixing pin with the tool and remove the excess bracelet elements, and then connect the break with the same pin. This is how any watch bracelets are adjusted, nothing unusual.

What do they look like?

The Haylou Solar 5 is a fairly large watch of the classic type, with a round display and a fixed bezel. The five-minute markers are engraved on the bezel, and the 12-hour segment houses the brand name. The case diameter of the watch is 48 mm, the lug to lug distance is 53 mm, the maximum thickness is 13.5 mm and the width of the bracelet or strap is 22 mm. The main part of the case is matte and metallic, the bezel segments alternately differ slightly in surface texture.

The back cover is glossy and plastic. It has a heart rate monitor sensor, charging contacts, as well as speaker and microphone holes.

There are two control buttons. The top one has a rotating head with a notch and supports both push and twist control. The letter "H" is partially matted on the end. The bottom button is also rotatable, but only pressing it works functionally. There is a red rim around the circumference of the button.

Quality assembly without gaps and backlashes, pleasant clicks when turning the wheel. The metal bracelet gives the watch a solidity. Judging by the labelling, it should be made of stainless steel, although it feels quite light. The watch definitely looks more expensive than its price, it's not a shame to put it in the collection next to something classic.

Is the display good?

It's good: with a diagonal (or rather, diameter) of 1.58 inches (40 mm), 480*480 resolution (sounds strange for a round shape) and 1000 nits brightness. Of course, AMOLED technology is used here, helping to properly implement the Always On mode. The display is slightly recessed under the level of the bezel to be less likely to collect scratches and other possible damage. The refresh rate is 60Hz, smartphones have accustomed us to big numbers, but even this is enough for pleasantly smooth animations when scrolling through lists, for example. The dials on the display look bright and high quality.

How to connect and set up?

Haylou Solar 5 requires synchronisation with the Haylou Fun mobile app to work. Data exchange between the watch and your smartphone takes place via Bluetooth. In the app, click on the add watch button, select the device that appears, then scan the QR code that appears on the watch's display with your smartphone camera. Your new watch and all of its associated features now appear in the app. Most of these are universal to all Haylou watch models, but there are a couple of features specific to the Solar 5 model.

The universal functions include:

dial selection (there is a large catalogue of ready-made ones, but if you don't like anything, we take any picture and make it the background for the digital or analogue watch);
settings for round-the-clock monitoring of heart rate, stress and oxygen (you can turn it on, but it will consume a little more charge);
selecting which apps are allowed to send notifications to the watch;
alarms;
enable bluetooth calls and a list of numbers for speed dialling directly from the watch;
templates for quick responses to incoming calls;
reminders to warm up, drink water and take medication;
firmware updates, resets and other service stuff.

Of the interesting things that appear in the application specifically when working with this model of watch:

a gallery where you can upload some pictures for viewing on the device (probably the digital analogue of "wallet family photo", though there are other ideas);
music (also a gallery, just for mp3/wav files that could be listened to on the watch);
electronic postcard (here it is suggested to save frequently used QR codes, though I haven't managed to find them in the watch interface yet);
pin-code option: in this mode, when you take the watch off your hand, it will automatically lock and require you to enter the pin-code to access any functions except for viewing the main screen.

How are the controls?

As we already know, there are only three controls: a touchscreen display and two physical buttons. The top button switches on the display to show the dial, and pressing it again opens the menu. Rotating this button allows you to scroll through lists or different dial styles. The bottom button manages to simply switch on a list of sports to further trigger a workout, pressing it again switches the list off and takes us to the main dial. However, in the settings you can assign this button to call any other section of the menu.

The touchscreen display takes care of all other navigation functions. Gestures from left to right and top to bottom open two different "curtains" for quick access to different functions, swipe from bottom to top shows a list of notifications received from the smartphone, and a gesture from right to left of the main dial allows you to scroll through separate information screens with activity, heart rate, stress, oxygen and sleep graphs, as well as the music control screen and weather forecast.

What can they do?

Solar 5 is probably the most functionally "stuffed" Haylou watch we've ever seen. It has all the features inherent in gadgets of this price range, but the developers didn't stop at the base and poured in a bunch of bonuses. The basis of such diversity is not software, but hardware feature: built-in memory (though, a very modest volume). New applications can't be installed on this watch, so everything that is available to us is visible in the menu.

Let's start with the main one.

The watch itself has many interchangeable dials. Five basic designs are "sewn" into the watch, and in addition to them you can download a lot of additional ones and switch between them by turning the button. This is a step up from many previous models, where you could only store one version of a custom dial on the watch.

Tracking of key metrics: steps, heart rate, blood oxygen, stress, sleep, women's cycle, with the ability to view daily graphs on the watch itself, not just in the app.

Voice functions. The watch is able to work in bluetooth-headset mode, for this purpose it is equipped with a microphone and a speaker. You can both receive calls received on the phone and call favourite numbers, or even dial an arbitrary number from the on-screen keyboard. There is an SOS item for emergency call to a preset number. A separate menu item is responsible for calling the voice assistant (the one that works on your smartphone is used).

Basic utilities. alarm clock, stopwatch, two types of timers ("pomodoro" and ordinary), calculator, torch (brightly glowing display, there is no separate LED), weather forecast. There is a camera control function, but, as in other Haylou watches, it is not an emulation of a universal bluetooth button, but control of the shutter of a simple camera built into the Bluetooth Fun app. That is, you can't control shooting in the regular camera app, nor can you use the watch as a viewfinder, which is a pity.

Among other things, there are breathing exercises and "emotions" - a fun function to determine your mood (not stress level, but exactly "what kind of emoticon you are now").

And now for the unusual features.

Music player. Yes, from almost any smartwatch you can control the smartphone's music player, but here you are offered to choose between this familiar function and playing audio files from the inbuilt memory. The sound is produced by the speaker of the watch itself, its quality is acceptable, but, of course, more suitable for voice communication than for music. There is no headphone connection function. Unfortunately, it takes a long time to download audio files (mp3 and wav are supported), four songs with the total volume of 25 Mb took me ten minutes to download. The manufacturer does not explicitly specify the storage size, but notes that the memory will be enough for about 10 songs of 3 Mb each. Modest, but thank you for that. You can't consider this function as a serious player, but you can, for example, download a few audio memes and switch them on at appropriate moments, surprising your colleagues.

Album-gallery. Similar to audio files, you can download pictures (up to 50) to the watch's memory via the Haylou Fun app via Bluetooth and then view them there. There is a function of automatic slide show, and rotation of the wheel is responsible for the zoom of the photo (should be convenient for cheat sheets for the exam). And you can also prepare pictures with barcodes of discount cards and always have them with you, not on your smartphone, but right in the watch. Or just admire kitties.

Voice recorder. Well, we have an inbuilt memory, we can play audio files through the inbuilt speaker, the microphone is also in place, why not? It's quite a working thing. Built-in memory should be enough for 70 minutes of dictaphone recording, but provided that the storage space is not full of kitties.

Games. Yes, yes, quite real games, reminiscent of old mobile phones with colour displays. There are four of them: platformer "flying bird", puzzle "2048", good old dice and air combat, a variation on the theme of Space Invaders. All games are controlled directly by the touch screen, which spoils ergonomics a bit (your finger obscures part of the usable space). It all looks bright, spectacular, about the display of such quality in times of button phones with STN-matrixes it was possible only to dream.

NFC. This is a surprise in budget watches. However, we are not talking about contactless payments, the watch can only copy an existing tag and then use it in readers. Unfortunately, during the test I didn't have a suitable tag to test this function, and the watch can't copy bank cards and magnetic keys from entrances.

What's up with sports?

The Haylou Solar 5 isn't positioned and doesn't look like a strictly sports watch. Nevertheless, they are just as well suited for sports. It seems that in this model Haylou took into account the experience of previous solutions and made everything right, correcting minor flaws. Right from the watch, you can start a workout in any of the supported sport modes, with the recently used mode appearing at the top of the list for a later start. During a workout, the display looks informative and convenient, showing all the important parameters (their set differs depending on the selected type of workout). Finally, you can link your Strava account to the Haylou Fun app and your workout data will be automatically transferred there. For the ideal, of course, it lacks autonomous work with GPS, but do not forget in what price category we are in. The accuracy of the pedometer is quite high, according to my observations, the deviation is within 1%.

The supported types of workouts themselves are many, they are divided into several groups:

outdoors: from walking and jogging to mountaineering and canoeing;
indoors: machines, barbells, yoga and other Pilates (for those who find it difficult, there's darts);
ball games: besides the obvious football and other ball games, this includes, for example, hockey, bowling and billiards;
dancing: various types, including pole dancing;
martial arts: the popular boxing, karate and judo, as well as the more exotic sumo, sanda and mulankuan;
Recreational sports: Frisbee, paragliding, car and motorbike racing, rowing, horse racing, and more, up to and including tug-of-war.

Unfortunately, swimming isn't on the list, so despite being waterproof, the Haylou Solar 5 isn't designed to track such activity.

And what about battery life?

The 360mAh battery provides a week's worth of watch life. This is assuming that continuous monitoring of everything is enabled, and the watch is generally used very actively (but without the Always On function). In a more gentle mode, the charge can be enough for a fortnight. Overall, this is an average battery life, not small, but far from record-breaking. It takes about an hour to charge from zero to 70%, and after another hour and a half, the full 100% is reached.

Three things to know about the Haylou Solar 5:

it's a fairly large, classically shaped watch with a high-quality AMOLED display and an IP68 dust- and water-resistant metal case;
it has all the usual smartwatch features, from tracking heart rate and other parameters and hundreds of sports workouts to working in bluetooth-headset mode;
have inbuilt memory, a standalone audio player and voice recorder, as well as photo storage and NFC (but no payment support).

For those who want to know more