Colossal survivability: a review of the Haylou IRON N1 rugged smartwatch

You know about rugged smartphones with huge batteries, of course. But what about a similarly styled smartwatch? Big, sturdy, with a month of battery life and water resistance up to 50 metres? Let's add to it the obligatory set of tracked parameters (heart rate, oxygen, stress, sleep), bluetooth calls, and in addition optional but useful functions: synchronisation with Strava, compass and barometer. Haylou IRON N1 is perhaps the most extreme smartwatch we've seen in recent times.

4 reasons to buy the Haylou IRON N1:

• Rugged case with 50 metre water resistance and MIL-STD 810H certification
• High-capacity battery and tremendous autonomy
• Heart rate, oxygenation and sleep tracking, bluetooth calls
• Over a hundred sport modes and synchronisation with the popular Strava service

3 reasons not to buy the Haylou IRON N1:

• Large size and weight
• Limited sports functions in software
• Sloppy localisation and minor firmware bugs

What's in the box?

The watch comes with only a charging cable with USB-A interface and a magnetic attachment, as well as a small paper manual. A 22mm wide removable silicone strap is already attached to the watch.

What does it look like?

The Haylou IRON N1 smartwatch both looks and feels very brutal. The watch is large (45x53mm, lug to lug 59.5mm), thick (15.7mm), heavy (as much as 86g), powerful, with a sturdy metal frame. It's a kind of rugged oversize militaria. It's hard to imagine them on a thin hand.

The model is available in black and grey colours. We got just the second variant, and it's not shiny silver metal, as shown on the official product renders, but a completely different kind of grey, matte, which looks very cool.

Only the chamfers on the contour of the display, button signatures and four marks on the perimeter of the "dial" shine with polished metal. There are three buttons themselves: two orange ones on the sides at the bottom and one grey, round, rotating one on the top of the right edge.

The back "cover" is made of black matte plastic, in the centre it contains a block with sensors, and at the bottom - the contact group for charging.

Is the display of Haylou IRON N1 good?

The AMOLED display is large (2.13 inches), it has an unusual octagonal shape and a resolution of 410x502 with a density of 331 ppi. Covering the display glass, like all watches, should have increased durability. We are not informed about the specifics, the material is called "gem-grade glass", apparently with a hint of mineral origin and corresponding hardness. The surface of the glass is somewhat recessed into the case, which gives additional protection. The display supports the Always On function, in this mode the screen saver in the form of analogue or digital clock with real time indication is constantly displayed on a black background.

How to connect and configure?

To work with the watch, you will need the Haylou Fun mobile app and a free account in Haylou services. In the app, select the add a new device function, then scan the QR code from the watch's display and you're done!

Haylou Fun allows you to accumulate and view information on all the main indicators tracked by the watch: steps, calories, heart rate, workout records, and more. As for the watch itself, you can customise it from the app too. Here you can choose a dial from the gallery of ready-made ones or make your own, set parameters for monitoring different indicators, customise notifications and update the firmware. There are a lot of ready-made display designs, you can get stuck for a long time, choosing the most suitable one.

How are the controls?

The Haylou IRON N1 features a touchscreen display and three physical control buttons. The left button opens a menu with a list of sports, starts and stops your workout. The bottom right (the same orange as the left) is responsible for calling up the menu. The top right one switches the display and the watch itself on and off. Yes, alas, despite being round and rotating, it doesn't offer any navigation options like scrolling through lists, which is a pity. Perhaps this is due to the peculiarities of the waterproof design.

Thus, all menu navigation is performed by means of the touch display. Swipe from the left edge opens a side curtain with a weather widget and icons for quick access to some functions. Swiping down from the top edge opens another curtain, it contains mainly service functions (brightness and vibration settings, night mode, power saving, device information, charge and other settings).

Swiping left from the right edge of the main dial opens a customisable gallery of widgets, with activity data, heart rate, sleep, weather and player control by default. And if you swipe up from the bottom edge of the display, it opens a list of notifications received from your smartphone.

What can Haylou IRON N1 do?

In terms of software Haylou IRON N1 is a typical smartwatch of its price category. Almost. At least two functions stand out from the usual list, they are compass and barometer. Everything is fine with the second one, it not only plausibly shows the current pressure, but also builds a graph of its change. But I never managed to calibrate the compass. I could not make the measurement error less than 20 degrees, which is not good for a navigation tool. It is possible that this is a software defect, and it will be corrected in the firmware update.

Since we are talking about nuances, I'll mention localisation. There are no problems with English. But some strange font is used for Cyrillic, menu items start differently with small and capital letters - in general, there is an unpleasant carelessness. For example, you can forcibly set the English language on the watch, but at the nearest synchronisation it will change to the language set on the smartphone. Fortunately, this is also a purely software feature, which can be written off to an early version of the firmware.

But let's get back to the main functions. Among the voice tools here there is a function of dialling a number on the phone, a list of contacts for a quick call and all contacts from the phone book, a voice assistant (not a separate one, but the one used on the smartphone) and a list of calls. That is, the watch can act as a full-fledged headset.

The fitness group of applications includes a report on steps and calories, a list of sports (more on this below) and a training log.

Monitoring of different parameters. These are heart rate, sleep, blood oxygen and "blood pressure". In quotes because it's some kind of synthetic parameter that rates something (probably similar to stress) on a hundred-point scale. It's not very clear, but it's nice to see that you have another metric that's normal. In the same group, let's put an app for tracking a woman's cycle and a breathing trainer.

All sorts of utilities. Weather, calendar, calculator, stopwatch and timer. There are remote smartphone interaction features. You can beep it to find a lost person. There is a music player control (though the name of the current track is not displayed) and also smartphone camera control. The latter function is implemented in a simplified form, in fact, it's just a button that launches the camera in the interface of the Haylou Fun app and allows you to take a picture. It's a pity that it's so simple, because such a huge display would be great to use as a viewfinder.

That's about it. In terms of functionality the stuffing is quite decent. You won't be able to install other applications here, but you can't demand that from a $49 watch.

How are things with sports?

Haylou IRON N1 can hardly be called a sports watch, it's not a "sports car" after all, but an "off-roader". Nevertheless, it seems to be the first watch in Haylou's lineup that has a synchronisation function with Strava, which is an important argument for those who like to record their workouts. This synchronisation works perfectly smoothly. The only thing is that only workouts done after you've linked your Strava account are synchronised, they are not transferred retroactively.

A separate button of the same name on the case is dedicated to sports, which opens the list of available types of workouts. The picture is spoilt by an obvious software flaw: this list cannot be edited, and from a smartphone you can add only one option to the list on the watch out of a huge number of available sports. That is, if you want to take into account, say, strength and core training (both of which are not on the list on the watch), you'll have to go into the app and change the settings between them.

As for the sports themselves, there are a huge number of them, over a hundred. In addition to the banal running and cycling disciplines there are:

• indoors: different fitness equipment, gymnastics, aerobics and even exercises with a massage roller;
• outdoors: fun "fishing" mode (I wonder how many calories an hour of sitting with a fishing rod burns), bungee jumping and gyroscooter (I guess it's not easy to lose weight with it either);
• swimming, a bunch of game sports (this is where I first learnt about Pickleball) and various dances, including folk dances (no gopak);
• martial arts, winter sports and all sorts of things (from horse riding to Frisbee).

If you're a serious exerciser, you may have reservations about the parameters displayed during a workout. They are too fitness-orientated, for example, when running, the display shows, among other things, calories burned, but does not show the current pace. And GPS-related workouts (running, walking, outdoor cycling, and more) can't be launched from the watch itself, only from the app. It is clear that the watch does not have a GPS sensor, but I would like a software implementation of launching any workout from the watch, it is very convenient.

Haylou IRON N1 is a rugged watch, right?

Yes, one of the main features of the Haylou IRON N1 is its security. We are already used to the IPX8 labelling, which indicates that the watch can be immersed in water for short periods of time. But here the developers went further: IRON N1 has IP69K marking (the highest class in this scale) and separately specified water protection of five atmospheres. This rating in theory allows immersion to a depth of 50 metres, that is, the watch is suitable at least for full-fledged swimming. The design even provides drainage for quick drainage of water that gets on the case, and in the menu there is a corresponding function that helps to get rid of moisture by vibration.

In addition, the watch complies with the US military standard MIL-STD 810H. This is the most recent and detailed set of requirements in the entire 810 series. For certification, the device is tested to withstand shocks, drops, vibrations, high and low temperatures and pressures, as well as dust, sand, salt spray and even mould. So behind the brutal exterior is a very real protection.

And what about autonomy?

Off-road smartphones can often boast good autonomy, and the situation with watches is similar. The impressive 850 mAh battery, according to the manufacturer, can last for 100 days in standby mode and a month in normal mode. This is three times more than typical indicators for smartwatches of this level. In a couple of weeks of testing, I still haven't managed to drain the battery, already charged "out of the box", despite active use and continuous heart rate tracking.

Three things to know about the Haylou IRON N1:

• Is a large smartwatch with MIL-STD 810H class protection and 5 atmospheres of water resistance;
• Has an extended capacity battery and up to 100 days of battery life;
• Equipped with heart rate, blood oxygen and sleep trackers, as well as a range of fitness functions with the ability to export data to Strava.