One of my favorite things about Huaqiangbei, the world’s craziest tech market, is the diverse range of wares available in its various stalls. Visit this market in Shenzhen, China, and you’ll find thousands of small retailers selling a wide range of products, with the majority being branded or inspired by Apple.
I found $9 AirPods Pro that were original and a great bargain, as well as a host of drones and other tech products. The strangest purchase? This $12 Apple Watch Series 10, which resembles the original Apple Watch at least until you start using it.
Here’s the story of a bizarre Apple Watch Series 10, which is, in fact, an Apple Watch, but also definitely isn’t.
Apple Watch in name and style
If you saw this on someone’s wrist, you’d immediately think it was an original Apple Watch. It features the same large display, digital crown, and power key that you’ll find on an official Apple Watch.
Turn it over, and it also appears to be an official product, although it lacks some of the hallmarks that you’ll notice when you place it next to an authentic one. It features a ceramic case, a heart rate monitor, and comes with a sport band that is identical to an official Apple product.
When you turn it on, there’s no setup; instead, it boots directly into the homescreen, which resembles Watch OS. Even the app drawer features the same zoomed-out view as on Apple’s products.
There’s a host of apps that all feature the same icons as the Apple Watch and work well. There are also a few apps you won’t find preloaded on an Apple Watch, such as Alipay, which is one of the two super apps used by everyone in China in every part of daily life. There are also shameless copies of most Watch OS apps, including Activity, Workout, Messages, and much more.
You could be fooled into thinking that this is an official Apple Watch. However, once you start to dig in further, you’ll quickly notice that it’s not an official Apple Watch.
But not in nature
The most appealing thing about the Apple Watch is its connectivity to your iPhone. The least appealing thing about this Apple Watch? There’s no way to connect it to your phone, at least that I have found.
To pair it, you first have to go into a settings menu that tries to mimic Watch OS, but fails miserably. Instead of the general menu, you have a universal menu, which is the result of a bad translation from Mandarin to English.
At the bottom, there is an option to pair with a new phone, which generates a QR code that you need to scan with an app. However, there is no indication of which app to use for scanning. If you simply use your phone’s camera, it redirects you to a random Google search, which is the default behavior for most phones when they cannot recognize the endpoint for the QR code URL. I spent an hour trying to find a way to connect this, but to no avail.
Beyond the lack of a companion app, there are also a few other notable aspects. The haptics are strange and activate in two stages. The touch response on the screen is considerably poorer than that of Apple’s products. There’s also a host of apps that are downright strange and do very little, such as one that lets you make it an AI Watch, whatever that means.
Despite this, some people would be happy using this as their watch, especially given its price and a few of its features.
Apple could learn from this imitation
As shocking as it sounds, Apple could learn from this watch. First, the app drawer features a kaleidoscope view that allows you to cycle through all installed apps in a more intuitive and user-friendly manner than the list or grid views, which are also available. Second, this Watch has slightly better step counting than the original Apple Watch Series 10 on my other wrist.
The biggest surprise is that, aside from notifications and phone connection, this is fundamentally a good watch. It accurately displays the time, and the fitness and activity features work. Although it lacks the polish of an official product, and you’ll likely never receive an update, it’s available for a fraction of the price.
Dubbed the Watch S10 Pro, it’s not a Pro watch and doesn’t offer the full experience of an Apple Watch, but could be ideal as a starter watch for a child or if you’re extremely limited by budget. After all, it costs less than 5% of a real Apple Watch and offers considerably more than a $10 watch you could buy anywhere else. For most people, that’s a worthwhile trade-off, even if it won’t be making its way onto any best smartwatches list anytime soon.