Pros:
– Sturdy build with 5ATM water resistance
– Stylish design (though Apple-esque)
– Large, high-res AMOLED display
– Built-in GPS, Bluetooth calling
– Fairly reliable health tracking
– Decent battery backup
– Peppy and lag-free UI
Cons:
– Pedometer is sluggish, GPS is flaky
– Companion app needs improvement, displays ads
– Only one slot for watchface of your choice on the watch
– Pricing isn’t competitive
Price: Rs 7,499
Rating: 3.5/5
Noise is a popular name in the budget fitness wearables category offering stylish yet affordable watches to track basic health and fitness parameters. With their latest ColorFit Pro 6 Max, the company aspires to compete in a couple of weight classes higher. Its feature list does look impressive, but India is a highly competitive market. Does it pack enough punch to command a premium over some excellent offerings from the likes of Xiaomi, Huawei and Amazfit? Let’s find out.
Apple-inspired elegant design, sturdy and swim-proof build, comfortable to wear
The Noise ColorFit Pro 6 Max design is heavily inspired by the last few generations of the Apple Watch series with a rectangular dial and a circular crown at the top right and a physical button below it. The build quality is quite good and so is the finish. It also has a 5ATM water resistance rating that makes it swim-proof. The display curves towards the edges and blends into the stainless steel frame. The combination of matte and glossy finish lends the watch a lot of elegance and keeps it largely smudge-free.
You can choose between a metal, silicone and leather strap during purchase (we got the latter). You do not get spare straps in the bundle but you can replace them with any third party 22 mm straps. The mechanism is fairly standard and simple. Though the exact weight hasn’t been specified, the watch doesn’t feel heavy despite the metal construction and is comfortable to wear for long hours. The leather straps not only look good but do not cause sweating or skin irritation even after wearing the watch all day.
Large and sharp AMOLED display with just one slot for downloadable watchface
This Noise watch has a large and lively 1.96-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 410 x 502 pixels. It has thick bezels but one can mask them by using a dark watch face. The display is sharp enough to read content clearly on it and gets bright enough to be perfectly legible under bright sunlight. You get a brightness slider, which at 50% level is good enough when indoors or even outdoors post sunset. You will need to manually push it higher under bright sunlight as there is no auto brightness adjustment here.
There is no mention of any scratch resistant glass or oleophobic coating either in the spec-sheet, but the screen remained scratch-free after a couple of weeks of use. Also, I didn’t have to wipe it frequently during testing as it doesn’t attract too many fingerprints or smudge marks. You can flick your wrist to turn the screen on or press a physical button to wake it; both work well. Covering the screen with your palm turns it off. You can turn off the flick gesture during your sleep hours or when in a dark room like a theatre.
The watch comes loaded with a handful of watch faces and you get access to a larger collection through the Noisefit companion app that you need to install and sync this watch with before using it. The transfer process is quite brisk, which is good to see. However, you get just one slot on the watch to store a watchface of your choosing; the preloaded ones aren’t removable. You can also use in-app AI to generate a custom background for a watchface by describing it in words; a fun feature to have.
Lively and lag-free watch UI but the companion app needs improvement
As I just mentioned, you need to download the Noisefit app, sign up, and sync your device with it over Bluetooth. It is available for Android and iOS both. The setup takes a few minutes but it is generally smooth. The app gives you access to watch faces and further breakdown of the health metrics and workout data. You can access some of it on the watch itself. For instance, you can view the details of your workouts or breakup of sleep stages for the previous night on the watch screen without having to open the app.
The user interface, or Nebula UI 2.0 – as the company likes to call it, is simple, lag-free and quite peppy with nice use of coloured icons and widgets. You can swipe up on the home screen for quick settings, swipe down for notifications, swipe right for quick access to commonly used functions and swipe left to browse through various widgets like daily goals progress, heart rate, sleep or stress data and more.
The crown lets you access different functions of this watch and also scroll through menus and watchfaces when rotated. It serves as a back button too when pressed. The other physical button gives you instant access to different workouts. While the UI is pretty good, the companion app needs improvement. The Noisefit app isn’t complex but can certainly be more intuitive as I had to look around for certain settings like goals. Also, a more detailed breakdown of workouts would have been nicer given the pricing of this watch.
It employs AI to provide you with a report of your activities but it can be a hit or a miss. One thing you do not want in a fitness tracker is inconsistencies, and the developers have some work to do here. I also found some missing data for certain days, especially steps count and sleep data which probably did not get transferred from the watch on those days for some reason. We had noticed such an issue even in the Noise ColorFit Pro 4 watch a couple of years back, and the company doesn’t seem to have fixed it yet.
And lastly, the app displays ads (mostly other Noise products), something I do not appreciate in fitness apps. Beyond that, things are generally smooth. All the health cards are neatly listed one below the other on the home screen that gives you a fair overview of things. They display your heart rate, stress and blood oxygen levels, sleep data, daily progress, workout details and more. We hope Noise fixes the above issues in a future software update.
Reliable health tracking, but steps and distance tracking is erratic without GPS
The Noise ColorFit Pro 6 Max has sensors to monitor various health parameters like heart rate, blood oxygen, stress levels and sleep, and some of them round the clock. The speed of SpO2 measurements is pretty brisk. If you wear the watch right and keep your hand steady, you get a near-accurate score in about 20 seconds. The SpO2 reading is generally a point below a clinical oximeter, which is par for the course. In fact, the general health tracking here is quite reliable for the segment.
The watch measures your heart rate and stress levels all day without draining the battery much, which is commendable. Sleep tracking works well too. The overall sleep duration from the time I fell asleep till I was up seemed correct. It tracks the quantum of light sleep, deep sleep, REM periods and awake time. This watch claims to track 100 different workout modes that include your usual indoor and outdoor walking, running, cycling, swimming, weight training and their variations along with yoga and popular sports like badminton.
It also has a built-in GPS module to track your outdoor activities, but it’s a bit flaky. It takes about a minute or two to get a GPS lock, and post that it complains about a poor connection every few minutes even when in open areas. Incidentally, the distance tracking with GPS is quite accurate; I wonder why it keeps complaining. Unfortunately, things are not the same with GPS off. The reported distance is at least 20 to 25 per cent lower and the pedometer under-reports the steps count.
The pedometer is rather late to jump into action even when you are moving around. I can understand if it doesn’t factor in a few steps if you move from your living room to the bedroom, but at times it doesn’t bother reporting hundreds of them. For instance, when I water my plants, most good fitness trackers report close to 500 steps, but the Noise ColorFit Pro 6 Max thought I was stationary during the 15-minute activity. The issue may stem from the fact that this watch lacks an accelerometer to detect the movement accurately.
Conversely, the watch adds to the steps count significantly even while doing fairly static strength training in the gym after choosing a Weight Training workout mode on the watch.
Moving on, the basic breakdown of your workout like heart rate variations and calories burned is available on the watch itself along with the recovery time. Menstrual tracking is also available and so are sedentary reminders to move around when you are stationary for too long. The watch is 5ATM water resistant and can be worn for a swim without a worry.
Yes, there’s Bluetooth calling too and some more
The Noise ColorFit Pro 6 Max supports Bluetooth calling function, wherein you can make and receive calls from the watch itself as long as it is synced with a smartphone with an active connection. The built-in speaker and mic do a fair job when indoors, but the speaker isn’t loud enough. I would suggest sticking to the phone or bluetooth earphones for important calls. This watch lets you dial a preset SOS number without having to reach for the phone; a handy feature to have.
You can also choose to receive notifications and messages from various apps installed on your phone on the watch screen. You can read the messages but cannot reply from the watch. In addition, there are a bunch of utility apps preloaded on the watch like a calculator, stopwatch, music player, camera control, weather updates and some more.
Acceptable battery backup if you do not engage is too much calling from the watch
The Noise ColorFit Pro 6 Max provides a decent battery backup under normal load as long as you do not turn on the Always-on Display (AOD) feature or indulge in excessive calling. The company claims a battery life of 7 days on a single charge under typical usage scenario, and it delivers on the promise. The battery life can vary depending on your usage pattern and the features you turn on.
During our test run simulating a real-world usage scenario with continuous heart rate and stress monitoring turned on, two hours of total GPS usage, live tracking of three hour-long indoor workouts, two SpO2 readings daily, sleep tracking for four nights and under 10 minutes of daily calling, the watch’s battery lasted a full week, which is not bad at all. The watch takes well under the mentioned two hours to charge fully with the bundled magnetic pin charger.
Price, verdict and alternatives
The Noise ColorFit Pro 6 Max is priced at Rs 7,499 in India with a one year warranty and an extra 500 if you choose the metal strap. Typically, it wouldn’t have been a bad price tag for a metal-clad stylish and swim-proof fitness watch with a large and sharp AMOLED display, built-in GPS, reliable health tracking, Bluetooth calling and good battery backup, but probably a year ago. Things changed drastically in 2024 with the arrival of some serious competition, and some for even less than half that price.
Two options that come to mind straight away are the Honor Choice Watch and Redmi Watch 5 Lite, both offering a very similar feature set and for less than Rs 4,000. Their fitness tracking, battery backup and companion apps are better too. And if you wish to spend closer to Rs 7,500, you can even score the Amazfit Active with much better tracking of the lot and a superior companion app.
Given the competition, it is hard to recommend paying a premium for this Noise watch unless you like its design, and yes, it does look more premium than the other three. But even then, I would recommend it only if you spot it closer to Rs 5,000. The ColorFit Pro 6 Max surely has potential but Noise needs to squash the bugs to realise it.