Maxima Max Pro X6 Review: Are Smartwatches Under Rs. 5,000 Worth It?

Smartwatches and fitness wearables are quite popular, especially amongst the youth of today. They are widely used, both for fitness as well as fashion purposes. There are ample choices in each price category in the Indian market, but off late, we've seen a lot of action in the sub-Rs. 5,000 segment. Usually, wearables in this price segment are just fitness trackers or notifiers and not full-fledged smartwatches.

Today, I have with me the Max Pro X6 from Indian watchmaker Maxima, which promises to be more than just a notifier. It packs in features such as SpO2 tracking, IP rating but most importantly, can also be used for answering phone calls, a feature that most watches in this segment lack. Is it better compared to proven feature watches such as the Redmi Watch or the Realme Watch 2 Pro? Let's find out.

Maxima Max Pro X6 price in India

The Maxima Max Pro X6 can be bought online via the company's own website or from online retailers for Rs. 3,999. It is available in a single 43mm case size. The smartwatch i`s available in four colours: Black, Black and Gold, Peach and Gold, and Silver.

You can also track sleeping habits using the Maxima Max Pro X6
Photo Credit: Robin John/Gadgets360

Maxima Max Pro X6 design

The Maxima Max Pro X6's design is heavily inspired by the Apple Watch as it features a rectangular casing and a crown on the right side. The watch has a metallic casing with a glossy finish to it which gives it a premium look and feel. It has a 1.7-inch display with a claimed 400nits of brightness. You can press the crown to go to the home screen and even rotate it, although there's no function attached to the rotating action as it is just for show.

Pressing the crown also lets you wake or turn off the screen, exit to the home page, stop activities, and a long press allows you to power down the device. It has a heart-rate sensor and a SpO2 sensor on the back along with two magnetic contact pins for charging. You'll also find the speaker and the microphone here, which is an awkward place to put it in my opinion, since your wrist tends to cover them when you're wearing it.

The Maxima Max Pro 6 features good quality rubber straps that are easy to detach and also replace. If you are not a fan of the black straps, you can swap them for any other 20mm watch straps. The watch is quite light and weighs just 44g. The Max Pro X6 is IP67 rated which means it should not be an issue while swimming or taking a shower. It is compatible with Android devices running on Android 5.0 and above and iOS devices running on iOS 9.0 and above. In the box, you get manuals, a warranty card and a charger that comes with a USB-A connector on one end and a proprietary magnetic charging pin on the other.

You cannot reply to notifications on the Maxima Max Pro X6
Photo Credit: Robin John/Gadgets360

Maxima Max Pro X6 software, interface and app

The Maxima Max Pro X6 runs on a custom user interface (UI) similar to the Fire-Boltt Talk. As mentioned earlier, the Max Pro X6 takes a lot of inspiration from the Apple Watch, and this influence trickles down to the software too. The UI looks decent but the display isn't very vivid due to low colour saturation. The icons and text aren't very sharp either and there are noticeable jaggedness along the edges of such UI elements. You get to set the app drawer to list style or the honeycomb style, which resembles the app drawer in the Apple Watch.

Swiping down from the home screen lets you check the weather, set the brightness level, enable/disable battery saver mode and also turn on the flashlight, which basically increases the screen brightness to the highest level. Swiping right brings up the step counter which shows you details such as the total number of steps taken in a day, the number of calories burnt, along with the highest and lowest number of steps you have achieved in a day. It also maintains a bar graph of the steps taken in the week which gives you a good idea of your activity at a glance.

The Maxima Max Pro X6 allows you to switch between honeycomb view and list view for the app drawer
Photo Credit: Robin John/Gadgets360

Swiping further right shows you the data collected during your sleep which includes your total sleep time, deep sleep and light sleep. Scrolling further down will show you a bar graph for the entire week similar to the step counter. Swiping to the right one more will show you all the health tracking features, starting with the heart-rate monitor and SpO2 tracker. The very last option is the Bluetooth phone calling feature. It shows your recent call records, a dial pad and also your contacts. You can store up to eight contacts on the watch itself. This has to be added to the watch manually with the help of the app. One thing to note is that you can't customise or shuffle the menu pages around.

Speaking of the app, Maxima Max Pro X6 needs the Da Fit app in order to pair with your smartphone. The app is available for both Android and iOS devices. The pairing process was seamless and I did not face any issues with that while pairing it with my Realme 6 Pro or even my iPhone 12. Holding down the home screen lets you swap between different watch faces that come preloaded. You can store up to five watch faces at a time on the watch.

You can also choose your desired ones from the Da Fit app, which offers plenty of options. Swiping up will show you all the notifications that you've received. The app lets you select which messaging or social media apps are allowed to send notifications to your watch.

The Maxima Max Pro X6 also allows you to use the watch as a remote shutter for your phone's camera too. You can use it to control the music playing on your phone, although you cannot store any music on the watch and it cannot read any of the song's metadata such as the song name, artist, etc.

The Maxima Max Pro X6 takes up to two hours to fully charge
Photo Credit: Robin John/Gadgets360

Maxima Max Pro X6 performance and battery life

I've used the Maxima Max Pro X6 for almost a month now and during this time, I had no issues wearing it for long hours on a daily basis. The display quality is decent and it gets really bright with good visibility outdoors too. I did not face any issues when using it under direct sunlight either. Since there is no auto-brightness function, you'll have to manually set the value each time you step outside.

The Max Pro X6 also works well as a notifier. You can get notifications from your WhatsApp chats, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook etc. It can show up to 13 lines of a message. It can also display messages that are in Hindi, although the formatting is a bit weird and hard to understand. However, the one thing that prevents the Max Pro X6 from being a true smartwatch is the fact that you cannot reply to any of the message notifications from the watch itself.

The Maxima Max Pro X6 allows you to answer calls directly from the watch. You can pick up the call from the watch itself once the call function is enabled from the settings. The speaker gets really loud but the microphone quality is average at best, which is to be expected in this price range. You will have to hold the watch a bit closer to your mouth so that the person on the other end of the line can hear you clearly. Despite the weird placement of the microphone and speaker, it worked decently well during my testing.

One bizarre quirk that ticked me off, and something we noticed with the Fire-Boltt Talk too, was that once you've enabled the calling function, the watch's speaker acts as a Bluetooth speaker and any kind of audio from your phone, be it from YouTube, Netflix or any other app, is routed to the watch's speaker. The only way to avoid this is by disabling the call function or by disabling the 'Media audio' permission in the Bluetooth settings on Android. 

The heart rate sensor was accurate for most parts when compared to the Amazfit Verge Lite. The app also allows you to monitor your heart rate continuously throughout the day. Keep in mind that this will drain out your battery faster. I ran our standard tests which involved walking 1,000 steps to test the step tracking. The Maxima Max Pro X6 registered around 1,004 and 1,007 for the two tests I ran, which is an acceptable result.

The Maxima Max Pro X6 offers eight different sports activity modes
Photo Credit: Robin John/Gadgets360

The SpO2 tracking was also very accurate when tested alongside a medical-grade oximeter. However, I would still suggest using dedicated devices made for these tests rather than relying on your smartwatch. The watch also has sleep tracking abilities and in my testing, it was quite accurate.

Maxima claims up to 10 days of battery life for the Max Pro X6 with the calling feature turned off, and about three days with the calling feature on. In my testing, the watch lasted for four days with Bluetooth calling off and around two to three days with Bluetooth calling on. For a watch with no built-in GPS, I expected a lot more runtime between charges. 

During this time, the watch was always connected to the phone with notifications for all social media apps along with phone calls and SMS enabled. I tested this with the quick view enabled, which turns on the display with a flick of the wrist. The watch does not display the percentage of battery left in it. It just shows you a bar under quick toggles. You will have to access the app every now and then to check the battery percentage.

As for charging, the watch took about two hours to charge completely. The proprietary charger is a bit awkward to handle. You have to make sure you place that at an angle so that it fits in place and doesn't accidentally disconnect.

The DaFit app has a lot of watch faces to choose from
Photo Credit: Robin John/Gadgets360

Verdict

Smartwatches with calling features under Rs. 5,000 are very rare. The Maxima Max Pro X6 is one of the few exceptions that offers this feature in this segment. The ability to make calls on the go from your watch is a very useful feature. The watch also has a bright display, does fairly well in terms of recording sleep data and your steps. I feel like the Max Pro X6 could've done much better in terms of battery and its software ,which could use a bit more refining to make the UI experience better. Besides the Max Pro X6, you can also check out our review of the Fire Boltt Talk which also has calling functions and is priced similarly.