Rogbid Mille - a bit ugly, but quite a nice smart watch

I feel bad for disparaging Mille, because my truth is highly debatable. Judging ugliness is mostly a matter of taste. I don't like square clocks, and I don't like anything that looks like a toy clock. Well, how many people are there who proudly wear the old Casio quartz watch, and I also vomit (with a slight exaggeration).

It comes in a simple black box, there are not many accessories, it comes with a description and a magnetic charging cable, nothing else. You don't need more, because when you take the watch and take it out of the box, you will only deal with it anyway.

It is a fairly large, not very light piece, and the strap is also much stiffer than what we are used to from silicone straps. I don't want to exaggerate the appearance, it's certain that strap watches are not made to be worn with a tuxedo, if you're pushing a wheelbarrow or stacking bricks, it doesn't matter.

The Rogbid Mille measures 5,0 x 4,4 x 1,3 cm and weighs 60 grams, so it's about as thick as the Amazfit T-Rex 2.

The design of the smart watch is visually very simple, there is no logo, no protruding parts, only glass slightly recessed into the frame. The frame around the glass, which is quite shiny and has a plastic effect, is not actually plastic, but metal, and feels quite thick. Let's say that the screw imitations pressed into the metal somehow do not help the appearance much (again, just in my opinion).

The body of the watch is plastic anyway, but you can feel that they did not skimp on the material. The same can be said about the strap, which is silicone and, as I wrote, quite stiff. However, stiffness is not a fault in this case, quite simply, the material on the upper side of the watch is very thick, so it cannot be anything other than stiff.

The sensors are of course on the back, and the good news about this is that they don't protrude out of the plane, so they don't press into our hands. This is important for convenience.

The shape is therefore quite strange, a bit retro, a bit industrial, if the Mille were smaller, we could even look at it as a game watch. The cover and the display are huge, the lower part is slightly curved, and this curve continues in the strap, so despite its size, the Rogbid Mille sits perfectly on our wrists, it doesn't want to turn, even without excessive tightening. The Rogbid Mille is a very comfortable strap watch, perhaps the most comfortable of those I have tried so far.

All in all, even if the exterior doesn't appeal too much, I can't say a single bad thing in an objective evaluation so far, in fact, the stuff is surprisingly good in terms of comfort!

There is no problem with knowledge either, at least based on the paper form. We get sensors, detectors, hardware of sufficient strength for the operation of the watch, and of course great durability!

There is a heart rate monitor, there is a blood oxygen level monitor, there is a blood pressure monitor and there is a measurement that I have not come across before, this is the stress level measurement.

Of course, the usual things like a pedometer, a sleep monitor, and sports modes are supported. If you connect it to your phone, you can set route tracking and distance measurement in the application that can be downloaded alongside the watch, obviously these use the phone's navigation solution, GPS is not yet commonplace in such a cheap watch, especially in a smartwatch.

Another interesting feature is the Bluetooth call function, which is included in more and more watches these days. I think this is particularly useful in the case of a smartwatch, because if we are in a stressful environment, it is very good that we don't have to take out our phone to make calls, we can talk through the watch. What's particularly good is that during the test, the Bluetooth connection between my Poco phone and the Rogbid Mille was stable even at around 13-14 meters, so you don't even need to have the phone in your pocket for the conversation.

The clock controls are a bit weird. As usual, the display is touch-sensitive, but here we get not only push buttons, but also a scrollable middle button.

By pressing the top button, we can turn on the display and bring up the menu. By default, the bottom button calls up the sports modes, of which ATTENTION, more than 114 types are available. If you can't find the sport you want to play here, you won't find it anywhere, or there is no such sport.

What is interesting is the middle rotary button. On the one hand, I really like that there is one, it reminds me of traditional watches, and that's a winning thing for me. On the other hand, I feel that Rogbid missed a huge step with this button!

By default, you can choose between dials by scrolling. If you enter the menu, you can scroll through the menu. If we go to sports modes, we can scroll through the sports modes. The roller works very smoothly, you can use it very precisely, it's really great. However, this button can also be pressed, and in this case we do not select e.g. in the menu, the point where we are currently standing, but we go back to the dial.

What could have been the best solution here?

Well, you can't really control touchscreens with wet hands. There is a roller here that you can push in, you can roll, in Hungarian you could have controlled the watch through it without even having to touch the dial. This would have been great while swimming, but it would also have allowed us to take calls while showering, for example.

How durable is the Rogbid Mille? Well, really!

The Rogbid Mille is IP69K rated, which means the smartwatch must withstand high-pressure water jets and be completely sealed against dust. In fact, this IP69K is currently the strongest IP classification, there is nothing above it. If a watch achieves this, then it is obviously water-resistant, usually the pressure of 5 ATM is given by the manufacturers in this case. In principle, this means a water depth of 5 meters, but this does not mean that we can dive 5 meters deep with it. True, this value is already adequate for swimming and showering, and of course it also resists sweat.

What gives it even more is the MIL-STD-810 military certification, which means resistance to extremely harsh conditions. In the case of the Mille, the watch was subjected to, for example, a 240-hour humidity test, a 96-hour salt spray test, ice freezing and shock resistance tests. In addition, the watch survived testing in 70 degree heat and -40 degree cold. All in all, it seems that the Rogbid Mille is a real beast that can survive even the harshest conditions.

I miss two things. One is that the glass of the watch could have been recessed a little more, better protected from impacts. The other is that I can't see anywhere that any kind of Gorilla Glass or similar glass has been included. We can say that there is something like that, but this is usually highlighted by the manufacturers, so it is suspicious.

The hardware is not a bull, but there is plenty for the watch, everything runs smoothly on it.

Interestingly, Rogbid hasn't been secretive about the hardware. For this reason, we know that the Mille is driven by an ARM core central unit, specifically the RealtTek RTL8763EW, which has an extremely low consumption DSP core. In addition to the CPU, Rogbid offers 356 KB of RAM and 128 MB of storage space. These are amusingly weak values ​​to the eye used to phone data sheets, but since it's a watch, a target hardware is the iron, it takes everything on it. Fast, flawless!

One of the neuralgic points of smart watches is the display. Neuralgic, because not all of them can see the content in sunlight.

Rogbid Mille is an interesting commodity from this point of view. The fact is that we are dealing with a 320 × 385 pixel IPS panel, and as such it will not look as good as an AMOLED panel. At the same time, the manufacturer has put quite strong lighting behind it, so that if the sun is not shining directly on it, it will remain legible even on the street, under the blazing sun.

In terms of other capabilities, I think the IPS can be enough for an hour, since the viewing angles are good, the contrast is good, and the colors are also good. Let's say the white is a little bluish, but this is mostly visible at full brightness, in complete darkness, barely even there. Of course, it's not an AMOLED, but it's flawless as an IPS.

Let's see some experience I gathered while using it!

The Rogbid Mille is considered cheap even among cheap watches with its current price of less than HUF 10 (details at the end of the article). Nevertheless, the durability, the large display, and the unique appearance are quite fine. Of course, I wasn't satisfied with everything.

The sensors basically work well, the heart rate measurement and the blood oxygen level measurement also seem good. But the heart rate measurement is slow. Understand that in the case of continuous measurement, if I started to push the pedal harder on the bike, it took a little time for the load to appear in the measurement, and if I stopped cycling, it took longer than usual for the value to start to decrease. This is not so good, since a warning message about an excessive increase in heart rate can be useful during sports, but here, by the time it appears, I may already be dead. So it could be faster.

Interestingly, the blood pressure monitor was quite accurate. Let's say it's the most accurate I've seen so far in a cheap watch. Okay, for this I had to not move too much, because when I started waving my arm, everything fell into place, but feel free to ask me: WHY the hell am I waving my arm during blood pressure measurement? So the thing is quite good, but nobody should think that it replaces a medical instrument.

What I don't like is that the hand movement display is a little harder to turn on than I'm used to with other watches. So you have to get used to what the arm movement will be, with which you have to raise it in front of your eyes and turn on the display.

The pedometer was good and the sleep monitor looks good too.

I already talked about comfort. despite the fact that the watch is relatively large and heavy, there is no problem with comfort. Maybe it wasn't very comfortable to sleep in, but maybe I'm just not used to it. I don't usually wear a watch at night.

The Bluetooth call can be said to be impeccable, the speaker is strong enough, although I did not try it on the street. According to the other party, my voice was also clear and understandable.

However, I have one comment about this, which is unfortunately true for many watches that can make Bluetooth calls. Namely, if the watch and the phone are connected via Bluetooth, the speaker of the watch works as a quasi-hands-free speaker. That is, for example, if you want to listen to your Spotify playlist on the phone, it will not be played on the phone's speaker, but on the watch's speaker.

The operating time is excellent. The Mille has a battery with a capacity of 520 mAh, which is quite a large capacity compared to a watch, especially with such frugal hardware. According to the manufacturer, the watch allows 15 days of continuous use on a single charge. Well today is my 16th day of wearing it and it hasn't worn off yet.

Let's say that after a lot of pressure in the first days, I switched to the usual use, that is, I check the messages, the time, I tried the sports function while riding the bike, I tested the sensors 3-4 times, so I think that what I produced can be called average use.

Compared to this, 16 days are very pleasant, even wonderful. I think it will be another day of leisure before I have to spend.

Anyway, the charger is the usual magnetic, two-conductor crap. I don't understand why they can't come up with a standard solution instead, because if the cable is lost, you can struggle to get another one. Let's say this is true for most cheap smartwatches.

One more point of interest before the conclusion. There are also games in the software of the watch. Let's just say that I don't really enjoy the game on the small screen, in the end, if I was really bored while waiting, then it was okay to have them as a last resort.

So what should be the final lesson about the Rogbid Mille smartwatch?

Let's start with the price, which I think is perfect. The fact is that in the current Banggood sale the BG7ef2dc with a coupon code, you can get it for HUF 11, which is a good price, to put it mildly, for a strap watch with similar capabilities. This is the one to go for if you need a watch with normal operation but durability.

The outside will definitely be divisive. I know that there will be people who will fall in love with it immediately, I can say that after two weeks of use, I got used to it and it no longer hurts my eyes. But, as I wrote, I don't like square watches in the first place either, the round dial is my world.

There is basically no problem with the knowledge, I only tested the durability in my own way, but seeing the materials and construction of the watch, I dare to say that it will be a suitable choice for sports as well as for harder physical work.

It will be mainly because the Bluetooth call function is flawless, the Bluetooth range is also above average, so you don't even have to keep your phone in your pocket during work if you want to receive a call.

If you like the watch, you can buy it at the link below for HUF 109 shipping.

Rogbid Mille strap watch