LOMO - Sports Watch

Star Rating: **** (4 Stars)

Recommended Retail Price: £25 available direct from LOMO

The LOMO SW Sports watch is a watch aimed at the multi-activity sports user and offers all of the features you would expect from a digital watch (stopwatch, alarms, backlight..etc.) whilst offering a couple of features only usually available with more expensive watches (pedometer and heart rate monitor). Coming in at a very attractive price of £25, the watch is also attractive enough (in our opinion) to be worn day to day as well as during a sporting activity giving it excellent value for money.

We spent a few weeks testing out the watch and were ultimately very happy with its performance. Of the things we liked with the watch, the best feature we felt was the heart rate monitor. Although it does not give the ability to track (lack of Bluetooth functionality to connect to a logging device), it gave very accurate on the spot readings. The heart rate monitor works using electrical pulses on the skin and requires touching the bezel with a finger and thumb, this gives a much more accurate reading than most watches which use a light on the back of the device and saves on having to put on a strap which can be uncomfortable. When the price of the watch is taken into consideration, this is a really nice feature to have. Other things we really liked with the watch included the pedometer, the look of the watch and ease of use of the functions.

There were, however, a couple of things we did feel let the watch done a bit. This is a difficult one as the things we didn't like with the watch are also things which, if fixed, would raise the price of the watch and consequently affect our overall impression of the watch. We feel the manufacturer has achieved a great balance between functionality and cost and the subsequent criticisms should be read with this in mind. The pedometer, unfortunately, does not work in a background mode and although the mode can be locked to prevent accidentally moving away from it, it does mean steps won't be counted if the watch is changed into a different mode. The other thing we didn't like too much with the watch is the material used in the bracelet. The rubber is slightly reflective which in a way can make it look a bit cheap.

Overall, we were very impressed with the watch and would highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for an outdoor watch which doesn't break the bank and doesn't mind the absence of functions such as a GPS, altimeter or a Bluetooth connection.

Things we like: Value, Heartrate Function, Versatility.

Things we don't like: Pedometer only works when mode is selected, the look of the bracelet.