Boult announces its maiden smartwatch, Drift — First impressions
Boult Audio, a homegrown personal audio brand, is making its first foray into the wearables space with its maiden smartwatch, the Boult Drift. The company announced the smartwatch on Monday at a price of Rs 7,999 and will be available to purchase on Flipkart.
The smartwatch boasts of features like IP68 watch resistance, heart-rate sensor, blood oxygen monitor, Bluetooth calling, AI voice assistant, message notifications, step counter, calorie counter, blood pressure monitor, menstrual cycle tracking and more than 60 sports modes.
First impressions
The Boult Drift comes in a neat little box which contains the watch, a pair of “one-size-fits-all” silicone straps and a charging cable.
At first glance, one could easily mistake the Boult Drift for an Apple Watch for it borrows its design cues from it’s more expensive counterpart. Even some UI design elements appear heavily inspired by the Apple Watch, such as the activity rings — calories burnt, exercise minutes, etc.
The 1.69-inch screen is very bright — the official documentation puts it at 500 nits of peak brightness — but the quality of interaction is somewhat diminished by the low resolution and pixel density — the Drift has a resolution of 240×280 and a 218 ppi (pixels per square inch) and it shows: look closely enough, and you can sometimes tell individual pixels apart.
The custom watch faces are fun to look at — the Drift boasts of more than 140 dials — but the complications on the watch face (the small widgets displaying different information, such as weather, date, steps, etc) do not seem interactive. You cannot tap on a step counter, for instance, to get a detailed break-up.
The watch fits snugly on your wrist and the silicone strap doesn’t chafe despite long hours of wearing. It looks good and has a premium feel to it, despite the affordable price point.
