KOSPET TANK X1 Smartwatch review – Smarter than his older brother?

REVIEW – The KOSPET TANK X1 smartwatch was offered for review and the brand was familiar to me. I reviewed a KOSPET watch in 2021 and after the review I promptly took it to electronic recycling with no regrets. I was interested to see if KOSPET had matured as a fitness tracker manufacturer. Other reviews of the TANK X1 indicate that it’s tough, looks nice and performs well but I’m on a mission to prove it. I’m not going to drill through the TANK X1 like one YouTuber did, but I’ll report the good, the bad and the ugly I found, and here’s to hoping KOSPET has earned our respect with the TANK X1 Smartwatch.

What is it?

The KOSPET TANK X1 is a ‘fitness band’ style, rechargeable, fitness tracker smartwatch.

What’s in the box?

• KOSPET TANK X1 watch
• Charging cable: USB-A to proprietary connector
• Instruction manual

Hardware specs

• IP69K / 10 ATM / 30 meter water resistant
• 1.47” rectangular AMOLED Gorilla Glass screen
• 194 x 368 pixel resolution
• Construction: Metal, ABS thermoplastic, polycarbonate
• 230mAh ‘Pure cobalt’ battery
• 15 U.S. MIL-STD-810H Certifications
• 70 sport modes, 6 sports auto-detected
• Bluetooth 5.1
• Charge time from depleted: 2 hours
• Strap: Silicone rubber
• Phone system requirement: Android 5.1 & iOS 10.0 and above

Design and features

The TANK X1 reminds me of my old Samsung Gear Fit S2 with its watch band integrated into the case.

I think the TANK X1 looks better than the Samsung because of its metal frame features vs. Samsung’s smooth overall finish and ho-hum design.

The silicone band is built into the design of the TANK X1 but KOSPET says they can send replacements for $15. The band isn’t listed at the KOSPET site but can be had by emailing of******@ko****.com. Support says the band may be challenging to replace, but I think with the right Torx bit it should be do-able.

There are two orange metal buttons on the sides of the TANK X1. The left button is labeled ‘SPORT’, the right button is the main operational button and is labeled ‘POWER’. They have a solid feel when pressed and there’s no wobble to them. The thick wrist of my workout gloves didn’t press these buttons as they do with other smartwatches I’ve used.

The TANK X1 has reportedly been tested for military specifications and the types of tests are shown above. It was tested for underwater use down to 10 ATM or 330 feet. You should be able to shower, swim, snorkel and shallow dive with it. KOSPET says not to dive below 30 meters and to avoid the sauna with the device on.

The screen has good visibility even in bright outdoor light and the Gorilla Glass used for the screen should be extra scratch resistant.

KOSPET has made nice progress with the watch faces they offer. I found 5-6 I liked and that’s good for me.

One of the built-in faces became a favorite of mine. You can customize one watch face by adding a photo as its background. I used a pure black wallpaper which makes the numbers very clear.

There are six built-in watch faces and others can be added from the app. One face at a time can remain alongside the six built-in faces, so if you want to switch among several choices, you must add the one you want to be active, each time you want to use it. It only takes a few seconds to sync the watch face from the app to the watch. Any one of seven total watch faces (the 6 built-in plus 1 of your chosen faces) can be quickly applied with a 2 second hold on the watchface. The phone app keeps track of your favorite watch face choices.

I think the TANK X1 looked good in casual.

And it looked good with nicer outfits too.

The main things I need from a smartwatch are a reliable wake-up alarm, countdown timer, and reliable silent notifications. The TANK X1 has all these functions. In addition, the watch auto-detects 6 exercises and has ‘70 exercise modes’.

Whether there’s a benefit to tracking your heart rate during fishing is up to you but the TANK X1 has fishing among the 70.

The watch does sleep tracking, heart rate, oxygen saturation sensing and blood pressure. I’ll comment on those functions below.

While the TANK X1 displays text messages they are shortened and the font size is so small they are nearly illegible. I complained to KOSPET about that. What a glaring, overlooked design issue.

When you get a text, most of you would need to use your phone to read and respond to it, but at least the TANK X1 reliably gave a single vibration with each text message. I just used it as a signal to check my phone.

I suggested to KOSPET that a single vibration is too brief for critical notifications like texts. Why not 4-5 vibes for all notifications? Or make the number and duration of vibes adjustable in the app?

KOSPET Support says every app on your phone can be chosen in the KOSPET FIT app to send notifications to the watch. That was not the case with the TANK X1 I reviewed. The list of apps on my phone, which appears in the KOSPET FIT app is a subset of apps I have on my phone. And several apps are listed that don’t even do notifications. With every reboot of my phone, one or two of my apps appear, or disappear from the list in the app. Frustrating.

Google Calendar isn’t allowed for watch notifications, and it’s built into Android phones. Support claims that will be fixed in a future update. I let them know how major a problem it is that Google Calendar doesn’t send notifications to the watch. I assume millions of users rely on Google Calendar and need event notifications from it?

At least Google Tasks, the Pulse text app, Google Messages, aCalendar, and Google Keep are listed to pass notifications to the TANK X1. For most of my testing period none of my four weather apps show up so they couldn’t deliver notifications to the watch. KOSPET second level Support could not provide a solution to my weather apps being missing for notifications. I followed Support directions to uninstall & reinstall apps and reboot the phone, but that made no improvement.

A few weeks later, two of my four weather apps appeared in the KOSPET FIT app so I could select them to notify the watch. I was glad to see this happen, but the questions why? and how? come to mind. After a few days I rebooted my phone and those weather apps disappeared from the KOSPET app picklist. Hand to forehead…

After several rounds with support it became clear that not all apps on your phone can necessarily send notifications to the TANK X1.  Again, several apps on my phone that don’t do any notifications, are in the KOSPET FIT app as if a user would want to get watch notifications from those. Puzzlement.

Support also eventually admitted that Apple phones would work better with the TANK X1 and the KOSPET FIT app. You probably won’t see that in their advertising. I made the obvious point to Support about how many worldwide Android phone users there are.

Setup

Setup was relatively painless. I installed the KOSPET FIT app from the Google Play Store and plugged the watch into its cable and a charger. I discovered when it’s charging it can’t be used, so since it came with 70% battery charge I disconnected the charging cable and went on with setup. I accepted permissions that Android presented and entered personal data needed for health and exercise tracking (height, weight, gender, age). Then I turned on app notifications from the available apps I want to pass from phone to watch and the review was on.

When the watch is charging, the cord from the cable naturally points straight up as the watch rests on its side. But the watch face that displays during charging is then upside down. That would be a nice firmware fix KOSPET should address.

Performance

The TANK X1 watch is comfortable to wear. The band is not a stretchy, pliable silicone so I recommend gently unstrapping the watch. Aggressive pulling of the band to take the watch off may lead to breakage and the band is only available from KOSPET. The band is designed into the watch body so other bands are unlikely to fit or look right on the TANK X1.

KOSPET claims a 2 hour charge time from empty to full. I ran the battery down to 50%, and it took just under an hour take it to full charge.

I got about 8 full days of use before reaching the 50% battery point again. I have the watch set for ‘wrist flip’ screen-on since ‘always on’ is said to only give 2-3 days before needing recharging. A smartwatch review probably causes more screen-on time than normal as we repeatedly test all the features, change screens often, set multiple test alarms and timers, etc.

I think the best smartwatches have Always On watch faces that are like their regular, screen-on counterparts. There are 3 AOD watch face choices for the TANK X1 and those faces are not like the regular faces. I liked the one pictured pretty well but only used it for half a day in order to get longer battery life.

Step tracking and resting heart rate are probably the two most reliable measurements the TANK X1 and most smartwatches perform. I’ve taken lots of blood pressures with proper equipment, and I’m doubtful a watch can do BPs accurately. Yet the TANK X1 will give you BP numbers. Are they meaningful?

The blood pressure function of the TANK X1 should be disregarded. I took my blood pressure with a professional stethoscope and BP cuff and got a reading of 124/74 twice.

The BP reading of 135/77 is not even close. Occasionally the watch would measure closer to what the BP cuff and stethoscope showed, but often it was well off, so I’m calling the watch BP function unreliable.

During vigorous exercise the TANK X1 reported heart rate numbers that were off from my manual pulse checks at the same time. They were usually way lower than actual. E.g. 134 actual showed on the watch as 107. My arm was not sweaty and the watch was correctly positioned flat on my arm and above the wristbone.

This phenomenon has been true for all smartwatches I’ve used except the $465 Withings Scanwatch Horizon. Sweat, movement of the watch on the arm, and motion in general can affect heart rate measurement. But while I found the TANK X1 reporting generally accurate resting heart rate numbers, it can’t show correct intense exercise heart rates.

The TANK X1 countdown Timer vibrates 3 times at the end of the countdown. If you are active while you have burgers on the grill, you might miss the timer you’ve set. There are 8 preset timer values and a custom timer setting area for hours, minutes and seconds to count down.

The Alarm vibrates 4 times. That was sufficient to wake me, but to play it safe I set two alarms for each day, 1 minute apart. One triggers its 4 vibrations then another triggers 4 vibes one minute later. If an alarm is ignored it does its 4 vibes every 10 minutes, 3 more times. I woke up with the first alarm every day.

Scrolling numbers to set alarms and timers was frustrating. The numbers would sometimes ‘spin’ for a couple of seconds and not respond to touch properly, sometimes increasing when I was swiping to decrease the number, or vice versa. That made it take way too long to set an alarm or custom timer.

I initiated a Walk workout on the KOSPET FIT app. The watch can do nothing during a workout except show you stats about the workout on the watch face. Amazingly the watch got the distance right as I used a mile course that I walk in my neighborhood. The TANK X1 must be using the phone’s location tracking.

I was glad to discover that a completed workout is logged into the KOSPET FIT app. But I wouldn’t count on the app for long term storage of your workout data.

I strapped on my Withings Scanwatch Horizon in addition to the TANK X1 and went for some step counting. I first did a 100 step walk and both devices were within one step of each other. I next did a 1.1 mile walk, the distance of which I previously verified with Google Maps and my phone’s GPS. The TANK X1 and Scanwatch both claimed the same distance walked, 1.1 mile. I’m pretty sure the TANK X1 uses the phone’s capabilities since it has no GPS.

Interestingly, the TANK X1 logged 2062 steps over that mile while the Withings claimed 2184 steps.

The walk workout is shown on a page of the KOSPET FIT app with a little data, but if I tap the center of the mile count screen I get more detail about my walk and the app does seem to retain workout history. I tap that detail and I see a map of the route I walked. I was pleasantly surprised. But I caution again not to count on a fitness app to retain workout data if it does not also allow for data exporting.

The Withings watch gives a nice report and maps the route, but the Withings Scanwatch Horizon is $465 on Amazon as of this writing. The TANK X1 is $75. The two devices are not in the same class. The Scanwatch Horizon does medical grade EKG reading for example. I really trust its data.

But, take a look, the KOSPET FIT app also mapped the route.

Next I walked 200 steps. The two devices were close. The TANK X1 counted 202 steps and the Withings counted 201. So I walked ⅓ of a mile as a final evaluation. The TANK X1 counted 728 steps while the Withings counted 716.

I’m calling the TANK X1 an OK step counter. I take step counting as a minor indicator of how much I’ve sat on my rear in a day and the TANK X1 can handle that task. I like to say that smartwatches aren’t step counters, they are arm movement counters. When I play drums for an hour I always hit my step goal for the day. Isn’t that telling?

I took a mile walk the next day wearing both the TANK X1 and the Withings watches on the same arm. I started the workout from each watch and did the mile route. At the end the KOSPET had not logged the exercise. It seems exercises started by the watch do not get transferred to or saved by the app. So, why is the watch set up for exercise starts if the user can’t see the results when the workout stops? Go figure. Not good. Support had no explanation or solution for this issue and it surprised them. If you get this watch, start workouts from the app, only.

I don’t get the ‘70 workout mode’ angle for the TANK X1. It’s more distracting than helpful.

Is there a need to take a long time scrolling to find ‘Street Dance’? Are there a lot of street dancers out there? The Street Dance workout mode measures total time of the exercise, heart rate and a calorie estimation, just like Shooting, Parkour and dozens of the other of the 70 workout modes. One category is ‘Athletics’. I wonder why someone would choose that category, but it’s in there. ‘Physical Training’ is one of the choices. So is ‘Weightlifting’. They measure the same time, heart rate and calories. I see a pattern here. Just like Bowling, Rowing and many other listed forms of exercise. I recommend KOSPET skip the 70 workouts focus and just make a ‘Workout’ button that tracks the same factors. The simplification would be an improvement.

The weather feature of the TANK X1 was usually close to the actual temperature in my neighborhood. The weather app oddly claimed it was ‘sunny’ outside in the dark of night. I assume the designers meant ‘clear’. Yes, there is an area near me called ‘Short Pump’ and some smartwatches think I live there.

Note the sensor array in the center, and the two charging contacts on the left.

What I like

• Approved for deep-ish water immersion
• Great design – Appearance, thickness, fit
• Gorilla Glass screen is a plus
• Watch seems constructed for durability
• Comfortable to wear and mostly easy to use

What I’d change

• Skip the ‘70 workout modes’. Most of them only track elapsed time, heart rate and give a calorie estimate.
• Notification text must be enlarged.
• Workouts started on the watch should get sync’d to the phone app.
• Adjustment of vibration duration, number and intensity would be useful.
• Scrolling numbers to set alarms and a custom timer needs work.
• Focus on Android – iPhone users are wearing Apple watches.
• Correction of English terms is needed on the watch and at the website.

Final thoughts

KOSPET is making progress and I’m not taking the TANK X1 to recycling. But if KOSPET wants to compete with the big names, the app and watch need to work flawlessly with Android phones. There’s ‘a work in progress’ vibe here, but if you mainly need a smartwatch for silent notifications, timers and alarms, step tracking and resting heart rate, the KOSPET TANK X1 may suit you. Serious exercise buffs will need to consider other smartwatches if reliable, accurate workout measurement and logging are important.

Price: $74.99
Where to buy: Kospet and Amazon
Source: The sample of this product was provided by KOSPET.