The original T8 is being replaced by a new trio of a 7.5% narrower T8 Mini, a T8 and a T8 Pro with speaker and mics for BT-calls.

These are ad renderings images of the T8 Mini and Pro where I scaled the dial by 87% resp. 92% to get the actual display to case ratio(!!), and scaled them too correct relative case size

 

Like the T8_original post, this is likely to be an ongoing project for a while.

Latest updates: Got the T8 Pro in my hands, updated the Pro1 part somewhat…

#### PLEASE NOTE, NOT FINAL VERSION! ####

I got some early sas of the T8 Mini, so some of the things I whine about might be fixed in firmware updates later!

 

Intro

Impatient? Jump to the TL;DR on the trio…

I have, for over a year, used my beloved T8_original 7mm, ø43mm smart watch, made by Sovogue.

And it is being replaced with three models.

A T8, T8 Pro and T8 Mini

• The T8 is silently being replaced with one that looks identical. In the below I will call the the new T8 “T8₂₀₂₄” and the previous “T8_original“
• The T8 Pro is identical to the T8₂₀₂₄ with added speaker and mics.
• The T8 Mini is a compact ø40mm version.

The T8 is for sale in many places, and frankly I have no idea what each seller offers, as some sell the latest of the original as 2024!! And many will be unaware that it is being replaced…

The T8 Pro is up for sale here, ordered one of each of the two colours, got them delivered 2024-04-22…

The T8 Mini is up for sale here, ordered and got some of each of the two colours.

The T8 Pro name is not well chosen as there are already smartwatches with that name on the market, making it easy for people to confuse the completely different watches.

Here a quick overview of this post with bookmarks.

• TL;DR on this trio
• Specs
• Common stuff, including app
• T8 Mini Only (with images)
• T8 Pro and T8₂₀₂₄ Only (with images)
• Conclusion

As the T8 Pro and T8₂₀₂₄ are identical less the speaker and mics. I have ordered (and will test) the T8 Pro, and not the T8₂₀₂₄.

 

• ø40mm resp. 43mm round (T8 Mini resp. T8 and T8 Pro)
  
• Less than 7mm thick
• Arm-to-arm length 46 resp. 48mm.
• ?? Stamina is yet to be determined but over a week even for the Mini
  
• All metal. (304 Stainless Steel. very low Nickel content)
• ?? not sure yet About $30, including shipping (less any local taxes)
• The 1.19″ resp. 1.32″ AMOLED display, can be used with AOD, though that hits the stamina.
• No NFC nor GPS
• Software works, but it’s weak.
• The usual HeartRate+Sleep monitoring, but SpO₂and BloodPressure measurements also.
• Works offline without a phone. Not tested yet: Holds data ?? days for fetching into the app later. (No known limits inside the app)
• The usual sports stuff, plus some period stuff – both out of my scope.
• The usual notification stuff, call control and camera control, if hooked to a phone.
• The T8 Pro offers speaker and mics.
• No Alexa or similar.
• Two colour variants: ‘Gold’ and ‘Silver’ (+bands, 18 resp. 20mm standard pin)
• Gorilla Glass.
• No 3.5mm jack, eSIM nor SIM-slot.

 

Specs

Let me try with a spec-table for the 3 resp 2 variants still with question marks!

 

	T8 Pro	T82024	T8 Mini	T8orig. 2023.	T8orig. 2022.
Case Diameter	43mm		40mm	43mm
Case length	48mm		46mm)	48mm	50mm
Thickness	8.05mm			7.8mm
Thickness excluding protrusion	6.95mm			6.9mm
Protrusion diameter	~19mm			~19mm
Display diameter	1.32″		1.19″	1.32″
Display pixels	ø466		ø390	ø360
Display DPI	353		328	273
Bezelring under the glass	3.3mm		3.4mm	3.3mm
Bezel from display to case edge	4.8mm		4.9mm	4.8mm
Display coverage	61%		57%	61%
Glass	Corning Gorilla Glass			?? (competitor? same hardness)
Bandwidth (std. pins)	20mm		18mm	20mm
Chips	JI7013A6S			RTL8762
G-sensor	DA267-LGA12			SC7A20
Heart Rate Sensor	VC30F-S			VC32S
Weight (case)	32.7g	~27g	23.88g	27.09g/24.12g (*)	24.02g
Battery	185mAh		135mAh	185mAh
App	Da-Fit			QWatch Pro
Stamina on a charge (My actual usage)	??		??	6 weeks!	5 weeks!
Stamina, AlwaysOnDisplay ON	??~2-3 days		??~2 days	~2 days (Off [00-08[ : 44h On, 8h Off)
Water resistance rating	IP68			IP67
Exercise modes	123			22
Hart Rate Monitoring	5/10/20/30 min or Off, + spot			5 min or Off, + spot
SpO2 Monitoring	Off + Spot			Hourly/Off + Spot
BP Monitoring	Off + Spot			Hourly/Off + Spot
AlwaysOnDispay options	Off/On			Off/On/Timed window
Speaker	Yes	No		No
Mics	Yes, two	No		No

(*) The T8_origi with 1.00_24 is 12% heavier than the 1.00_23 in exactly the same case dimensions, Perhaps larger battery??)

All in the trio exist in a ‘gold’ and ‘silver’ colour model for the case. Here for the T8 Mini

 

Common for the Trio

This was originally from the T8 Mini, where I tested stuff

Surprises

Pleasant surprises, minor details

• AOD is MUCH leaner on the T8 Mini, than the T8_original, when On it uses around 1.8%/h.
• A nice surprise is that the seconds hand move ‘smoothly’ and not in whole seconds jumps, but more importantly the minute hand moves a notch every ten seconds, on the T8_original the minute hand moved once every whole minute, that is when the seconds hand went from 59 to 60. That was a nice and pleasant surprise.
• Even in AOD mode, the minutes hand moves every ten seconds. Nice!
• You can set time and date without connecting to the app.
• There are four games on it, but I think they will work better for people with better eyes and lesser fingers than mine.

There where also some unpleasant surprises

• It uses the Da-Fit app, that seems (even) worse than QWatch Pro!
• Only ONE watch face can be downloaded at the time – it does have a few good ones preloaded so not a catastrophe.
• The AOD on the T8_original had a nice feature of a time window when AOD was on, this allowed it to not burn through the whole night.
• The AOD on the T8_original had a nice feature than when the watch was still for five minutes it turned AOD temporarily Off.
• No SpO₂ Monitoring, spot only – not that I personally will miss it though.
• No BP Monitoring, spot only – not that I personally will miss it though
• The BP measurements constantly says 140/90, tried two specimens, and it does not matter if on the arm, or on a wooden table!!
• If you put it on a wooden table, it clams the heart rate to be between 86 and 96  BPM…
• If you put it on a wooden table,it clams the  SpO₂ to be 96%…
• If you put it on a wooden table,it clams the  BP to be 140/90_….

The last three give me a worrying feeling of how much of the numbers it outputs that are just free fantasy, and what is actually related to my body…?

Add: I tried a third specimen, and it also gave BP results independent of the surface, but the odd thing is that it sometimes shows different numbers around 120/80

I really HOPE the healt measurements are going to be less bad after firmware updates.

Same problem

• Security flaw: When an app try to connect to the watch, no confirmation is required on the watch at all, not even an OK!! Potentially allowing anyone with the app to connect, read and change anything, even while it is on your arm, if out of reach for your phone&app – crazy that this is still not fixed!!! (Many -if not all- other cheap Chinese smartwatches have the same security flaw though, including the T8_original)

Functions menu

“Stress” are new compared to the T8_original

The “Player” controls your music-app on a connected phone, and can play music using the speaker on the T8 Pro. The player does not offer sending offline music to a BT headset directly from the watch.

Relaxation is an extension of the Breath Training of the T8_original

Calculator and games are additions for small fingers

 

I noticed that they in the the menu of the Pro versus the Mini had a few differences.
The “Relaxation”, “Stress”, “Calculator” and “Games” are T8Mini Only

The “Phone Call” and “AI voice” are (less surprising) T8 Pro Only

The icons and text ar neot all identical eieither between the T8 Mini with firmware MOY VUO3+2.0.1 and the T8 Pro with firmware MOY VVQ3-2.0.1 (the bolds are mine)

 

Timer and alarm

The timer can be set to anything between 00:00:01 and 23:59:59. or you can use one of the preset 1m, 2m, 5m, 10m, 15m, 30m, 1h or 2h. You can pause and continue the timer.

You can only have one timer running at the time. If you need more you have to set them as alarms.

You can set up to eight alarms, each can be enabled/disabled, and can repeat on one or more weekdays. (You can not set a monthly alarm or a birthday alarm)

The timer does NOT have the bug the T8_original had, that it required the display to stay on, (that made the timer rather useless for longer periods).

In contrast to the T8_original the timer vibrates five times versus just one.

Like the T8_original there are no repetition, if you miss a timer. This can make sense for a 1 min timer, but less so if you choose 23:59:59

Alarms can be snoozed for a fixed 10 minutes interval.

App, DaFit

They have changed the chipset for the three new watches, and rather than their own app, they now use one that has a more modern look to it DaFit.

I’m not super happy by that switch, but for the most part it gets the job done, though less stable, and with some oddities….

It is rather primitive, and when there is a problem with the connection (e.g. after drained to 0%, or too far from the phone) it can not re-connect.
You need to

• Kill the app
• Stop Bluetooth
• Start Bluetooth
• Start the app

And THEN it reconnects nicely automatically….

This bug seems to be more common on LineageOS 21 (Android 14), than on Android 9 – but that could be coincidences, seen on both.

But at the least the app allow us to fetch a watch face (singularis, yes!)
Note: These are  different for the T8₂₀₂₄ and the T8 Pro due to the different resolution

Here the ones you can download

 

And one you can modify (digital only)

 

There are a substantially more faces for the T8 Pro (and thus most like for the new T8₂₀₂₄ too.)

 

“Quick View”

There is a setting in the app called “Quick View”, with an On/Off switch. With the description “You can customise the effective period of quick view“.
When On you can change the “Valid Period” the default window is 07:00 to 22:00.
My first guess was that it was the AOD window, but it is not.
My next guess was Raise-to-wake. And that was it! What a translation *LOL*

Sleep

This is just for a single night so far, went to bed 01:18, but here how it looks on the watch and in the app

    

• It claims I fell asleep at 23:15 and the first deep sleep started at 02:07, the later might be correct. But that it did not even detect it as “awake” when I went to the bathroom and going to bed, does not bode well… I can understand that a quite evening can be seen as “light sleep” though.
• It seems unlikely with the many short periods, and just a single short 7m REM period.

(Note also the odd “restful” for “deep sleep”)

 

For comparison this is on the T8_original

Totally wrong during the evening, but at the least it caught it as “awake” going to the bathroom before going to bed. And it seems likely that I fell asleep 01:22, a few minutes after I went to bed, and also seems likely that I had deep sleep periods getting shorter. (The T8_original does not offer REM sleep detection)

Compare with the expected normal overall sleep-pattern from here

The next night were not better really.

But overall neither the T8 Mini nor the T8_original do an impressive job here….

Heart rate

This clearly needs some tweaking, In this very early version I see some odd upwards spikes, I hope they will find ways to iron out.
(In general for smart watches downwards spikes are more common, when a watch miss a beat and see two beats as one)

Here two silent days compared

T8_original

T8 Mini

As there are no Y-axis, here two dumps with the cursor at the highest peak, for scale.

Note how the T8_original has graphs that are about flat around 60 while I’m asleep, where the T8 Mini shows some odd fluctuations…

 

Steps

Here is a lot of room for tweaking, as it seems over-sensitive, registering too much, but again early version so I hope they will iron stuff out.

During Eastern I was doing some home renovation, mounting a new access to the attic, and here I got about a factor of ten(!) higher count on the T8 Mini. I’m pretty sure this is a calibration issue, where it count ‘micro-movements’ using tools, as steps also…

Here the same two quite days as the heart rate above, at the least it here is more like a factor of ‘only’ four!!

 

versus the T8 Mini, again first the average,

and with the cursor at the peaks for scale.

 

Sensors

Here a few close-ups (T8 Mini), of the sensor and LED block. (as usual click to enlarge)

Note also that the sensor and LED arrangement changed. It seems there are now four LEDs, two on each side, (the T8_original got one on each side), So I GUESS that they are different wavelengths to produce more accurate measurements. The ones away from the crown are green, the others are not in the visible spectrum, so I guess IR??

Stamina, Battery and Charging

It is obviously way to early to say anything on the stamina, other than that Sovogue claims the chips to be even leaner on the battery than the T8_original.
There are no percentage indicator while charging. While not charging we got an icon divided in four. When connected and not charging a percentage is given inside the app. It does NOT show the percentage while charging though, so you have to temporarily remove the cable to see how far it has charged…

The battery of the T8 Mini is 135mAh versus 185mAh on the others, so different stamina is to be expected

 

T8 Mini ONLY

The area is 16% lesser than the other T8s and thus more suitable for many people’s wrists.

The 6.8mm on the above profile rendering almost certainly means outside the protrusion, and in real life that is 6.95 mm. The T8_original is 6.9mm outside the protrusion and 7.8mm at the protrusion. That is 8.05mm for the T8 Mini. The minor difference could be due different sensor unit and display.

The 135mAh 3.7V (0.5Wh) battery is 27% less than the T8_original so I doubt the stamina will get close to the very impressive six weeks I get on the of the T8
(I have not -yet- tested the T8_original with BP and SpO₂ monitoring OFF, so that should give even longer than the six weeks)

Here copies from the listing on the profile and specs. With corrected length! (the original image says “52mm” ???? – even the diagonal is not that long…)

A few real images (The white-balance is on automatic, so bare with the odd colours…)

And here the two colour variations

 

T8 Mini band

The T8 Mini uses 18mm standard bands. (slightly narrower than the 20mm for the T8_original, and the other in the trio)

The accompanying band reminds of the one of the T8_original when mounted, but the hinge mechanism is made a little different, making it look more elegant, and easier to loosen or tighten during the day, but a bit more complex to put on. Pros and cons of it not hooking on to a pre-set length.

(For me personally this does not matter, as I replaced it with a Milanese loop band anyway. Not as neat looking, but more to my taste for functionality)

 

T8 Mini and Pro vs T8_original

Here a front and back, of the T8orig 2024, T8 Pro and T8 Mini.

Note that though the T8_orig and T8Pro share the outer diameter of 43mm, the slope are quite different. So the flat part of the back of the T8 Pro is 36.2mm, where the T8 Mini is 32.0mm close to the 32.5mm of the 32.5mm.

So the less conic back is another drawback over the T8_orig

 

T8 Mini. Stamina

It charges with around 120mA at 5V, or 0.6W from “0%” to around “67%” after 50 minutes, and then reduces gradually “72%” 100mA after an hour, “90%” 27mA after 75min. 99% and <10mA (less that the minimum 10mA my amp metre will show) after 90 minutes, Leaving it a few minutes more and 100% are reached , completing the full charge of the 135mAh 3.7V (0.5Wh) battery.
It is nice that it reduces the current near battery full. This is good for the overall battery life.

The “above 100%” oddity of the T8_original keep charging after “100%” is reached, seems to be absent on the T8 Mini. 🙂

 

Test: AOD On:
I charged one fully (the point where the Amp-meter says 0 mA), and unplugged with AOD active, and let it run until it turned it self off.
It ended with a rather rapid plunge, but in mean 1.8% point per hour with AOD on, Or 2.5mA and that seems much better than the 3.8%/h or 7mA for the T8.

Remember when comparing the graphs that the battery is 27% lesser AND the T8_original above had two eight hours periods with the AOD temporarily Off (from 00 to 08).

 

Test: AOD Off
My first impression is that it has a substantially shorter stamina than the T8_original, but I obviously use it more as new, and the firmware is still at an early stage, so hard to say anything fairly on it yet.

On the T8_original with the heart rate monitoring every 5 minute, and SpO₂ and BP monitoring hourly, I have 42 days of stamina, so with a 185mAh 3.7V battery the mean usage is thus
3.7 x 185/42/24=0.7mW
The same numbers for the T8 Mini should for now be taken with a huge pinch of salt, but currently gets over a weeks, or about 2mW in mean.

The amount of movement seems to matter a lot. A unit placed on the table discharges MUCH slower than one on the arm, with heart rate measuring turned off.

 

 

T8 Pro and T8₂₀₂₄ ONLY

The T8 Pro and the T8₂₀₂₄ are identical, except the added speaker and mic.

I got a video-link of a proto type of the T8 Pro, and extracted and cropped a few frames.

It really looks identical to the T8_original, except the holes for speaker and mics.
Hard to get a good frame, showing all three, this was the least bad one: (click to enlarge)

Note the clever placement of the double slids for a speaker, and the two holes for mics, protected by the band.

(I have asked, and the reason for the two mics are not noise cancelling)

BUT that was not how the T8 Pro ended!!!

The speaker is now at the far end(!), and both mics are more or less covered by the arm!?!?!

Apart from calls the speaker can be used for playing music, though obviously limited usage on such a tiny speaker, but possible.
The mics are used for calls only. No recorder.

All in all the T8 Pro seems to offer all that the TN88 tried, but failed to deliver, and in a substantially minor body.

I noticed that they in the the Menu versus the Mini had a few differences.
The “Relaxation”, “Stree”, “Calculator” and “Games” are T8Mini Only

The “Phone Call” and “AI voice” are T8 Pro Only

 

 

Conclusion (well sort of, not final version…)

As I have only just got the T8 Mini, this is more of a first hand impression than a fair conclusion, so might improve with time, and it is not a released product, so firmware might still be fixed/improved…

Though the size is indeed really nice and unique for all in the trio, and especially the T8 Mini, it at first glance reminds me a bit more than I had hoped for of the underwhelming TN88!!

Not only does it use the same poor app, It also seem to share some lacks and faults!! No monitoring of neither SpO₂ nor Blood Pressure, and the BP measuring it do offer is just useless crap.

But if you do not care of the removed monitoring (like me), and do not care that the offer a pure BS function for BP, and you can live with the poor app, well then one of these unique size watches, might be for you. But at the current state I prefer the T8_original over the T8₂₀₂₄, and the speaker and mics of the T8 Pro does not really matter to me.
But the T8 Mini does feel like going back to a proper watch size from a (slightly) oversized one!  See my post on (smart)watch sizes here.

I will give it some weeks, and perhaps await updates, and yet have to see how heart-rate compares to the T8_original. Before I decide if I will live with the step backs of the T8 Mini, or go back to the T8_original.