KKTICK Tank T5 Smartwatch Review
Built For the Outdoors
This smartwatch is supposed to be a tank, that’s why it’s named after one. The KKTICK Tank T5 promises a whole lot of endurance for a rather low upfront cost. It may not be a brand you see on everyone’s wrist, but the Tank T5 certainly offers quite a lot of function that I was not expecting until I had this thing on me for more than a month. The big question is whether this package can entice you to take a step away from the big brand competitors to take a shot at a Tank.
Retail Price: $149.99
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Disclaimer: KKTICK sent us a unit free of charge to review, but all thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are our own and were not discussed with the company prior to publishing.Standard Watch Bands
The Tank T5 can use any 22mm Watch bandHealth and Fitness Tracking
One of the main selling points of this smartwatch is that it should cover everything you’ll need to explore the great outdoors. Front and center of their marketing campaign for the Tank T5, the company prominently features the ability to read offline maps as a core function as to why you should consider buying this. While I personally don’t capitalize on this feature, I do respect the ability of this watch to provide pathing tracing ability to record a trek. This does require a bit of a setup process as the app directs you to websites where you’ll have to download files on a computer and transfer them onto the watch. It’s a bit more of a commitment than I would like to do, especially when it involves downloading files not associated with the Google Play Store to an Android device that involves location tracking.
The health and fitness tracking features on the Tank T5 are comprehensive for its price point and a focal point of what I did end up evaluating during my time with this watch. The heart rate monitor provided consistent readings with what I found to be appeasing animation sequences. Actually, most transitions and function animations on the T5 were on par with what you see when operating watches made by the big named competitors. I was quite pleased to see how smooth transitions between tiles were. The drop down and pull up screens come into view translucent. It’s a surprisingly well developed experience. The watch has a few important tracking sensors that are the standards for smartwatches nowadays. There’s an 8-channel heart rate sensor, and a 16-channel blood oxygen sensor.
Continuing with the health aspect, the step counter seemed accurate in my comparisons with other devices. There’s sleep tracking available to monitor sleeping patterns. While not super in-depth, the sleep analysis offered a decent enough overview of my sleep patterns. I particularly appreciated the variety of sport modes, which were easily accessible and provided relevant data for different activities. The company says there are over 100+ types of activities it tracks. I didn’t count them all for a definitive number. However, I can say that there’s an abundance of sporting modes to set the watch to.
The most unique tool I found on the Tank T5 had to be the customized coaching courses that operate directly on the wrist. These are built-in video exercise courses that instruct the wearer on how to perform certain movements. Sure, the voice is extremely robotic and it’s not an optimal position to view instructions on as you’ll be physically moving your wrist while doing these exercises, thus removing your coach and video source from its viewing position. Still, this is a unique feature for a smartwatch that might be beneficial to somebody out there beginning their fitness journey.
While I wouldn't expect medical-grade precision from the sensors, the data provided is more than adequate for general fitness tracking and monitoring your overall well-being as an active individual. The tracking tile for activities is pretty basic. The tracking menu is activated by the bottom button on the right frame. It didn’t really matter which category you chose to record under, the interface and what they keep track of are nearly identical. The top quadrant reads a real-time heart rate tracking, followed usually by calories, the average heart rate, and the amount of time the current session has been ongoing for.
I used this mainly for strength training and I categorized it as such. While there’s an abundance of categories, they weren’t specifically precise in activities like a Garmin watch would identify. That’s not that big of a deal as I used other means to rep count. When it comes down to tracking on the watch, I do find it to be suitable for activities that involve heavy movement.
The companion app, after an initial period of familiarization, effectively consolidates all the collected data, presenting it in an understandable way with useful insights. I did have to open the app to do sync updates for data, but that’s very common in watches of this caliber. The frontend interface is surprisingly clean and well laid out. The app is available on the Google Play Store and is called Wear Joy. While it runs a somewhat out of place gold and black color combination, I did like how all of the information you read is easily classified and segregated into squares. For the most part, the features and modifications that can be tinkered with are straight and to the point so that anyone should be able to just log in and operate the app.
Durability and Design
The KKTick Tank T5 smartwatch tries to impress with its rugged build, which as its name would suggest is a major selling point for this watch. From the moment you pick it up, it feels like a device engineered to go out and about to track the rigors of outdoor adventures. The casing is exceptionally robust, and the scratch-resistant display provided peace of mind during my testing, shrugging off bumps and scrapes that would typically ding up less durable watches. Its design is unashamedly utilitarian. Its chunky, almost industrial aesthetic clearly signals its purpose for the outdoors. While its bulk might be a consideration for those with smaller wrists, I found the watch to be relatively comfortable to wear during activity. Oh and did I mention the watch has its own dedicated flashlight? It doesn’t just light up the display in bright white either. This is a legitimate section of the frame that illuminates light out of it.
The Tank T5 might be a tank in name, but interestingly enough, it's deceptively lighter than it looks. The company says the bezel and case is made out of metal, while the display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass. I genuinely couldn’t make out the difference between plastic and metal in this scenario, but I can say that the watch has held up rather well during my review period.
Speaking of the display, a pleasing and rather large 1.43-inch AMOLED panel takes up most of the circle on the wrist. The Tank T5 does have a bezel with markers in increments of 2 surrounding it. It’s a sporty watch face and the 461 ppi count makes it sharp and clear to view. I also thought the colors were vibrant and easier to identify in bright sunlight. It’s a good smartwatch display in general, but especially so when you factor in the fact that it can be had for less than $150.
There isn’t a sim tray for data on this watch so it will be reliant on the Bluetooth connection to a smartphone. That lack of a sim tray makes the frame of the watch capable of water submersion and a rating of IP 69K. It’s a sporty watch thanks to the two buttons solely operating the functions that resemble a stopwatch clicker. The top button doubles up as a rotating dial which I was pleasantly surprised to see on here. The rotating dial when used on the home tile will circulate through the unique watch faces in the watch’s library. You can of course add more to the list, but the default ones cover a lot of ground in stylistic approaches. Then when you’re operating a menu, the dial can be used to scroll through the options up and down. It’s great to have this especially at this price point.
As this watch will likely be someone’s lifeline when out in nature and on an extreme adventure, it does carry the important task of containing both a speaker and a microphone on the body. Both outgoing and incoming calls can be received and communicated using the Tank5 and it does a rather decent job of handling your phone calls. I could clearly hear the person on the other side of the watch, and they can hear me loud and clear on their side from what I’ve been told.
Since the Tank5 uses a standard 24mm pin implementation to change out band straps, it’s quite simple to add in your own flare for style and comfortability. I highly disliked the included bands that shipped with the purchase of the watch. You’re given an orange, and a black silicon band which feels extremely cheaply made. The clasps seem ready to snap off at any time. It’s one of the most low quality bands I’ve seen as a default option on a smartwatch in some time. The steel strap on the other hand is made of decent quality, but it also isn’t too logical to run with that band as this kind of watch is aimed towards physical activity. I don’t know many people who enjoy sporting steel link bands to work out or explore the wilderness on a hike.
Overall, I do find the watch’s appearance to be attractive and appealing to look at. It doesn’t feel like a premium option when strapped on my wrist, but I also didn’t have any worries about it getting damaged accidentally brushing against a desk. Seeing the continued growth of these inexpensive Chinese smartwatches and how they’ve cleaned up the interface, while developing an identity away from the Apple Watch makes me very happy as a longtime smartwatch investor.
Performance and Battery Life
In day-to-day usage, the Tank T5 handles essential smartwatch functions for the most part. While the device does push notifications through, the interface is plagued by limited text lines. This has been a big sticking point for many years now that keeps a lot of Chinese smartwatches from being a truly viable option.
One of the originating functions of a smartwatch is to push text messages or emails to the wrist to forgo reaching for a phone. If you can’t actually read what the message is fully conveying, then it's not doing the job needed. I’m even ok with the font the T5 uses, but it’s a must to push the full message onto the watch like Google and Apple do. It’s a huge missed opportunity with the software here as the hardware has a rotating dial that would have been perfect to scroll through a wall of text with.
Navigating the interface is intuitive enough for common tasks, though it's not as fluid or refined as the high-refresh-rate displays found on premium smartwatches. However, the Tank T5 truly excels in battery life. I comfortably got several weeks of power on a single charge of this 860 mAh cell. In fact, my entire 30+ day review period with this watch was essentially off of the first charge I gave it after I unboxed it. This extended endurance is a game-changer for multi-day trips where the charging port is one less thing you have to worry about packing, alleviating the constant worry of your watch dying mid-adventure. This is absolutely one of the reasons why you’re likely to look at this watch over some of the big named Android Wear or WatchOS competition. The Tank T5 charges using a magnetic pin connector through the back side of the casing. I’ve never liked magnetic chargers that also have pins on them. If you’re going to do a puck style magnetic charger, just go the full implementation and a 100% magnetically connected.
Connectivity and Software
Pairing the Tank T5 with my smartphone was a straightforward process, and I experienced no issues with maintaining a stable connection. Notifications from my phone were consistently pushed to the watch when the app was running in the background. You can decide what permissions to give the app and which notifications you want pushed to you. The watch operates on its own proprietary operating system. While it's functional and serves its purpose, it's important to note that it lacks the extensive third-party app ecosystems of Wear OS or watchOS.
The biggest loss here that will keep me from using this in the long term is the lack of NFC for payments. In 2025, it’s nearly impossible for me to go a day without paying with my smartwatch. Yes, that might be an anecdotal thing, but according to Market.us Scoop, 30% of the 1.1 billion smartwatch wearers pay using their phone. According to my math, that’s 330,000,000 people who don’t pull their phones out for contactless payments. Since I’ve been reviewing this watch, I’ve resorted to tapping my phone, as well as pulling out my wallet for my credit card more than I would like. At this point, tapping to pay using a watch isn’t a habit or a luxury anymore, it’s a necessity and every smartwatch needs to have it, especially if you’re marketing it as an off-grid endurance champion.
I also found myself a bit frustrated with how slow the watch is to wake from sleep using the raise wrist to wake function. Whereas most smartwatches will be illuminated, displaying time before the position reaches your line of sight, I often found myself staring at a black blank screen. It takes such an extremely long time to get running that it was ironically faster to pull out my phone to check the time than glancing at the watch. I’m not kidding.
The software is also a bit funky at certain menial tasks like recalling what it's currently doing. When you have the watch running a function like say a stopwatch count, the watch will still timeout and go to sleep to its black default slumber. When you wake it by once again raising your wrist, it displays the home tile instead of the currently functioning operation. It’s infuriating needing to keep the watch awake for certain tasks before it times out just to keep the task running in the foreground. I would have to go into the app menu and reopen the app after waking it each time. Fortunately, the running counter does not stop during the time out, but it makes absolutely no sense for the time out to override an operating function. The whole point of having a smartwatch is the ability to monitor data. Making the ability to read that data hidden through tap after tap after tap reduces the efficacy of the watch for sure.
final thoughts
The AMOLED display is legible in direct sunlight
For outdoor enthusiasts, the offline map feature is a significant advantage, allowing navigation even without a phone connection. However, I found the initial setup process for these maps to be a bit less intuitive than it could be, requiring some patience. The integrated compass, barometer, and altimeter could be valuable tools to those who enjoy outdoor excursions, but I’m not the right target audience for those features right now as a brand new father who is at home with the baby all the time.
The things that won me over are self-explanatory as everyone loves a watch they rarely have to charge. Everyone loves a sharp, high pixel density AMOLED display to look at. Everyone wants a watch that doesn’t scratch up easily as it's something you wear everyday and everywhere. And of course, everyone wants something good without paying a lot of money for it. The Tank T5 isn’t the perfect smartwatch, but it's an extremely serviceable one that I don’t have a problem recommending. It’s still priced below the big brand watches so there is a segment difference that could justify why someone would buy the Tank T5 instead of spending a little bit more for an entirely different level of smartwatch. Still, for a watch like this to do a majority of the things a much more expensive watch can do, and in some cases do it a lot better (battery life) at a fraction of the price is pretty impressive.
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