SKMEI 1358 Review

I bought this watch four months ago and I have been wearing it every week during my weekend hiking. Overall this watch is impressive considering the number of features per the price that I have paid for it. All the features worked flawlessly considering that this is a relatively cheap watch comparing it to Casio ProTrek range of watch.

SKMEI 1358 is basically an equivalent of Casio's triple sensors watches. You might know them as Pro Trek or Pathfinder in North America. It has a barometer, a thermometer, and a digital compass. It also has an extra sensor that the Pro Trek watches might not have as far as I know of. It has a pedometer. Yes, it counts steps and estimates the calories burnt and distance traveled. With the combination of these sensors, this is an ideal outdoor watch you can have for a fraction of a Casio Pro Trek price.

SKMEI 1358

Dimensions

SKMEI 1358 Watch Dimensions

Quality and Durability

After four months of usage, I felt that the quality of the watch is acceptable. The watch is built like
a G-Shock but I doubt that it would match up with G-Shock. Never the less the G-Shock look-alike built does provide good protection against drop or accidental knocks to walls.

However, it can only withstand 30m of water resistant. I suspect that the lower limit of water resistant is caused by how they positioned the pressure sensor. Don't expect that this watch can withstand the force of a car wheel rolling on it. Some Youtube videos demonstrate that a G-Shock will survive such a test.

SKMEI 1358 Pressure Sensor Position

The wristband provided is surprisingly good silicone band.

I notice that SKMEI uses unconventional pins to hold the wristband to the watch. The design of the wristband and its pins from my point of view is genius. The tighter you wear the watch, the tighter the wristband is attached to the watch. It also very easy to disassemble the wristband from the watch.

However, after four months of wearing with my sweat pouring over the watch, the pins started to rust. It seems that SKMEI decided to use non-stainless steel pins. Such a pity. It's almost perfect. Treating the pins with WD-40 seems to prevent rusting.

Notice the side pins begin to rust

Rust mark after a side pin was taken out

Rusted side pins

User Experience

Overall using this watch was pleasant. I was worry that the size of the watch might be a turnoff but because of the size of the watch, it was able to display more information on it. You can glance at it without much effort to read the time, altitude or temperature. As for the backlight, I felt that it was too dim but it's still useful. The negative display is very visible during daytime and even under a bright sunlight. During night time, the backlight is good enough to light up the display. As the styling of this watch is a sports watch, I mostly wear it during hiking or outdoor activities.

As this watch has tons of features, the operation of the watch might be too overwhelming for some people. The typical user manual from a China company doesn't help either. I have to explore the watch by myself and rewritten the user manual. You can find the user manual at https://almost-a-technocrat.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-better-skmei-1358-instructions-manual.html

Watch bands disassembled

SKMEI 1358 without bands