Tested: Fiido Mate S3 Cycling Watch, the Smartwatch Designed for Your e-Bike

That's not a bad thing. Quite the opposite. Fiido is a China-based company that can boast some of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns in the e-bike sector, a manufacturer with an already established and very large community, a sound reputation, and excellent customer service. And good e-bikes, too.

The e-bike market has seen unprecedented growth these past three years due to a combination of various factors ranging from increased environmental awareness to the international health crisis and rising living costs. Electric bicycles are considered a greener alternative to personal cars or even public transport, more time-efficient, more affordable, more beneficial to the rider's health, and way more fun than any other means of moving about the city.

So, how do you make one even better? You add unexpected functionality, that's how.

The Setup

Fiido kicked off 2023 with a huge bang, introducing the first two new bike models out of a planned new lineup: the e-Gravel or C-Series bikes, the C21 and the C22, the latter of which I got to test and review – and was positively impressed. Marketed as direct rivals to much more expensive, $3,000+ variants from the likes of VanMoof or Cowboy, these two bikes aim to bring comfort, high quality, good looks, and a fully connected experience to the daily commute.

This is where the Fiido Mate or the Fiido S3 Smartwatch comes in. It's the latest product from Fiido but the first of its kind from the company and, I believe, a rarity on the market, at least coming as a bundle from the e-bike maker. The Fiido Mate is a sort of a hybrid between a fashion statement piece, a sports accessory, and a cycling watch. Is it absolutely necessary, like, say, the air in your bike tires? Definitely not. Is it a nice addition to an already awesome bike? Oh, yes.

The Fiido Mate has three operation modes: fitness tracking, health monitoring, and cycling mode. In that last mode, it offers remote lock and unlock of the bike, access to the bike's display with detailed stats, and control of the functions of the e-bike. Fancy, eh?

The Fiido Mate is a watch face that comes with two swappable silica gel straps, one black and one gray. It's very lightweight, at just 43 grams (12 oz), but of medium size (39.3 x 44.3 x 12.5 mm), so that it fits all male wrists and most female.

The watch features a 1.60-inch IPS TFT color screen display with full touch functionality, 240 x 280RBG resolution, adjustable brightness, and one button on the side. The cover is 2.5D CG ACG tempered glass, with ABS on the back, where you also have the sensors that make it a health smartwatch.

You have a heart rate sensor with blood oxygen sensor, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and geomagnetic sensor so that you can track heart rate, blood oxygen, sleep, and the number of steps taken in different sports activities.

By means of Bluetooth 4.0 connection, the Fiido Mate pairs with the Fiido App on your phone for more detailed stats or your C-Series bike – the C22, in my case -, though never with both at the same time. It's rated IP68, so some splashing won't damage it, but you're not meant to wear it when bathing.

Power comes from a built-in 200mAh Li-ion polymer battery that takes just 40 minutes for a full charge. The charger attaches magnetically to the back of the watch. Fiido doesn't offer an estimate for how long it goes between charges, but my experience was of 36 hours with heavy use, including daily workouts and a couple of bike rides a day.

The Experience

The Fiido Mate looks nice straight out of the box. It's sleek, though bigger than a standard women's health watch, with a nice display and intuitive features. It's packed with features, too: in addition to tracking and breathing exercises, you get weather, music, messaging, mail or app notifications (you choose which ones you wish to receive), and remote phone camera control.

When you use it as a smartwatch, you can rely on relatively accurate data in terms of calories burned and number of steps. During my tests, I only got readings on my nightly sleep once, so my guess is some functions are still a work in progress. The same goes for a couple of features in the app, which are non-responsive or left empty.

The Fiido Mate disconnects from the app as you move farther than a couple of meters from your phone. Not all of us take the phone with us to go potty, so this becomes a serious bore at some point.

With the connection cut off, the watch continues to track your movements and your vitals, but you can't see them updated on the watch display. You'll only be able to see them here and in the app on the phone once you reestablish the connection between the two – because it doesn't happen automatically, as you'd expect.

It does when you use it as cycling watch, though. Once you pair your bike with the watch, every time you press the power button on the bike, the watch will automatically sync with it, provided it’s within range. What the Fiido Mate does is basically put the bike's cockpit display on your wrist, including the controls for the levels of motor assist (PAS), the overall data regarding the current ride, overall distance covered, average speed, and the light controls.

More importantly, though, once the two are synced, you won't have to worry about turning off the motor. To be clear, the C22 has two power buttons you have to use before each ride if you want to make the most of it: the bike's on/off button and the motor button. The Fiido Mate replaces the latter, so if you park your bike and leave it turned on, the motor will turn off as you walk away from the bike. It will also turn back on when you come back.

Fiido says that proximity start is within 3 meters (9.8 feet) of the bike, while proximity shutoff is at a distance of 10 meters (32.8 feet). I can confirm both of these figures. In neither case are we talking about some kind of terrible burden (it's just a button, y'all!) that’s being lifted off your shoulders. But walking to your bike and hearing it beep to life, ready to go whenever you are, is a very cool thing to experience.

A few things stood out during my tests as wanting some improvement. The watch bracelets are porous, so with the black one (as you can see in the photos in the gallery), you will get speckles of dust and fabric on it all the time. While the material doesn't cause rashes or irritation, it tends to become sticky and somewhat uncomfortable during sweaty sessions of working out or bike riding.

The second eyelet could use a protrusion to keep the end of the bracelet in place. As it is now, it keeps slipping out, which means you're constantly forced to readjust it.

Conclusion

The Fiido Mate is not a necessary, absolutely vital accessory to the enjoyment of your C-Series e-bike from Fiido, but it does add surprising functionality to it and the extra cool factor. The fact that it's the only cycling watch offered as a bundle with an e-bike by a manufacturer adds even more of the same coolness factor.

The Fiido Mate is not exactly the best fitness and health smartwatch out there, but it works just fine if you're not a professional athlete or a diehard fitness fanatic. If you put in a couple of workouts a week, it'll serve you just right. But if you're looking for very accurate readings, detailed data, and extra features like monitoring stress levels and hydration, it's not the Mate for you.

The Fiido Mate retails for $100, and that's probably the bit I should have started with. For this kind of money, it's an excellent addition to your collection of gadgets – one that can offer you an overall look at your health and fitness, and which extends the functionality of your e-bike.