Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsDumbest Smart Watch Ever
Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2019
I was actually really hopeful about this watch. It was supposed to be the pinnacle of smart watch technology. However, I was pretty disappointed right out of the gate. I've had it for about 6 months now, and below is my experience:
The Good:
1. The rotating bezel idea is amazing. It makes scrolling much more intuitive.
2. It's made out of metal, seemingly some sort of steel, which makes it really resilient.
3. It's incredibly waterproof. I'm an aquatic guy (swimming, snorkeling, SCUBA diving, etc), and I've never been afraid to get this thing wet - even when going down deep. Though I rarely use it, it does have an integrated water lockout mode that keeps the screen from being touched. When you turn that mode off, it blasts a bit of sound out of the speaker to clear it of water. I only ever actually use the water lockout feature to clear the speaker.
4. It seems to take one of the standard sized watchbands, which is changeable by the owner. I stuck with the original rubber one it comes with and have had no real problems. It also comes with a spare.
5. Some people think the charging station is clunky, I think it's great. I just put the watch on it, face out, and it works perfectly fine. No plugs needed. It seems to charge reasonably fast (a couple hours max).
6. The battery life is pretty nice. I can usually get about 3 to 4 days off a single charge.
7. The "find my phone" feature is amazing. It also tells me when my phone disconnects, like when I forget it at my desk or something. Cant find my phone? If it's within bluetooth range, I hit the "find my phone" button, and it makes my phone ring.
8. I've tested the heart rate monitor against pulseox devices as well as medical professionals, and it's always within 2 to 5 beats.
9. The app notification and integration is reasonably decent. I can get texts and some chat programs to work well on it... however, Facebook messenger doesn't integrate well. It always makes me check my phone for message details. I'm not sure if that's a Facebook thing or a watch thing, but it's pretty annoying for my watch to tell me I got a message, but not be able to use my watch to see it.
10. There are a bazillion watchfaces you can get for it. A lot of them free, some of them cost about a dollar, maybe 2.
The Bad:
1. Let's say you're laying in bed and dont have your watch super tight. The flickering green light under the watch that is used to record your heart rate, is super bright, and will rapidly blink until you adjust your hand to hide it.
2. The heart rate sensor, which I always have set to "continuous monitor" turns off randomly. And I dont mean, turns the setting off, I mean, it just stops working randomly. When I check the setting, it says it's on, but it's clearly not because the annoying green light (as explained in my last point) isnt on. The only way to fix it is to turn the setting off, then back on again.
3. The stair counter (records how many flights of stairs you climb) is incredibly inaccurate. More often than not, if I'm driving to work and I'm going up a bumpy hill, it thinks I'm climbing stairs. At one point, on the way to work, it congratulated me on breaking my previous "record" of 54 flights of stairs. I hadn't climbed a single flight of stairs that day.
4. God forbid, if I'm sitting at my desk for more than an hour without getting up, it notifies me that I need to get up and start moving. "Torso twist?" Sure watch, I'll give it a go. I do 10 perfect torso twists, it records 3 of them as correct. Then, after not moving around for a while, you finally get up and walk somewhere, it notifies you and congratulates you on "getting back on track." Such a condescending device.
5. The only workout it autodetects is walking quickly. Nothing else. I go swimming, do crunches, etc.... and nope, it has no clue. I try one of the built in workouts, it doesnt detect half of my motion. I do 6 full situps, it records 2 of them. It's literally useless as an activity tracker.
6. I have it set to turn the watchface on when I turn it towards my face. That works about 40% of the time. I often rotate my hand back and forth several times to get the watch face to turn on. Drives me absolutely nuts. If I keep it on constantly, I get about a half a day less of battery time over 3 days.
7. The watch has slowed down significantly over the last 6 months. At first, it was snappy and I never had to wait for a thing. Now I can rotate the bezel around three or four times before it continues to scroll. I've removed all but 3 widgets (weather, heart rate, and calendar). It still lags badly when I try to scroll. I click into a menu, I have to wait 5 seconds before it allows me to scroll through the information. I've even tried factory resetting it, and the same thing happens. I keep up with updates and device maintenance, and nothing seems to help.
8. Though the main body of the watch is made out of steel, the rotating bezel is not. If I barely nick it against a wall, it gets badly scuffed. I wish they would have made the bezel out of steel as well.
9. Though the screen itself is recessed under the bezel, it makes it super hard to touch the very corners of the screen. I got a screen protector for it, and that seems to help.
10. There are basically no apps for the watch. And the ones you can get are several dollars. I was hoping that as the time went on, there would be more apps, but it's clear that developers are more focused on watchfaces than useful apps.
11. You're basically forced to use the AccuWeather App... which, for anyone who pays attention, is not good. Accuweather has a bad reputation for mining user data. However, you don't have a choice as it seems to be the only weather app available for the watch.
Overall, I dont necessarily regret purchasing the watch, but I wouldn't recommend others buy it. It's a bit pricey for what you actually get. I'd recommend researching another, less frustrating, option.
