I am a watch person, I love to wear my watch and have only a handful of needs: an analog face, a good battery, a good band, readable time/date and comfort. I wear my watch face down (or upside down), so I tend to scratch the crystals. Historically I have destroyed any watch not made of titanium (I’m a bit hard on them!)
Being a watch person, I have always been less than enthused by the idea of a smart watch. I have never seen the point of wearing something that requires me to charge it every 4 hours, tells me nothing that my phone can’t and won’t tell me the time when I look at it.
Oh how misinformed I was!
First Impressions
The watch is very light. It is a round watch, has a thick leather band, silver back and casing and a strange little black area at the bottom of the screen, like it obscures part of the screen for a bezel. Not sure why that is needed, but it does make for a “square” bottom on the screen. The band is very stiff, which makes it difficult to clasp, but that’s expected of leather and I’m sure it will soften up in time.
It is a very nice looking watch, but the bezel is thick. It’s quite a bit thicker than my other watch, and the face is larger. I’ve never been one for large watches, but it fits my wrist well enough.
It paired to my phone immediately, without issue! After a couple hours it notified me of an update, so I told it to install. It required 80% battery before it would install, and I was at 69%. After 2 hours! At that rate of decline the watch would last less than 7 hours. More than I thought, but less than ideal for using it during the day!
Charging the watch is simple. The watch uses inductive charging, and the base holds the watch sideways. When on the charger, the watch displays a digital clock and charge progress meter. The strange thing about charging is the watch can’t be off and on the charger. Putting the powered off watch on the base turns the watch on.
The installation took a few minutes and a couple restarts to complete. Updating the apps took quite a while, but that’s when I noticed the back and bezel of the watch gets pretty warm to the touch when it is active. During the update it was warm enough that it felt uncomfortable on my wrist and I took the watch off.
After the update I could not get the watch and phone to connect. After some research I restarted the phone, forgot the watch on the phone and factory reset the watch. Drastic, but after all this they connected just fine. Had to charge the watch to reset it, was at 50% and needed 80% (the magic number) to do anything.
Apps
The apps on the watch are pretty slick. The pedometer recorded my steps, which tells me that I walk quite a bit for someone who sits at a desk all day. The kept the default goal of 10,000 steps per day, but at around 3,400 steps per day never got close to reaching it. It only recorded my steps for 5 of the 7 days though. One of those days was the first day, which may be a “learning day” so it can figure out whether I’m walking or just talking with my arms.
The heart rate app was touchy at best. I like to wear my watch fairly loose on my wrist; it slides up and down my arm a bit, which made for lousy heart rates. Once it recorded me at 47 beats per minute. It failed to record a heartbeat for two days after that, leading me to believe I was dead. Frequently it asked me to tighten the band and try again, but I had some degree of luck by pressing it into my wrist.
The alarm app works like any standard alarm. Set the date and time and wait. The alarm is nice and quiet, with vibrations at the same time. It wasn’t loud, but having it on my wrist made it very obvious what was going on when it went off. I’m not sure it would wake me up though.
Taking a picture with the watch was pretty cool! I opened the camera on my phone and the watch buzzed. When I tapped the app on the watch, it said tap to take picture. I lined up my photo on the phone and tapped the watch. It counted down from 3 and snapped the photo! My kids loved that it showed the picture on both the watch and the phone. It made multiple “can I see” questions easy to answer. With this feature, you have three seconds to pose, rather than 3 seconds to run into the frame and pose.
Text messages on the watch, while being easy to read, offer more and less privacy than the phone. The watch only shows the current message, rather than all the history, which is nice for the one off funny to show the family! However the small screen makes longer messages harder to read, and the fact that it shows on the face means anyone could see it while you aren’t looking. Emails fit this as well.
The flashlight app was quite impressive. At night, in my garage, I was easily able to navigate around without running into or stepping on anything. This might be the only case where wearing the watch upside down is an advantage: I simply held my hand out in front of me, naturally, and the light pointed down and in front of me! I don’t see how this would help carrying anything though: most boxes require you to grab by the sides, putting the light off to your side (or on the box for me). I didn’t use the flashlight enough to be certain, but I would expect this to drain the battery faster as well, so use with caution!
Find my phone is something I have no use for: I don’t lose my phone! Given that I’m in a minority here, I tested the app. My phone rang with a loud, unique ring, making it easy to locate. This would definitely come in handy for all of those “where is my phone” moments!
The navigator app seemed to work well, it buzzed when it was time for a turn, showing me which way to turn. This would work much better with the watch face up, so you could see it while you’re holding the wheel!
Theatre Mode would definitely be nice. It blanks the screen and silences the watch until you push the button. That is much easier to do than silencing the phone. Mute works the same way for sound/buzzing, but is way too easy to push. Frequently while checking the battery I muted the phone!
Translate was kind of neat. I spoke English to it and received a decent Spanish translation. Likewise I received a decent English translation when I spoke Spanish to it. I would use this in the checkout line, when people are conversion in another language. I doubt it would pick it up or translate quickly enough.
Every time I tried to go to the Play Store to download more apps, it crashed. Not sure what that was about, but I guess the suite that’s installed is all I’ll test!
Use
The first night, I put the watch on the charger in my bedroom, and at two in the morning had to take it off the charger and turn it off. The screen was bright enough that it was bothering my wife!
The watch shows notifications on the screen when I get an email, text message, phone call, Hangout comment, Google Now Card or calendar reminder on my phone, as well as other messages that it displays on its own. The screen is very clear and easy to read, and the touchscreen is fairly responsive to my fingers. The preview message removes line breaks and can only display about 3 words on one line before wrapping, making the email previews difficult to read. Clearing the notification on the watch clears it on the phone as well. This is normally good, as it’s much easier to clear an email from the watch than the phone, but the upcoming football game I wanted to keep blocked the time, forcing me to clear it! Strike one on use!
I noticed that the watch would frequently turn on the screen when I moved the watch face away from my face. I’m wondering if this is due to the watch being upside down. Upon occasion, when I looked at it, the screen would come on and show me the time, or at least tried to. The notifications take up about half the screen and make it impossible to see the time for most of the day. I should note that I chose an analog face as I don’t like digital watches. Digital watch faces may be readable behind the notifications.
Whenever I viewed the watch face, the phrase “OK Google” shows up in the center. Naturally my eyes are drawn to it, so I don’t register the time as quickly as I do on my normal watch. The settings screen is difficult to read, as the watch face seems to dim every time I get there. Also, the text is a light gray on a dark gray background, which is not ideal for readability.
The touchscreen is quite sensitive to touch, and you can change the face of the watch by pressing and holding the screen. Apparently this is easy to do as you sit and cross your arms. I randomly would change the face while waiting for something else to happen, each time I would look at the watch later and have to change it back. This probably wouldn’t affect anyone wearing the watch “normally.”
Using the watch at work shows the blessings and curses. The notifications are nice to see from time to time, but Google Now has always annoyed me on my phone (I know how far from home I am!) and the watch makes it worse. The amount of emails I receive each day also wears down the battery faster. I was able to kill the battery in one day (more on that later).
All that said the notifications got a win while at work. We were waiting for a conference call and the watch alerted me to a text message before I knew my phone went off. I was able to act on the message faster than I normally would due to the lack of feeling my phone sometimes! That’s a win for the watch, but that’s the only one I had.
Final Thoughts
After spending a week with the watch, I now see the merits of smart watches. The quick notifications and available apps make it a nice addition to a smart phone. I would like to see it have a full open touch screen face, rather than that annoying black space at the bottom.
The band is thick leather, so it could possibly hold up to me. I am sure it would soften up and be easier to use in time. The clasp feels cheap, but says Stainless Steel on it, so it should hold up to abuse. All in all, the watch seems to be well constructed. I can only assume there are pins holding the band to the watch, and traditionally those are the weakest points on the band. It seems well constructed, and I can’t actually see the pins, so it may connect differently.
As for resisting scratches, I wore it all day, every day, for 7 days. While I was careful with it, since I wear the watch face down the face is in contact with more surfaces, and I am rather hard on my watches. All that said, the watch face has no scratches and is as responsive to touch on day 7 as it was on day 1.
The battery life was the single biggest surprise for me. I expected 4 to 6 hours per charge and it really stood up to my use. I wore the watch an average of 13 hours each day. During that time period, I used 1% of the battery every 12 minutes or so, for a projected battery life of 19 hours per day! I was able to kill it once, using 90% of the battery in just under 12 hours, but that was the aberration in my data, and it charged back to 100% in less than 2 hours. While my normal use may not be all that normal, I didn’t walk through a dark forest at night using on the watch as a flashlight, I was most impressed with the battery life of the watch.
I see it can be a useful tool for anyone, with quick notifications, ease of use, comfort and battery life. Everything I want in a watch and more!
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