There’s even a fitness tracker, limited as it may be, calculating your calories and distance travelled from your steps, height, gender, and age.
But some of apps just don’t seem to work, and we couldn’t get any of our calendars synchronised with the ones on our phone, nor could we link our contacts for one of those easy wrist initiated phone calls.
You might have better luck, but outside of notifications from Gmail, the HTC One we were testing it with just wouldn’t maintain a decent conversation with the Z Watch, ignoring half of the functionality provided by the phone.
To get the Z Watch taking with a phone, though, you need the software, and SmartQ won’t really win any awards in this department, as it really doesn’t feel like you’re getting a finished app for your hard earned dollars.
When installed, it doesn’t offer much more than screen timeout settings, what you sync, and which apps will talk to the watch. It’s not like either the Pebble or Samsung Galaxy Gear, which offer apps you can install, and even let you change the watch face to something of your choice, not just the ones provided by the manufacturer.
SmartQ has a selection of watch faces that you can select, but they’re the only ones you get at the moment, with no way of deleting ones you don’t want, or easily replacing them with your own designs.
We’re sure someone will at one point hack it open (or already has, even) to let you install your own apps, but right now, there isn’t a lot you can do with the Z Watch outside of what Smart Q has provided which, truth be told, isn’t much at all.
Add to the fact that it’s next to impossible to find the Z Watch synchronisation app for Android unless you Google it, and Google pretty hard.
There’s no software in the box or on the device itself. There are no links on any documentation in the box, which is fitting, because there isn’t a manual or a sheet of paper in the box at all.
In fact, there was no listing of the required application on Google’s Play Store at the time of publishing, and there was nothing on the SmartQ website for the watch.
All up, SmartQ doesn’t make it easy to install the app needed for its smartwatch.
Colour us confused, but after heaving searching on Google, we eventually found it on the XDA Developers forum (and there’s a link in this sentence for anyone looking), a place we didn’t expect to be the only location where one could find the app that would make the SmartQ Z Watch work.
Apple users can, however, find the app on their equivalent, the Apple App Store, but that’s hardly surprising, since most of iPhone and iPad owners can only install apps using the aforementioned Apple app marketplace.
WiFi is even built into the handset to get apps like “weather” talking with the internet, but good luck typing in your WiFi password on a screen that is so tiny, you’d need a capacitive needle to get the keys noticed. It took us several tries to get our password in using the Z Watch screen, and the whole process made us ready to throw the watch out the window.
Speed and performance isn’t fantastic either in this smartwatch, despite the 1GHz processor used here. We’ve seen quite a few bugs that crash the unit, and there seems to be a good second delay minimum between finger swipes and button presses.
On the whole, it’s not an efficient unit, and we hope SmartQ can fix this in time with better firmware releases (we used 3.2 in our review).
There does appear to be one positive thing for the Z Watch, and that’s its water resistance, which is pretty decent.
We don’t recommend you go snorkelling, scuba diving, or taking it for a long shower, but its resistance to the elements is decent at IPX7, and sitting in a glass of water, it didn’t die at all, which is more than we can say for some of the so-called rugged water resistant devices we’ve seen in the past.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, it’s hard to recommend the Z Watch over any of the other smartwatches out there, even though the category is new, and the SmartQ offering certainly provides the concept at the lowest price point.
Between the bugs, the lack of speed in the unit, and the software just not being very good, we just can’t find a compelling reason to choose the Z Watch over anything out there in the world.
For $99, it’s certainly a cheap entry into the new world of smartwatches, but honestly, we’d rather spend a little more for a better smartwatch, and with so many coming on the market this year, there will be plenty to fill that space shortly.
Adam, we can only review based on the experience we had with the unit. In this case, our review sample Z Watch may not have performed to the best of its ability, compared against another unit.
It’s possible the Z Watch we were working with may have had issues, but, as I said, we can only review what we’ve been supplied. If there are supply issues, we’ll let Millennius and SmartQ come back to us on that, and if we have time later on, we can revisit the review.
It needs to be acknowledged, though, that not everyone’s experience is going to be the same, and compared against the two other smartwatches we’ve reviewed on GadgetGuy, this was easily the weakest, even if it had the most affordable price point.
I agree with you that everyone has different experiences. Its like with anything out there.
What I’m saying is I don’t think this is a true reflection on this product.
To be quite frank, I purchased two of these watches and I do believe they sold out within weeks.
But comparing your review against other users and myself, well its a contrast.
As I said, I can only review what’s supplied to me. Talking to PR, there’s a possibility mine may have issues with it, but I have experienced loads of slow downs, frequent crashes, and some weak connectivity.
We’ll send it back to Millennius and might look at it later on if we get a new unit, but if it’s a supply issue, I don’t think I can be held responsible for that.
Most items that come to us for review our at production level, and from the box I saw here, this was no different (pre-production boxes are generally not even marked and totally white). This one feels production level, but our unit didn’t perform.
I’ll happily admit if I felt it under-performed based on something I was doing, but I’ve been a technology journalist for enough years now that I don’t think it’s me, rather the unit I had to work with.
Still, as I said, we’ll see if we can get another unit. I’m not doubting experiences by others in the slightest, but ours wasn’t fantastic.
I have had my SmartQ Z for about a week now, and I am impressed with what you get for $99 USD. I must confess that the out of the box product is quite simplistic, but does the job, pairing with both Android and iPhones, giving you key notifications. To really get the maximum out of the device you have to tinker with it, side loading apps. So far here are the Pros, Cons and technical challenges I have faced:
Pros:
– cheap, as in price, NOT quality (for a Chinese product it is very well built)
– with the install of key apps, and use of its WiFi and Bluetooth, watch can do a lot of neat things
– waterproof: I have tested in shower and pool, and no issues
– good looking and gorgeous color screen
Cons:
– battery life – not sure about others, but I am lucky to get 4-5 hours of heavy usage. I need to close almost everything for it to last the day.
– slow performance – to be expected with single core, 1 GHz processor
– poor instructions
– both WiFi and Bluetooth can be finicky and lose connectivity, with WiFi more prone to disconnects
Technical challenges:
– synchronizing with my Windows 8.1 PC (success!)
– installing a video player that works (success!)
– input of text (success!)
– customization (ex. Wallpaper – success!)
All in all, a device with tons of potential at a great price!
I bought this watch from their site about a month and a half ago. Took 15 days for the damn thing to arrive. Was having all kinds of problems with it… but I was okay using the very basic features… like using it just as a watch…
Then 2 days later, it decides not to come up… just stick in bootloop… I contacted their customer support and they are not very helpful either… They won’t respond for days together and when they do they give you one line answers like they don’t care.. actually, they don’t.
Then I was told to ship it back to China for repair. I spent 25 dollars on the shipping for the repair and 10 days later when I still hadn’t received a response from them, I decided to follow up to which a couple days later, the Customer support responds saying that the watch was broken in transit and he refused to pick it up from the Post Ofiice. Funny thing… he sends me a picture of the opened package and the screen broken… (remember, this is a package he refused to pick up from the post office)
And to add to that, they are demanding more 25$ to fix that watch…
Now was I rude when I told him to flush it down a toilet? Anyhow, there should be an option like no stars at all for the reviews.
I just bought one on ebay, new in box, for $22 (including shipping).
unless it’s a used unit, it’s probably a fake one