Apple's entry into the Smartwatch arena will have certainly pushed the core concept of smartwatches to the general public's eye and Hannspree are keen to tap into this wave of enthusiasm with the release of a range of in-expensive smartwatches; costing as low as £30.
Mind you the sample I had in for review was the Pulse version and this has an RRP of £89.99. Yet you can't argue that this is still a darn side cheaper than the Apple alternatives that’s for sure.
Before I start on the box and design contents I have to point out that from my initial testing this is not a smartwatch designed specifically for sports or OCD health enthusiasts, rather they have a designed a general purpose watch for telling the time, but with the added bonus of some applications, phone support and standard health based features, such as a heart rate and sleep monitor; plus a means to track the number of steps via its Pedometer.
I'll explain more about these features in detail later....
Box & Design
The Pulse smartwatch comes in a relatively small box adorned with some of the watches stand-out features and specs such as its OLED 1.22” TFT capacitive touch display with a 240 x 206 pixel resolution, integrated 0.7w speaker, 320mAH battery, 32MB ROM, 128MB RAM and Bluetooth 4.0 technology.
Getting inside the box from here is straightforward as the outer cover just slides off and with a snip of the protective tape you can get your first glimpse at the watch itself.
On first impressions this is actually a pretty stylus watch and while the depth is a little on the chunky side, it's not noticeably chunky as to spoil the aesthetics.
It weighs 46g which is hardly noticeable and measures 42.6mm (Diameter) x13.8mm (Excluding the watch band). The leather band is also black and features a buckle system which replicates most standard watches. Update: I did start to notice some wear/tear on the watch strap after two weeks.
To the side of the watch you will find a physical button which controls the turning on and standby modes of the watch and beneath this is the speaker grill.
On the face of the watch there is also a touch sensitive home button; though keep reading for my thoughts on this.
Additionally in the box you get a circular screen protector which you can add to the surface of the watch - to protect it from accidental scratches. You will also find a propriety charging cable with a magnetic clip design and a few pamphlets, one of which is the watches quick start guide.
Setup
I have to admit like most techies I did not study the quick start guide when using the watch to start with, I simply explored the interface and made it up as I went along.
For the most part the watches various options were intuitive enough to navigate through without consulting the manual. I.e. You can basically use a series of gesture controls to swipe to the right or left of the display to bring up the sub-menu options and from here use up/down swipes and taps to navigate/select functions.
The physical back button can go back a screen and turn the display off into standby. From the main clock display you can also swipe down or up the screen to activate a quick access menu; one that features controls for adjusting your brightness, volume and for turning on your Bluetooth Antenna. You can also view your Battery life and access text messages if you have linked up your phone (though from my experience this feature does not fully work with iPhone's)....
Mind you that does not mean the setup and operation was all plain sailing. For a start when I did consult the quick start guide it mentions the Home button at the base can be pressed to turn on the display. In reality, it did nothing and when I say nothing I mean nothing. I had to turn on the display via the physical back button.
Bluetooth setup was also a little fiddly, mainly when involving the 3rd party app that you need to download in order to tap into the smartwatches phone, messaging and notification support. Most of the time it partnered OK, but there were other times that when the watch was connected to the phone, the app wasn't. So I had to go into the app to pair the phone and this in turn created duplicated entries in the iPhone's Bluetooth settings menu.
Clock Display
I mentioned the Clock Display earlier on and this needs another mention here, because part of the watches appeal is you can customise the main display via a range of templates. This includes a traditional template (with clock hands) and digital displays. The problem is the quick start guide does not really tell you how to change these so I had to work it out for myself. Basically there are two ways to achieve the result, the first is from the main watch display and the second is from the settings > clock option. From the main clock interface however you press and hold the screen and then you can swipe left to right in order to find which template you want and then you simply tap on this to activate it. I went for a traditional look in the end as it also provides quick access to your current date.
However what I don't like is the Home button which pretty much truncates the base of the display. Considering it seems to do nothing or its function is yet to be revealed to me, its annoying that a lot of the templates get chopped off by this Home button.
The truncation also creeps into the main interface's text, so you can find the text towards the right edge is missing. In other parts it gets around this with scrolling text. But not in all areas.
What you can do with the watch
Despite this there is still a part of me that likes this watch, I think it feels comfortable to wear and the screen is generally easy to view in all light conditions. It does have motion support built in as well, so when you raise your hand towards your face it will turn on the screen so you don’t have to physically press a button and this is good. Plus the vibrancy/quality of the display is also top notch and this helps warrant the cost to a certain degree.
Heart rate monitor
Mind you there is another part of me that feels that the watch needs a few updates to iron out some of the niggles. For example one of the options you get with the Smartwatch is the ability to measure your heart rate. Now the accuracy is pretty good when it works, but while the heart monitor (sensors are placed on the underside of the watch) is supposed to take 12 seconds to measure the rate, sometimes I can be waiting several minutes for anything to happen. It does state you need the watch pretty tight, but if it’s too tight then the clasp can start to pinch.
Note: When the heart rate is being measured you do get a graphical symbol of a heart and this continues to pulsate while the rating is displayed.
Sleep monitor
Another function that you have on the watch is the Sleep monitor. This measures your sleep pattern based on motion and I believe your heart rate. You need to wear the watch of course while you sleep and the gesture I mentioned earlier about the screen coming on when you have your watch near your face is good during the day, however it isn't when using it with the sleep monitor at night! Primarily this is because the screen (which is pretty bright) kept turning on and this has woken up my Wife on a few occasions! Thus make sure you disable the smartwatch's auto-display feature before using this mode.
However its accuracy seems good, it measures how long you have slept and out of the hours slept it also indicates if you had a deep sleep. It then provides you with an assumption i.e. if you have slept well or not.
Sedentary rem…
The above option is basically trying to say Sedentary reminder (again the text is truncated on the watch).
I actually found this option to be pretty useful as it can be set to give you an alert every 30-60 minutes to remind you to get up and walk about to stretch your legs if you have been sitting down too long.
From my line of work this is important and I think the function is really useful at making me get up.
Pedometer
The above can then be used in conjunction with the watches secondary function as acting as a Pedometer. You need to set the options up first such as adding your correct height and weight, because this helps with the accuracy and also stops you from cheating by wafting your arm up and down to simulate walking.
However the setup could have benefited from a different measurement system, i.e. such as stone for weight, instead of kg and height in ft, instead of cm; as I had to convert the figures myself. Also the option to accept any changes was done by tapping a tick option via the top right of the screen and this was easier said than done.
On a positive note you can then configure the watch to set up a target number of steps; ranging from 500 to 30,000.
Once you start the process it will run in the background and you can keep an eye on matters by heading back to the Pedometer application.
Its accuracy was generally spot on during testing, what wasn't so hot is that the number of steps gets wiped out if the battery drains completely (there is no buffer) or after a day or so of non-activity.
Thus if you want to attempt a big walk you need to do it in one hit otherwise it seems to be less practical for multi-use training (especially as the supporting app is so poor - more on this later).
Additionally I did not like that when you reached your goal there was no alert or congratulation message. It just carried on counting steps.
The biggest gripe though with all the above is that the supporting 3rd party app (MediaTek SmartDevice) is extremely poor to say the least. It’s linked via Bluetooth, but it doesn't seem to pull over the data correctly, in that it's supposed to showcase the number of Steps, Calories and distance I’ve walked, including Sleep data. But whatever it does pull over seemed random and non-accurate.
Because of this from my point of view the watch is let down heavily and a lack of a web or dedicated app support is a killer blow for those who like to keep track of their data.
Messaging
With the phone linked via Bluetooth to my iOS 9.1 iPhone 5s device, the messaging app is supposed to bring over the last few messages but it does not work correctly as it sits there on the loading screen before stating it is a feature not currently available.
However what does work is current messages i.e. if the phone is linked via BT and you get a message it does send this to the watch so you can read it.
The messages through are displayed a little messy and you can’t reply to the message from the watch itself.
Phoning
You can however dial phone numbers or pick from your contacts (which are pulled from the Phone). This works OK for the most part, but there isn't a search system on the contacts side so it can be a bind scrolling through the list to pick the contact you want.
In use you can receive and answer calls; the recipient’s voice then pipes through to the small speaker and the callers could be heard clearly during testing. However on the flip side our recipient was stating that she could not hear us properly; with the calls cutting out for a fraction of a second. In fairness the recipient was using a headset to make the call, so this could be the primary issue here.
BT Music
Music can also be controlled from the watch, but again this was hit and miss. For example sometimes the music would not play or the up/down volume controls seemed to adjust the brightness on the phone rather than the watches volume. The music played from the phone does pipe through the internal speakers, but without a headphone port you will then have to link up a pair of Bluetooth headphones to hear the music privately.
Update: I also found that sometimes you had to kick start the music on the phone before the watch could control it. So for me the option was not that intuitive.
Applications
Additionally the watch does come with a few extras, such as a calculator, voice recorder, stop watch and alarm. However with the alarm you are limited to just two choices (as per the profile customisation which has only two themes for backgrounds). There is a way to link the device to your computer, but the available storage is so small you would be hard pushed to add any new content to the watch anyway.
Customisation
I should quickly mention the two themes; these are accessible via the main Profile icon so you can change the colour of the icons or the background. There is no way to add your own custom background which would have been good. Yet despite this the two options do look OK for the most part.
Battery Life
The battery needs 2 hours of charging before use and we recommend doing this (unlike us) to help train the battery to improve its effectiveness. In reality the battery life is OK form a standby point of view (up to 96 hours). In reality I've been using this watch without tapping into the core features i.e. using it like a standard watch and it can last for days which kind of confirms the standby life battery usage. It’s only when you switch to the BT or Pedometer that the battery takes a hit, so you could be charging this every two days or less!
It takes roughly three and a half hours to fully charge the watch (it will beep at you and display a message to let you know when it needs recharging), but the propriety cable for charging is a pain to use! This is because its magnetic clip system is so weak it just needs a slight moment on the watch to dislodge the charging aspect.
Summary
For me I am in two minds about this watch. On the one hand I do like the sophisticated look and the way the watch sits on my wrist. I also like the sleep, pedometer and sedentary reminder; despite the niggles that go with it. However on the flip-side the 3rd party app support is extremely poor from a data analysis point of view and granted I know this is not a dedicated sports watch but I would still like to find out how many steps I’ve made!
The Bluetooth support on the whole is also hit-and-miss at times. Plus its dependence on a smartphone for some of its functions makes me think that the watch is not so smart after all (though you could say the same about the Apple smartwatch). Its price tag is tempting, but I feel that a few fixes are still required before I can fully recommend this product!