J**K
As of 10/2014, this is the best iOS Smartphone available (better than the Pebble)
UPDATE ON 11/19: I've had the Microsoft Band for 2 weeks now, and it is AMAZING! Skip the Metawatch and go straight for the MS Band (if you can get one). They are sold out online, and you will have to look on eBay and pay a premium.This is my favorite watch (for iOS) so far, and I have had many:Cookoo watch: Returned it. Not enough functionality.Cogito Watch: Returned it. Not enough functionality.Pebble: Looks like a kid's watch, made from plastic and gets scratched too easily.Pebble Steel: Meh. I preferred my metawatch to it. It is small, the build quality is mediocre and the watch faces are ugly. They have an app store, but most of the apps are useless, look terrible or don't work right. I returned it after 2 days.Meta M1: I preferred this watch to the Pebble Steel, but it has a few deal-breakers. 1) The backlight is completely useless. Seriously, you can't read anything in the dark. 2) The font and font size are very hard to read. I had to get close and squint my eyes to read it. 3) The UI is a mess, and is totally non-intuitive, and seems very beta. 4) No activity tracker. I kept it for a week, then returned it.So that takes me back to my Metawatch. It has all the main widgets on one screen: time/date, weather, iPhone battery, activity tracker. It also has a full size watch screen, and calendar that shows a listing of your next 5 days. The best feature (for me) is that the weather widget always tells you the weather where you are. So if you go from San Francisco to Oakland, the weather location will change. But, the cool part is that it doesn't just tell you the city. It tells you the neighborhood. For example, if you are in Chinatown, that's the location it indicates. If you go to the Marina, it indicates it. Even in Oakland, it will tell you if you are in Uptown or Lake Merrit, etc. For some reason, I really like that feature. The watch isn't fancy and loaded with functionality, but it works consistently well at providing me ALL the SMS, email and notifications I want. Never had any issues! When you get a message, the light turns on briefly and the message stays on the screen to give you enough time to read it and decide whether you want to grab your phone. I get 100% of the messages that go to my phone's notification center. The watch lets you know when you are out of range by vibrating several times. Once you are back in range, it will reconnect and buzzes you to let you know. The battery life lasts easily 5 days, and takes but a few hours to get a full charge. I ended up buying a new band for it, and will keep wearing it for now. I got a black leather military strap band, and it looks pretty cool. You can put any standard 22mm watch band on it, unlike most of the other watches.The next watches are am interested in trying are the Omate X, and the Burg Neon 16A, which is supposedly going to be sold at Best Buy. I will wait for more reviews before I buy it. None of the other watches out there send notifications to iOS, so there are only a few choices until the Apple Watch goes on sale.I didn't mention the Martian Notifier because I think it is ugly, and I dont like scrolling text.I recommend trying the Metawatch if you want to get a taste of what it is like to get your notifications sent to your watch for a quick glance, and don't want to hassle with a complicated UI, and difficult Blackberry pairing setup. Once you buy it, you will have it on your wrist completely set up in less than 1 hour, once you download the free MetaWatch app from the app store.You should be able to get one on eBay for $99.
Trustpilot
3 weeks ago
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