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Review: Cogito Pop smartwatch for iOS (video)

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When you put the word “smart” in front of anything, most people tend to think that it’s going to be some kind of advanced product. Most smartwatches on the market have a display and offer a simplified (or detailed) look at information from your smartphone along with access to third-party apps and services.

CONNECTEDEVICE is the company that’s trying to put the “watch” back in smartwatch. What if your smartwatch was created with the primary purpose of showing the time? Well, that’s exactly what the Cogito Pop does. It offers style and functionality, but don’t expect anything fancy here. The Cogito Pop puts notifications on the back burner, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Overview

At first glance, this looks like a normal watch. There’s absolutely nothing from it’s appearance that would indicate that it has any type of smart features. It just looks like a good old-fashioned watch with a couple of buttons on the side. Surprisingly, this watch does connect to your device via Bluetooth and displays notifications for text, email, social network interactions, alarms, phone calls, and more. It’s also made out of plastic, but that’s not really different from any other smartwatch.

Check out the video review below:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw1jI5B4Blk]

Functionality

The Cogito Pop uses four simple LED notification icons that sit at the top of the watch’s face. This is about as simple as a smartwatch can be. When you receive a notification, the watch will vibrate and one of the related icons will illuminate. The icon will continue to blink until you acknowledge the notification on your device or press the top button on the watch. In a nutshell, that’s what makes the Cogito Pop a smartwatch.

Setting up the Cogito Pop is very simple. Download the “Connected Watch” app from the App Store and pair it via Bluetooth with your iOS 7+ device. The app is extremely simple, but what more do you need to manage notifications and four LED lights? The best part is, you’ll never have to charge this smartwatch. It runs on two small watch batteries that CONNECTEDEVICE says will last up to one year. It also carries a 100M water resistance rating.

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The Cogito Pop also offers a remote camera shutter button that can be used with the camera interface within the Connected Watch app, a smartwatch finder that will cause the watch the beep and vibrate in case you’ve misplaced it, a phone finder feature, and music controls.

In my experience, the remote camera shutter wasn’t very impressive. Like I mentioned, this feature will only work within the app’s camera interface, and overall, it’s very slow (see the video for a demo). The music controls work, but I’d hardly call them “controls” because I really only had the option to play/pause music. After some searching (outside of the instructions), I found a post on the company’s Facebook page noting that holding down the top button for three seconds will skip tracks.

Pricing & final thoughts

Novelties aside, the core notification features of the watch are great. It may be a very low-level alternative to today’s smartwatch standards, but some people would prefer this over something like a Pebble. For example, my wife is a medical professional and she’d much rather have something like this instead of a flashy smartwatch. She actually finds this to be more beneficial in her line of work than any watch with a display that would draw unnecessary attention.

Overall, I found the watch to be useful, but the real downside here is the price and that it lacks a backlight, so you won’t be able to check the time in the dark. Currently, the Cogito Pop retails for $129.95. In my opinion, that’s a little too much money to spend for what you’re actually getting, but there’s definitely a place in the world for this kind of smartwatch. For $20 more, you could purchase a Pebble, but again, some people prefer this type of simplicity. For a closer look at the Cogito Pop, check out the video review above. The Cogito Pop is available in a wide variety of colors from the company’s website or on Amazon.

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Comments

  1. PMZanetti - 10 years ago

    That looks awful.

  2. frankman91 - 10 years ago

    I like the concept; a simple standard watch with the ability to show phone status at a glance, but the execution of this is not great. It is WAY too bulky for a watch of it’s type and it just looks cheap.

    Again, I really like the idea and would like to see some other watch makers like fossil that make decent $150 watches throw similar features on.

  3. keithhussey - 10 years ago

    I just got mine. Looks great! Paired easily! Emits random alerts that have nothing to do with what’s on my iPhone 5s. Began emitting a solid tone that wouldn’t ‘t stop until I rebooted the watch. Won’t stay connected more than 30 minutes, while not being more than 12 feet away! Customer Support could not care any less. If this is what you expect for your $200, go for it!

  4. anmite - 10 years ago

    I like the concept, don’t mind the bulkiness—even as a women’s watch, it’s got some funk. I like the dial and hands. The idea of notification by vibrating I can see as useful particularly in meetings where I have the sound off on my iPhone. The colours are great, too. $130.00 (obviously more in Canada) is a bit rich. Overall, as a watch with more, I think that design wise, it’s heading in the right direction.

  5. dksmidtx - 9 years ago

    Sorry, but don’t see how it holds a candle to the Pebble. Watch faces are abundant, they can show weather and other information at a glance, and notifications give you the text and then disappears without interfering with its other features. I don’t just want to know I got a message, but I like a glance that tells me whether I need to dig the phone out of my pocket – this thing is like a pager without even telling you who is paging you.

  6. Conduit Pune - 9 years ago

    I’m impressed by a smartwatch. This android watch also helps to keep us fit with his activity monitoring feature which no other watches have.