Gadgetory

as the SmartWatch battle then decided between Apple watch and Android wear or can another system emerge as a competitor the pick watch looks to put a fresh spin on a touchscreen wearable and I've spent the last week sporting it as my daily driver does it tickle my fancy only one way to find out first of all this is a really nice looking wearable outwardly a finely brushed metallic casing with leather bands the underside is clad in a dark plastic well not quite as nice as recent steel watches helps provide wireless fast charging in the unique tickle strip more on both later in this review the round display is a 400 by 400 pixel OLED with respectable brightness though it can still be difficult to read outdoors the Onyx version which we're not reviewing covers that display in sapphire which is an easy recommend for the $50 premium a bevy of tech is on board including a pedometer heart rate monitor GPS Wi-Fi Bluetooth mic and speaker and the whole affair is ip65 splash resistant the software on tap feels Android wear adjacent maybe like the lovechild of wearing Tizen on setup you'll see Android is starting and you can secure the watch using a pattern unlock on startup instead of the vertical sliding UI of Android wear each direction swipes delivers a different function on tick watch swiping from the top down reveals settings options music controls in your step count swiping from right to left opens the applet drawer and here you'll find short interaction services like the health apps stopwatch calculator and a voice recorder swiping from the bottom up houses your notifications you can read deeper or swipe the notification away and lastly a swipe from left to right opens the voice assistant it's handy for web searches and looking up restaurants or point of interest details but proved frustrating for things like initiating phone calls saying call marie juliet back now always resulted in a web search for call me back now a saying call marie would move me to a text prompt asking me to choose between my wife marie and my friend mary EV while driving a car it would be nice to have a voice prompt finish this interaction is taking my eyes off the road to hit small text on a hard to read display isn't particularly great design happily the voice recognition worked like a champ for replying to text messages coming from an android wear device there was a little muscle memory retraining but this layout isn't as complicated as Tizen various menus the watch can be used with both Android and iOS but Apple's walled garden stunts a fair amount of the functionality for third-party wearables using an Android powered accessory with an Android powered phone just makes the most sense for maximizing your bang for buck one of the more unique features is the tickle strip on the side under the steel you can use the sensor to scroll through and use in notifications it takes a minute to get a feel for it and I find it strange that the strip does nothing from the main watch base but it is an appreciated Hardware control which reduces the amount of fingerprint smudging on your watch face the sock orientation though does look a bit odd as tick watch natively puts the strip on the right so users wear the watch with the crown on the left but that can be swapped in the watch settings Wi-Fi is well appreciated for keeping me connected as I move throughout my condo but this watch also falls prey to one of my biggest wear pet peeves that you receive no alert when the watch drops the Bluetooth connection I really appreciate a leash function on other wearables and for having the heart rate sensor it's nice when firing up a workout but constant background monitoring is appreciated on competing products also it's just nice having health data tracked throughout the day and having more accurate sleep monitoring movements is important but adding heartrate data to your step count for a whole day delivers much better insight on your activities that last point might have something to do with battery life however tick watch claims up to two days on a charge and I really couldn't get close to that wearing this watch took me back to my first days using early Android wear Hardware watching the battery meter plummet during the day nervously checking to see if it would last through the night it usually would but I would often be running on fumes by bedtime the watch fully charges in under 80 minutes so a short stint on the charger can alleviate some of that battery anxiousness but instead of blending into my lifestyle tick watch often felt like yet another gadget I had to babysit or manage so let's wrap this up where does that leave us with the tick watch there's a lot to like here tick watch delivers a fresh twist on Android smartwatches and it's a well featured wearable to look well complimented my style both dressing up and keeping it cash and it more than satisfied the basics in delivering notifications and offering applet interactions Raso not overly concerned about support as this watch has received three small bug fix date since it was delivered we would like to see a bit more polish around some phone interactions like initiating a call through voice commands and voice commands only but chief among our concerns was battery life if you receive a lot of notifications and are apt to use the watch more heavily in situations like commuting this will be a charge every night kind of gadget even for that issue though I liked this watch a lot better than I thought I would it doesn't completely satisfy my list of wearable wants but it's a well executed companion delivered with style by a team with some obvious talent as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for more reviews like these as I continue my search for the perfect SmartWatch and help us out with some sharing on your favorite social networks the pocket now I'm Juan Carlos bag now some gadget guy on Twitter and Instagram and I will catch you all on the next review