Wyze Watch 44, Hardware: good! Software: disaster

Lifestyle
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I bought Watch 44 to replace my aging mi band. Here is my feeling after one week of use.

First the good part:
The hardware is amazing for a $20 smart watch, very good build quality. To me, it has a premium feel. Really a good job for the hardware. Yes I know it has a large breeze, but what can you expect from a $20 watch?

Pretty fantastic watch right? I was pretty excited too until I sit down and start to use it. I ran into a lot of issues, mostly due to half baked, buggy software.

  1. Alarm. I set the alarm to 7:45 AM, and it vibrates RIGHT AT 8:45 AM!!! What a bug! My guess is it mixed up daylight saving. Also, I can’t set the alarm using the Wyze app (have to use the watch), which is not convenient.
  2. Connect to Wyze app. When I open the watch in Wyze app, first it shows disconnected and then start to connecting. Not really a big issue. But when the app tries to connect to app, it almost always failed to connect to watch the first time. I only had one success in first try. Sometimes I have to try multi times to get it connect to my watch.
  3. Data sync to app. Sometimes when the app finishes sync to watch, the data tab overview shows correct data, but when I click one item, e.g. Sleep, the detail view for today shows no data.
  4. Step tracking is far from accurate. When I get up, the watch shows I’ve walked 197 steps today. Maybe I dream walked in my bed? The steps on my watch shows like 5000 steps while my phone tells me I only walked like 2500 steps.
  5. Sleep tracking is not accurate as well. Sometime I wake up in the morning (like 7 am), and go back to sleep for another hour. The watch shows me I didn’t sleep after 7. I didn’t wear another device to compare, but this already tells me the sleep tracking is not accurate.
  6. The swipe right gesture to go back doesn’t work many times.
  7. Notification for many apps doesn’t show app name, instead show “Other apps”. Also there is no option to show notifications from all apps.
  8. And many more small areas that can improve.

Overall, I feel the software is really not in a ready state. I hope later firmware and software updates can address most of those issue, or else the watch is just a cheap and good looking garbage.

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