While we tested Cogito’s new smartwatches, this article could have been titled: “the problem with smartwatches”.
You see, Cogito targets their smartwatches as an easy way to get notifications, but within that there lays a fundamental problem with smartwatches. As soon as you pair your Cogito Classic or Cogito Pop with the new Bluetooth 4.0 protocol you will get a notification on your watch, but instead of just ignoring it, the phone not only demands your attention, it will make you glance your watch, followed by a ‘whatever is that icon again?’, followed by you grabbing your phone out of frustration to just dismiss an Instagram comment.
The only way of getting a real notification is when you get a call, which in that case the tiny built-in LCD mirrors the caller ID. In which case you can either look at your watch and dismiss the call, or accept it, and then .. go search for your phone. But to be fair, when I get a phone call I grab my phone way before I ever reach for my watch. In fact, when beta-testing the new OS X Yosemite, getting a phone call was never so easy with the new Handoff feature between the Mac operating system and iOS 8.
If you look past this huge white elephant in the room you will find two nicely designed and well constructed devices that will tell you the time and notifications.
Both feature a mostly-waterproof design and feature a battery life rated for a year! Weirdly enough there is no easy way to see the difference between the battery on your phone getting lower than 20%, or if the watch is about to run out of juice. In a funny turn of events, a friend of mine sent his watch back two times because the watch was about to run flat, while it was just the battery-low notification of his phone.
Cogito Classic
The Classic is a well-built watch, but too heavy for my kind. Four unlabelled buttons and a crown surround the face, that sports a small digital LCD, 5 spaces for notification lights and an analog face. Construction of the band is a strong rubber, where a more classy leather would feel much better.
Cogito Pop
With a series of bright colours, cheaper price and less features the Pop is targeted at the younger generation.
Conclusion
Both my fiancé as me wore our Cogito’s with a lot of enthusiasm. I rocked the Classic, while my spouse tried the Pop. In the end it took less than a week before we both abandoned the products.
A combination of the notification problem, as the non-labeled buttons that have no apparent function (without having to carry a non-existing manual the entire time) made sure that we are not fans of this iteration of a smart watch.
