Sony SmartWatch 2 review

With Samsung's Galaxy Gear stealing headlines and Apple's iWatch continually doing the rumour rounds, the smart watch concept is becoming a very hot topic. Sony threw its own model into the ring last year with the first SmartWatch, but it didn't really impress.

It's back again with the SmartWatch 2 though, complete with a bunch of new features that Sony hopes will knock the smug smile off Samsung's face. It's got a new design that's water resistant -- although not waterproof -- and has a slightly larger 1.6-inch screen.

Like the Gear, it connects to your Android smart phone, acting as a second screen to display incoming calls and texts without making you fish out your cumbersome phone each time it vibrates. Unlike the Gear though, there's a healthy catalogue of third party apps that bring email and social network support to its little face.

With more 'smart' functions up its sleeve, the SmartWatch 2 would be a genuinely useful phone accessory, but I found its software to be so buggy and sluggish to use that it was extremely frustrating and at times wouldn't function at all.

At £150, it might be much cheaper than the Gear, but is it cheap enough to make up for the pretty awful experience it offers?

Design

The SmartWatch is a very simply designed piece of kit, made up of a black, metal-edged square that's plonked on a rubber strap. It's a very plain design and I personally think the curved glass and brushed metal design of Samsung's Galaxy Gear is much more elegant.

Sony has made a couple of attempts to jazz it up though. The milled edging and silver button on the side add a bit of interest, but its square face is still far from stylish. If it's hoping to pair well with a sharp suit, a beautiful gown or even just a decent pair of jeans and a jacket, it's going to need a better fashion sense.

The black rubber strap isn't exactly pretty, but you can swap it for any standard watch strap if you prefer.

The rubber strap is comfortable and lightweight although isn't particularly breathable so it might not be a great gym buddy. It can be replaced with any standard watch strap though so you can always pop in something more appropriate.

Unlike the Galaxy Gear, the SmartWatch 2 is water resistant, allowing it to put up with a bit of light rain or a small splash when you're washing your hands. It's sadly not totally waterproof, so you will have to remember to take it off before getting into the shower in the morning. As Sony has been pushing the waterproofing tech on its excellent Xperia Z and Z1 smart phones, I really hoped it would do the same on its watch.

Display

Sony's watch has a 1.6-inch display with a 220x176-pixel resolution. It's roughly the same size as Samsung's Gear, but the Gear has a higher 320x320-pixel resolution, which helps make on-screen text and icons look much sharper. For the basic information the SmartWatch needs to show, its resolution is adequate, but things would look undeniably better with more pixels on board.

The 1.6-inch display could definitely do with a few more pixels, but it does the job adequately.

It's bright enough to be seen under most lights though -- including our harsh CNET office lights -- and it's about as colourful as it really needs to be. Sure, Sony could have tried to pop in a vivid OLED panel, but you're hardly likely to watch movies on a screen that small, so there's no real need for that level of quality. For the basic tasks it's there for, the display is fine.

Setting up the SmartWatch 2

Things didn't begin well with the SmartWatch. It's designed to pair instantly with an NFC-enabled phone by simply tapping the two together. Trying this on my Xperia Z1 didn't seem to work though. After a few taps of nothing happening at all, the watch eventually suggested that an app was needed on my phone -- by showing a picture of the Google Play store icon, with no text to indicate exactly what to download.

The watch has built-in NFC to let you connect it to your Android phone by simply tapping the two together. At least, that's the theory.

After some digging around in the manual and online I realised that you need to have Sony's SmartWatch 2 app already installed on your phone. That might seem logical, but nothing in the setup suggested that this was a required step, and the NFC pairing didn't take me to the Play Store page in order to download it, leaving me to figure it out for myself. If you're new to the Android world, expect some frustration.

Once pairing is in place you can go about having a swipe around its face. You'll quickly notice that there are very few apps installed as standard. If you want to make use of any of the smart functions, you'll have to download a host of separate applications. It's definitely not ready for use straight out of the box, so you'll need to set aside some time to get everything on board before you strut out into the street.