Tech review: Nevo smartwatch, €178

Suffering from gadget fatigue? All smartwatch-ed out? Who could blame you, with a new smartwatch vying for your attention every month? They’re needy things, smartwatches. You have to remember to charge them, give them access to your phone and treat them with a bit of care. What do they give you in return? A constant reminder that you’re not moving fast enough or often enough, a permanent connection to your phone to make sure you don’t miss that all-important work email on your day off and a vague sense of guilt when you screen calls.

Okay maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. I’m a fan of smartwatches in theory, because they can be useful little things at times. In practice though, they don’t always live up to promises. They try to do too much.

Which is why the Nevo piqued my interest. The device is intended to be a minimalist connected watch. It will track your movement and deliver notifications to your wrist, but there’s no LED screen to tackle and it won’t need charging every few days. In fact, it looks just like a regular watch, if a little chunkier.

It has two batteries: one for the time, and the other for the connected capabilities. They’re CR2025 flat batteries, and there’s a handy tool in the box to help you replace them once they’re exhausted.

On the side of the watch, there are three controls: pressing the top button will let you know how close you are to completing your goal; the bottom one is for activating the Bluetooth connection when pairing the watch with your phone initially; and the middle is the regular dial for adjusting the time. That’s right, the Nevo is old school when it comes to setting the time.

I have to say, it’s a little refreshing.

When it’s connected to your phone, the Nevo will alert you to certain events with coloured LED lights and a little vibration, which can be customised to your preferences.

The good

The Nevo has one immediate advantage over many of the smartwatches currently available on the market. Because it uses regular batteries, there’s no need to remember to charge it. When it starts acting up, just change the battery and you are ready to go again. They even give you a spare in the box.

The danger that it will die mid-day leaving you watchless is dramatically reduced.

Like the Withings Activite, the Nevo looks like a regular watch, if a little chunkier than the average timepiece. It will blend in, unlike some of the others that can look hopelessly out of place.

The app that comes with it is equally minimalist. It allows you to set your goal steps for the day, displays your progress towards that goal and controls the notifications. You can assign your own colours to each notification event so it’s clear when you glance at your watch exactly what is going on.

There’s also a daily alarm, which will alert you through vibration and flashing white LEDs around the watch face. It’s not the worst way to wake up in the morning.

The not so good

The vibration may be subtle and the LED lights aren’t the most intrusive, but the first few days – a week even – of wearing this watch will see you peering at your wrist trying to decipher exactly what that notification was. It will take that long to remember you set SMS to green and calls to red. My advice? Start small and obvious: Facebook is blue, calls are red, and continue from there.

The Bluetooth connection can drop easily too, and even though I had link loss notifications switched on, it didn’t always alert me to the problem. That sort of defeats the purpose of the watch, since I had to keep a constant eye on my phone

The rest

There are a limited number of events that can be alerted from your phone. For example, there’s no way to assign a dedicated alert to WhatsApp or Twitter – Facebook and WeChat are the social networks of choice. Presumably that can be fixed with an update later, but for the moment, you’re stuck with those choices.

The verdict

HHH Overall, I liked the Nevo. It’s useful without being over the top, and that subtlety is something that’s missing from many of the current crop of smartwatches. Once minor niggles are fixed, it would definitely score higher.

nevowatch.com