Smartwatches have certainly been booming in the past year, and soon we will be getting our first watches that will be running the smartwatch OS, Android Wear. But for those that aren’t entirely about having a ton of features on their wrist, smartwatch manufacturers like Cogito give you a stylish alternative in the smartwatch world.
The Cogito Pop is Cogito’s latest smartwatch that gives you an analog watch experience that has a little nifty features added to it. If you are like me, you don’t need to be able to send a text, or make a phone call from your wrist. As much as the kid inside loves having that Dick Tracy feature, I’m okay with just having an extension of my smartphone, not a replacement. So when we went to the Cogito panel at this year’s CES, we were introduced to the Cogito Pop and the Cogito Original. The Original has more features with a fancy LCD display that looks just marvelous, but the Pop is more for style, and most likely more for kids.
Features and Specs
Time
- 3 hands Japanese analog movement
Notifications
- Incoming Call and Missed Call
- Text and Social Media Message
- Calendar event
- Low / Critical Low alert of phone’s battery
Actions
- Remote music control
- Remote trigger phone’s camera
- Find phone / watch
- Mute incoming call (*Support on Android device only)
Watch Resistance
- 10 ATM
Battery
- No Recharge Required – Extra-long battery life by a standard cell button battery
One of the first things you must do when setting up your Cogito is downloading the Cogito Connected Watch app out of the Play Store or App Store. When it comes to Android, you must go into your Notification Access settings to turn on permissions for the app to receive your Notifications, so it can send them to your watch. Â Once you have taken care that, you will of course pair your watch with your Bluetooth on your phone. I found it to be very easy to pair the Pop to my phone, simply just by following the directions given in the guide. Once you have paired your phone and watch, you can then go into the Connected Watch app to pick which notifications you want to receive on your watch. I love that they give you the option for this, because if you are one of those that get a ton of notifications an hour, you don’t want your watch to be vibrating constantly on your wrist.
The app also gives you a camera icon to press, so that way you can prop your phone up somewhere and then take a quick picture by hitting a button on your watch. It’s a nice feature for anyone wanting to take a picture with a group, and not having one person out of the picture because they have to snap it. You can also begin playing your music from your watch by hitting a side button, which I found to work pretty well, and can see it being useful in life.
The Good
As I stated up top about the Cogito being easy to pair, the rest of the functions are very easy to use. They have simplified the experience in the Pop where even your Mom can handle all what it can do. Also, with it being mainly made out of plastic, the watch can withstand some of the everyday mishaps out there. The battery life is another aspect that will appeal to the consumer, simply because it is a smartwatch that does not have to charge, and you can get a year out of the battery.
The Bad
The Pop isn’t for your everyday tech enthusiast like myself. At first glance, it looks like a watch that you would buy a child, or that hipster in your family that wear very bright and vibrant colors. The features are pretty nice on the Pop, but they are very basic compared to the Original, so again, it doesn’t quite appeal to me as much as other smartwatches out there. That being said, I think Cogito have chosen the target consumer being a child or teenager, or people who have that bright color style.
Sadly after a few of days, my phone and the watch stopped being friends with each other, and I couldn’t pair the watch to my Nexus 5 anymore. Tried many times to pair it, by rebooting my phone, and uninstalling the Cogito app, but no luck. Not sure if it has to do with the software on my phone not being compatible with the Pop, or if the watch itself it is to blame.
Conclusion
The Cogito Pop is a simple and stylish analog smartwatch that is simple enough for anyone to use, and fits the style of a certain group of people out there. $130 isn’t that steep of a price with all the features you get, so I would recommend it for that teenager in your life. Not exactly for us tech enthusiasts, but the Original is more of what I like, and we hope to get a review of that version very soon. Was going to shoot a video showing off the Cogito Pop, but like I stated above, the watch and my phone stopped being friends with each other. Head over to the Cogito website to take a look at what Cogito has to offer.
