Since I reviewed the Fitbit Sense I have had it attached to my wrist basically ever since. It is an absolutely fantastic watch with some extraordinary features and a good battery life. The only issue is that $450 is a lot of money to spend on a watch. Even if that watch is filled to the brim with features.  

If only there was another watch with a lot of these premium features but with a lower price tag. Oh hello Fitbit Charge 5, when did you walk in the room?

Living that slim life

The first question will be your personal style. I definitely like the chunkiness of the Fitbit Sense, it has that classic Smart Watch style. Though it is hard to deny that the sleek look of the Charge isn’t appealing. The smooth line as your eyes follow the band to the watch back to the band is pretty awesome.

This watch will appeal to different people in different ways and I can’t tell you your style is wrong. I mean I am a dad rocking the sneans combo with a Last of Us T-Shirt so who am I to judge? The watch’s interface is built beautifully to use within limited space so have no fear, the loss of real estate isn’t lost when using the device.

If my stubby fingers can use it, then you’ll be sweet.

Battery is life

Before I tested out the Fitbit Sense I was used to terrible smartwatch battery life, examples being the Oppo I got a day out of and the Samsung Galaxy watch I could get two days out of (sometimes).I didn’t know how good life can be with a watch that doesn’t need to be charged every night and now I can’t turn back.

The Charge 5 doesn’t have the massive battery life of the Sense, but I easily got between four and seven days out of a full charge. This is pretty impressive when you think about how little the device is, and charging once a week or so is pretty damn reasonable.  

Of course it retains one of those useful features that I loved when using the Sense. When the battery level dropped low I got an email and a notification on the app on my phone saying to charge it. When you get this alert, you still have at least a day left of battery life. This is bloody brilliant because you won’t be caught out with it dying halfway through a workout.

Well unless you ignore it. If this is the case then stop ignoring your emails, your grandma is getting worried.

Walking through life

With previously used watches the steps were all over the place, with many days they reckoned I walked 10 steps. Even at my laziest I can walk from the bed to the couch which is more than 10 steps. This kind of tracking is where the Fitbit is king in the industry. The Charge 5 continues to make this a part of your life.

With a sedentary job that has me at a desk for hours on end, those prompts to get moving are actually kind of useful too.

The one omission is it doesn’t have an altimeter so it doesn’t pick up how many floors you have walked up. Not the biggest deal, but a thing if that is important to you.

Living a stress free life

OK maybe not a stress free life, but you can see how stressed you are.

What is impressive is the premium features slipped into this watch. Things like the NZ ECG app which first featured on the Sense is included here. You can also do things like the EDA scan which checks the electrical charges in your skin to tell if you are stressed. 

To do this you put your hand over the watch for a minute and you close your eyes and chill for two minutes. The process of doing this for a test tends to wind up creating my  most stress free moments. This is because I try to regulate my breathing and before I know it, I am ready to get back to being stressed at work.

Sleeping through is the best kind of life

What is cool is that it picks up a lot of info throughout the day and night. It generates scores based on how well you slept including in the different states. With a six month old in the house who hates sleep it is anyone’s guess on how accurate it is. I know that the Sense did a good job of picking up when I had a shit night’s sleep but when all your sleep sucks it’s hard to tell a better one from a worse one.

It wasn’t always perfect but it was pretty good. I then combined info including your exercise and heart rate to give you a health score for the day. This cool feature has it balancing multiple important aspects to live a balanced life.

Charge your life

The Fitbit Charge 5 is an excellent watch for the price. Some premium features make this one a no brainer for someone looking in that price bracket. At $299 it has a great battery life, a heap of cool measurements, and is super comfy to wear. It doesn’t let you control your music could be a minor annoyance. Though I image most do that with their earbuds now anyway. There are some cool features behind the Fitbit Premium paywall like the Daily Readiness score too, but these aren’t essential.

On the whole when it comes to features for money, you would be hard pressed to find a better option.

The post Fitbit Charge 5 Review appeared first on 8-Bit Island.

The fashion industry has long understood that watches serve the dual purpose of time-telling and decoration. From Roger Federer’s Rolex, to every girl in primary-school wearing a Casio Baby-G except me, what you wear on your wrist makes statement. 

Up until now, the Fitbit fashion statement has been “Hello, I’m health conscious”. Not the worst statement to be making, but sometimes you want to present an image that’s less step-count orientated. 

And that’s where the Luxe comes in – the newest fitness and wellness tracker from Fitbit. 

Well, don’t you look strapping

The most immediately obvious way the Fitbit Luxe differentiates itself from other Fitbits is its slime visual design. It gives it a look closer to that of a bracelet than other models. Any product that calls itself “chic” in its promotional material immediately makes me suspicious, but against the odds, Luxe gets away with it. Everything from its golden trim to its elegant curves seductively whispers “technology – but make it fashion”. 

Admittedly, the starter beige silicon strap when paired with the gold plating makes me feel like a like I married rich and spend my days doing Pilates (sounds like the life to be honest). Happily, there are other easily interchangeable straps on the market if your tastes require something more edgy.

I especially appreciate that the heart rate monitor doesn’t jut out and into the skin, as some of the previous Fitbits did. It means I can monitor my bpm without having the physical proof indented into my wrist. 

An app for everything

Surprisingly for such a small device, the Luxe packs in most of the functions Fitbits are famed for. The Fitbit Luxe tracks your calories, your sleep quality, your heart rate, your blood oxygen, and stress levels. A few swipes across the screen reveals the Fitbit Luxe’s other features, such as phone notifications, a timer, an alarm, and a workout app. 

One thing the Fitbit Luxe does lack is an inbuilt GPS function: the Luxe piggybacks off your phone GPS. I guess something had to give to get that slim.

There’s also a relaxation feature, which works by guiding your breathing. My heart rate increased after using it, which I’m pretty sure means it didn’t work, but that could just be because I wanted to perform the exercise perfectly and ending up stressing myself out instead. 

Fitbit Luxe has a respectable battery life, too. Like an office worker that has managed to achieve a work-life balance, the Fitbit Luxe has a 5-day battery life before it needs charging. 

Oh yeah, and it does a good job of tracking your steps.

Slim … but at what cost?

The Fitbit Luxe’s slight frame is both its best point and its worst point.  While the slim look is elegant, a smaller screen is still … a smaller screen. Which means, smaller text. Seriously, this text is tiny. 

The small screen meant that the Fitbit Luxe did not become my first screen of choice for many of the apps on offer. For tasks like using the alarm and timer, I still instinctively prefer the larger screen provided by my mobile phone.

However, for many this will be a small sacrifice to make to avoid the chunky square look of some other wellness trackers 

I also found that the touchscreen didn’t always easily respond to my commands, particularly when getting the screen to turn on. The lack of buttons means that it’s not ideal during sweaty work-out times, when touchscreens don’t tend to perform as well. 

However, perhaps I’m biased in that I never got the hang of at the wrist flicking action required to turn the screen on automatically. I’ve been looking pretty ridiculous at the gym, swinging my arm up to look at my wrist in increasingly dramatic motions.

More than a pretty face – but not by a lot

So, should you trade in your old Fitbit for a Fitbit Luxe? It depends on what you value in a fitness tracker. If you’re after all the bells and whistles, you’re better off upgrading to a newer Versa or Charge model. 

However, if you don’t mind smaller text and no in-built GPS, then you will be rewarded with a genuinely good-looking wrist accessory, with decent fitness and wellness tracking to match. 

The post Fitbit Luxe review appeared first on 8-Bit Island.

As a big fan of smart watches I recently checked out the Fitbit Sense and found myself loving the ways it helps keep you from being sedentary for too long. Now I wanted to see what a Fitbit could do for my seven year old, and Fitbit has answered with the Fitbit Ace 3.

Childproof technology

Obviously the smartwatch \ fitness tracker for a child would need to be a little bit sturdy. After all if it couldn’t handle active children it wouldn’t exactly be fit for purpose.  

In the few weeks it has been in use the watch has bounced off plenty of surfaces as my kid insisted on doing a lot of indoor exercise and his wrist managed to catch a lot of doorways. Given he is related to me that is a genetic issue, not a watch issue. But the rubber surrounds did a good job of protecting the watch from my genes.

The watch is said to be swim proof and it got wet a lot. How long it would last with regular swims is anyone’s guess, especially with what we learned from the recent water resistant story on Fair Go. So far so good at the moment though as the watch hasn’t drowned yet.

Simple yet engaging

The first thing we noticed and enjoyed out of the box was the watch faces. Because it has the elongated shape, the watch faces aren’t as snazzy as the ones that you can get on the Sense or the Versa. This is absolutely fine because what Fitbit has done is design simple clock faces that have animations on them like a monster, racoon, or rocket ship.  

The simplicity is key because you don’t want another screen distracting you kid, but you do want something to engage them. Things like the rocket launching in the morning and travelling through space throughout the day is engaging but because there isn’t a lot going on it isn’t distracting.

With a weeks worth of battery in a charge, we didn’t wind up with it on the charger at night so you can capture those sweet sleep metrics if that is your jam. Or you can still take it off if that is too creepy or if your child has a short attention span and will get distracted changing clock faces or playing around with the timer.  

This may come from a real example, but again it is a fault with my genetics not the watch.

Gamify exercise.

If you need a way to make your kids do something that they aren’t normally into, the easiest way is to make it a game. Though sometimes that can be as much work as the task itself. The Fitbit Ace 3 however makes exercise a game with no extra work.

As I sat writing my review about the Fitbit Sense I saw my son do more exercise than I have seen in … well ever outside of sports practice. He has done laps of the house, squats, pushups, lunges, and some weird exercise where he keeps his feet on the ground and tries to get his stomach as low as possible.

All he did was see the metrics and he wanted to smash them.

An all round great device for kids.

If you want a smartwatch that isn’t overly loaded with apps to distract your under 13 year olds then the Fitbit Ace 3 is a pretty good bet. You can creep on their sleeping patterns, set fitness goals, and get them to receive things like texts on their wrists and can control the majority of this from the app on your phone.

The watch helps engage kids with movement without going overboard with the features adults are into like heart rate. It is perfectly designed for its audience and can help kids engage with fitness.

The post Fitbit Ace 3 Review appeared first on 8-Bit Island.

In the last few years I have gone from thinking Smart Watches are a silly fitness fad, to borderline essential. I got my first one when I used to e-bike to work so I could see if someone like my wife was calling so I knew to find a spot to pull over, or if it was someone that could wait until I got off the thin road with cars driving past at 100Km\h.

Since then, even when I am not biking I have found the convenience of seeing a text or who is calling on my watch to be an absolute necessity. To date I have used the watches made by my phone maker which was the Galaxy Watch then the Oppo Watch. So I was keen to check out a watch from a company whose sole focus is this.

Bring on the Fitbit Sense.

Watch the battery

Seriously, I have lauded Oppo smart phones for their awesome battery life, but the Oppo watch they released had an atrocious battery life. I was lucky if I got a day out of it with the smart watch functions on. The Samsung I usually got two days out of it.

I have been using the Fitbit Sense for two weeks, and I only charged it for the third time yesterday. This is an absurdly excellent battery life.

Even better, you don’t have to keep an eye on the battery too closely. When the battery level hit 25% I got an email and a notification on the app on my phone saying it is getting low and to charge it.  

Because the watch has so many features like Sleep tracking, needing to have it on for long periods of time as opposed to charging it every night is essential, but this is good work from Fitbit.

Watch me walk

So one thing that has never worked quite right with the other branded watches is the motion tracking. Now I have no idea how accurate the Fitbit actually is, but it seems like I do a lot more steps in my daily life than I realised. Hitting the target steps a day was super easy until I had my operation which slowed me down a bit.

Now it will be my motivation to get me back up to normal amounts of walking.  

With a simple couple of swipe ups from the watch faces you all of a sudden open up you will see the distance you have walked, the floors you have climbed and other cool stats like that. I live in a split level house so it must have been picking that up as elevation which is another super cool stat I didn’t know I was smashing.

Watch your heart rate

This premium watch has a lot of awesome features. One is the NZ ECG app which recently got regulatory clearance in NZ. This simple test has you placing two fingers on the watch edges and it checks for irregular heart beats.

It reckoned my heartbeat was OK but I feel like it must have skipped a few beats as I watched my son do loops of the house to get his stats up on his Ace 3 and he cut it awfully close to the kitchen counter a few times. Though maybe watching your children almost kill themselves is regular for heart beats.

Then there is the EDA scan which checks the electrical charges in your skin to tell if you are stressed. To do this you put your hand over the watch for a minute and you close your eyes and chill for two minutes. I think the process of doing this and trying to regulate my breathing was the most relaxed I have been in years.

It even Watches you sleep

One of the coolest things is the stats it picks up throughout the day and night. You get scores based on how well you slept including in the different states. For the first week it seemed to line up to what I expected or felt, and one night where I had a rough sleep it definitely picked that up.

But then a couple of nights it reckoned I got four hours and under two hours when I had great sleep so it isn’t perfect, but based on some of the stuff I read it seems like maybe something weird happened like the tracker sat weirdly or was too loose. 

Either way the vast majority of this info it picks up, and added to things like your exercise and heart rate it gives you a health score for the day. This is cool because it is balancing the three things, exercise, chilling and sleeping that will result in a healthier life.

Watch Premium content on your watch

Fitbit Premium is $16.99 a month, and the Sense comes with a six month trial to get you up and running. Initially I was sceptical but it unlocks some cool stuff. There are video training sessions and some mindfulness sessions that do add some great value.

It also unlocks a heap of dashboards so you can micromanage your health even more, you know so you can relax as you stress over the stats and trends. Oh god fitness is starting to sound like my day job… but hey Deepak Chopra will help you chill with some of his mindfulness classes. Maybe that will take your mind off those stressful stress dashboards.

Watch this watch

The Fitbit Sense is an excellent piece of technology. An insane battery life, excellent smartwatch functionality, excellent health features, and whole lot more that opens up with the subscription service. Fitbit doesn’t only make fitness trackers, they make one truly premium smartwatch.

The post Fitbit Sense Review appeared first on 8-Bit Island.

The Fitbit Versa 3 offers a range of helpful tools by combining a fitness tracker and a smart watch for the on the go, busy person… Or someone like me who thought it’d be cool to know my resting heart rate and just discovered the rest along the way. And boy there was a lot to discover, such as my heart rate rests higher at work than when I’m at home.

Ah, capitalism.

The Versa 3 offers a range of health tools, from heart rate monitoring and steps taken, to menstrual tracking and mindfulness. Optionally the app also let’s you track water and calorie intake, and also helpfully tells you how many calories you’ve burnt so far that day. The most interesting for me however, was the sleep tracker.

If worn while sleeping, the Versa 3 will keep an eye on your heart rate and breathing patterns, which definitely sounds like a weird dystopian future, but it also means that it can track your sleep cycles. I’ve never been a particularly good sleeper, so being presented a graph of how my sleep cycles between light, deep, REM and being awake gives me some insight.

I have no idea what to do with that insight, but I definitely have it!

The best part about the sleep tracking is the alarm. The Versa 3 has a vibrate alarm that gently nudges you awake without loud noises. It can also be set to wake you up at the best part of your sleep to ensure you won’t wake groggy. You know, how you feel when your cat wakes you to insist that they be fed RIGHT NOW at 3am. Once you set your alarm, it will go off within the half hour before you’ve set whenever the best time for you is. Just make sure to test the vibrate alarm before you trust it for work, or that important flight; if you’re a heavy sleeper, it might not get you up.

Along with all the neat health tools, the Versa 3 is also a very functional smart watch. You can receive calls on it, but will need to boost the volume and take the microphone off mute first. Once you’ve got it all working however, it offers a reasonable sound and mic quality, even if you do have to walk around with your wrist at approximately chum level.

You can also read and answer texts with a selection of premade options. Options that can be customised with any short answer you want. Any answer you want. Be as mature or as immature as you feel inside.

There are a lot of hidden gems on the smartwatch side of the Versa 3. Find my phone, for example makes your phone chime out, even if it’s on silent. You can control your Spotify from your wrist, but not play music through the actual watch, and in true smart technology fashion, you can even pay by waving your wrist at a pay wave machine.

As far as smart watches go, the Versa 3 offers it all at a reasonable price when compared to the Samsung and Apple watches on the market, and has all the health tools to boot. You can even download an app to roll D&D dice, just in case you forget yours or have a surprise tabletop game waylay you.

Speaking of surprises, you don’t need to fear a sudden downpour, or worry about taking your fitbit off while you swim or shower. Advertised as ‘swim proof’ rather than waterproof for what I can only assume is legal reasons, it did hold up well in the shower and doing dishes.

I wouldn’t say the Versa 3 is designed for use in the shower, simply because the hot water hitting the touch screen seemed to confuse it a lot, causing a lot of random menus to be opened and closed. It ended up just freezing a bit, and turning the screen on and off instead. It did seem to get over it after a minute and a quick dry off though.

The Versa 3 manages to not only be very useful, but look good doing it. I had the gold case and midnight blue band, which looked very striking together. I definitely had a few jealous friends. Unfortunately the band comes in a matte finish, which feels nice on, but has already started to rub off around the edges after only a month.

A month is also how long it took for ‘Leah P’ to try to friend me via the fitbit app, so we could compete against each other for how many steps we could do. Which is actually kind of cool, and with a group of people, or even just one friend to compare yourself to I found it much easier to motivate myself to take the long way round to get those last few steps. Sadly Leah is not a real person. I know this because she had an average step count of “- -“, which I can only assume means she has never used the fit bit app, and because she does not like to wear shirts.

Am I being subtle enough? She was a porn bot, and not nearly as interested in matching steps with me as she originally promised.

If all else fails and you just can’t get into the step tracking, or the ability to read tiny emails on your wrist, there is a huge selection of watch faces. From Christmas themes, to Animal Crossing. From the PokeWatch to the Eiffel Tower, rainbows and famous art pieces, there will be at least one design that takes your fancy. Even if you only used it as a watch, at least it would look good at the same time.

The post Fitbit Versa 3 Review appeared first on 8-Bit Island.

I recently fell in love with Bluetooth earbuds. When I checked out the Panasonic RZ-S500W, all my fears about losing one disappeared, and the comfort and freedom made me feel like a …comfortable…free… thing.

They should have sent a poet.

So given the Oppo-tunity to check out an Oppo take on noise-cancelling earbuds, I was all in.

The Oppo X-Factor

One thing Oppo has excelled at for a long time is their devices battery life, which has always been a big factor in our love of their phones. This was so obvious when both Brian and I were shocked with the poor battery life of the Oppo Watch.

You should’ve seen us. Like a couple of bingo grannies seeing a punk rocker in the pharmacy we were.

Well Oppo has come back to their insane battery ways with the Oppo Enco X. I charged these bad boys on a Thursday, and using them a normal amount, with noise cancelling on and keeping them in their cradle when not in use, it is now next Thursday and they still have life. This is multiple hours a day use, and even more on the weekend.

It is absolutely insane that I haven’t charged these all week. Brian once mentioned his theory that a tiny wizard lived in a phone to keep it charged. Well, clearly they brought a friend this time.

X-quisitely comfortable

There are two things to note with earbud comfort. The first is that, fresh out of the box, I popped them in and couldn’t have been happier. The box comes with a couple of different sized nibs in case you have smaller or bigger ear holes, but I apparently have the most average of ear holes; couldn’t have been comfier.

But the design of earbuds in ears aren’t anything new right?

Well, the cradle is something new. This may seem trivial but it is significant. The cradle is a sleek, curved edge masterpiece that lets the buds sit in your pocket comfortably. If you are going to be using them as your main pair, and therefore kept in your pocket almost all the time, then this is an awesome feature.

No awkward edges sticking in your leg, or strange shapes appearing in your pocket any more. At least, not from the cradle.

I REALLY like these earbuds.

Earbuds that co-Oppo-rate with you

My only annoyance with the earbuds was that double tapping the ear buds skips songs, and the way to pause music or podcasts was to take a bud out. A cool feature, no doubt, but sometimes my hands are full and I want to pause it so I can hear the cashier without risking swallowing one of the things.

Well, I was surprised to find it was super easy to customise the prompts. In the bluetooth settings on your phone you can change what the double tap does. I changed it to pause and life got SO much smoother.

I can’t say how easy this is on other branded phones because our house only has Oppo phones. But honestly, if you aren’t using one, then why not?  Did you see Brian’s review of the Oppo Find X2 Pro?  He was heartbroken sending that glorious phone back.

Brains note: I am editing this, so I’m remembering it now. My heart is breaking again; seriously, it’s that good.

But back to the earbuds.

I Enco-rouge you to buy these earbuds

I am trying to find anything to knock these earbuds on, but I am struggling. The noise cancelling isn’t the best I have experienced, but they were good. The sound quality is excellent, the battery life is excellent, the comfort is excellent, the Oppo Enco X True Wireless Noise Cancelling Earphones are excellent.

… Excellent.

You can pick up the Oppo Enco X earbuds from the Oppo NZ Store for $349.

The post Oppo Enco X True Wireless Noise Cancelling Earphones Review appeared first on 8-Bit Island.

OK, so, story time. A few years ago, never mind how many precisely, I spent about 3 weeks worth of my spending money on a pair of headphones, the Sony WH-1000XM2. Previously, I’d been using the Sony MDR-1000, which were the best headphones I’d ever used.

The WHs blew them out of the water. Now, I’ve been trying out their descendants, the WH-1000XM4. And while the difference isn’t mind-blowing, it’s hard to improve on damn-near perfection, right?

Sounds 4-nomenal

Sound quality is still phenomenal. I never had an issue with my older pair, so it was zero surprise to find that the highs and lows still came through, well, high and low. Maybe they’re a little bass-heavy, but hey, that’s not the end of the world. Or maybe it is, who even knows with 2020. I always assumed the end of the world would involve more locusts.

The MX4s need a little breaking in when it comes to comfort; mine were quite stiff right out of the box. But after about a week, they were up there with the best things to ever sit on my head. Which leads me nicely into saying that, in my week of softening them up, I never had to charge. I listened to (approximately) 30 hours of podcasts and music over that week, and after 6 days they finally suggested I charge them at some point in the distant future.

If, like little old immigrant me, you used to travel extended distances pre-coronapocalypse, the WH-1000XM4 would have been your dream companion on those long transhemispheric flights.

Power 4 Days

We’ve also got the quick charge capability (about 3 hours for the full thing, or a couple of hours after ten minutes). Basically, you’ve got a good long while before worrying about an outlet. And hey, USB-C; my Kindle is now the final holdout for everyday micro-USB.

Futuristic.

The noise cancelling is also incredible; with no music it softens everything right down, and even on low volume the headphones are all you can hear. Perfect for everything from open-plan office to a construction site (in theory, please pay attention on construction sites so Worksafe don’t come for me in the night).

Working 4 you

There were some odd connectivity issues I experienced that MAY have been caused by my devices rather than the headset. First, when reconnecting to my phone after a day of work, they inexplicably defaulted to whatever volume they were at before turning off, regardless of my manually turning volume down before playback.

What this means is, since I tend to ramp up the volume as I rock down the Wellington streets, I was immediately blasted in the ears by pirate metal or the Hades soundtrack until the devices realised I wasn’t on a rocket launching pad and calmed down.

Again, this may have been a latency issue with my devices rather than the headphones, but worth keeping in mind.

Pearls B4, well, me

Automatically pausing when taking them off is a great idea, but apparently my neck looks like my ears so they would arbitrarily start playing again if they got too close to my throat. Again, in no way a dealbreaker, but I got some startled looks in a bookshop when suddenly Vikings are singing about mead and six-legged horses.

I really like Brothers of Metal, y’all.

Not very a-4-dable

Honestly the only thing holding me back from a glowing recommendation is the price. Remember how I said I spent an entire paycheck (after rent and stuff) on my last pair? Well, these ones top it.

And yeah, they’re phenomenal, but for this amount of moolah you’d expect them to be. Certainly they’re the best I’ve used, and I doubt you’ll do better for the price, but still, they’re over $400. That’s not walking around money.

The SONY WH-1000XM4 are the headphones of the year. If you can justify the cost, you will not regret it. Just maybe turn the volume down before you take em off, just in case.

The post Sony WH‑1000XM4 headphones review appeared first on 8-Bit Island.

What time is it? Oppo time!

Oppo-ut Time

The first thing you notice about the Oppo watch is that it’s, well, a watch. The second is probably that it looks pretty damn similar to any and all other smart watches on the market. Sleek and black, the main thing setting it aside from a FitBit is the choice to go for a rectangular face over a platonic square.

Next you’ll notice the body; while largely plastic and a bit slick to teh touch, like an artificial dolphin, there’s a fair amount of metal (I assume aluminium) present too, like an artificial dolphin that’s blown into a sheet metal recycling centre.

Bizarre similes aside, it does have a decent heft and isn’t small, although the plastics texture really isn’t my favourite. The strap is also strange, eschewing the traditional buckle in favour of a sort of pin push buttonhole contraption. Cool, yes. Secure, maybe. Convenient to put on, absolutely, if you don’t mind pressing your wrist to your stomach while strapping on your wristwatch.

What that watch do

Unfortunately my accessibility issues were far from over. I wear my watch on my non-dominant left hand, and so any buttons should be facing the left side for ease of right thumb access… That’s a confusing sentence. Anyway, it took me several days of frustrating fumbling before I learned that you could invert the watch in Settings, and flip it so buttosn would be optimally placed for your convenience.

Basically, southpaws, you’re in luck. Just make sure to read the manual.

Putting the fun in smartwatch functionality

Once you’ve mastered the art of fastening the Dark Souls of watch straps, you get to use the Oppo Watch. And let me tell you, it’s not bad at all.

The famous Oppower is here

Oh boy does this thing pack a wallop for a little device.

… but the battery life isn’t

Oddly for an Oppo, the battery needs something to be desired, There are various different power oprtions tro make it a liottle more accessubvle to those who don’t want to charge their watch as often as this, but yuou sacriufice power and speed, as well as features.

Luckily, it charges in about 25 minutes, so it’s not exactly restrictive. So long as you remember to plug it in, that is. Which, uh, I did not. A lot.

A fine boi

A sharp screen, curved glass, and a delightful interface powered by Google’s OS make the Oppo Watch a pleasant experience, let down by the crushingly disappointing battery.

Honestly, if you want a smartwatch that won’t die halfway through your second day, I can’t recommend it over a Fitbit Versa 2 or 3. If, however, you remember to charge the damn thing, you couldn’t do any better for the price.

Question is, how’s your memory?

The post Oppo Watch – Watch Out for this One appeared first on 8-Bit Island.

If you spoke to me a few years ago about wearable tech, I was unnecessarily douchie about it.  “All watches tell the time” and other stupid stuff like that came out of my mouth far too often, untill I started riding an e-bike to work.  

All of a sudden riding alongside trucks on State Highway 2 and being able to tell if that phone call or text was something that needed to be addressed immediately or when I got home became a god send. Naturally I got a Galaxy watch to go with my Samsung phone and it was a gem, but since joining Team Oppo I have been itching for an Oppo Watch.

Well now they have delivered.

You’re so square

When I got my Galaxy watch, the first thing I loved was that it had a classic watch shape. By all accounts the body looked and felt like a classic watch, but with a digital screen to display your texts.

The Oppo watch went down the Apple\Fit Bit route with the more square shape. I was initially nervous about that because it looked less like a watch and more like a bit of tech on your wrist.  It took all of 15 minutes to get over that and adjust to my new watch shape.

This is also helped by the fact that the thing is so thin that it is super light and comfortable to wear. When I went back to the Galaxy watch to test it felt so bulky and unnecessary after the sleek Oppo Watch.

The odd thing is the straps. The Samsung watch uses a rubber strap but a classic watch clasp, and others use magnets and other tomfoolery. The Oppo watch has a rubber strap with holes, but the other end is a metal piece that clips into the holes. It took a little while to figure out the first two times, but it became seamless pretty quickly.

Hopefully they don’t loosen over time, but for now I am digging it.

Google knows where your wrist is

The Galaxy watch uses its own Tizen OS, whereas Oppo has opted for the Google Wear setup.  This meant when I joined team Oppo for my phone, I had to then use Samsung software on my phone to connect them and they never worked quite right. It would disconnect all the time, and was unreliable at the best of times.

So the good news with the Oppo watch is that Google Wear is designed to work with Android so it should work natively with any Android phones. I can’t test that because we only have Oppo phones in our house now as once you go Oppo, you never go back-po.

Ok that line didn’t work, but the Oppo Watch certainly does.

A simple connection and blam I was in action and it has been a dream for the weeks I have been using it. Google can now see where my arm is at any given time, but they probably knew that before my phone is with me at all times.

Get your charging on

Unfortunately unlike Oppo’s phones, one thing the watch lacks is battery life. When I knocked out most notifications except calls and texts, I still only got a day out of it. If I took the watch off the charger in the morning, it would need to go to power saving mode before lunch the next day if I was lucky.

Other watches you can get 2 or 3 days out of before they need a charge so I was a bit gutted about that initially. It means you need to get into the habit of popping it on charge every night.

When the watch is in power saving mode I got a few days out of it easily, but that defeats the purpose of a smartwatch. I was gonna see how long it ran until it completely died but I wanted those sweet apps again so I charged it back up.

A pretty damn awesome watch.

For a first try out of the gate, the Oppo watch is pretty awesome. It looks good, runs well, and makes life sweet. The features like workouts add some extra value, but if you want to watch smartly, then all of that is there and works a treat.

Hopefully the next iteration uses wireless charging so we don’t have to worry about the contacts getting too dirty and a bigger battery. But I think you would struggle to be unhappy with this sweet watch.

The post Oppo Watch 41mm WiFi Review appeared first on 8-Bit Island.

Wireless Earphones can be a confusing market to traverse right now.  With so many different brands and styles it can be hard to tell what is worth spending the money on, vs what is a fad that looks interesting but doesn’t add any extra value. Having seen some of the wireless earbuds in use around I was curious to see what they were like, and so I was keen to check out the Panasonic RZ-S500W True Wireless Bluetooth Earphones with Dual Hybrid Noise Cancelling Earbuds for myself.

It only looks like a ping pong ball in your ear.

First things first, the look. If you are anything like me you used some terrible cabled headphones plugged into your phone with stubborness while other people used their fancy wireless tech.  I kept justifying that I would lose the fancy tech or it would break and on the fly it is easier to pick up some cheap headphones, despite the damage being done when my headphones would be yanked from my ears, or the phone yanked from my pocket when they caught a door on the way through.

I was proven wrong when I played with the Oppo Enco Q1 headphones which used the weird collar sitting device handling the battery and microphone, with little cabled earbuds going up to my ears. At first I thought they looked stupid, but quickly stopped caring thanks to the convenience. The change to having ping pong balls jammed in my ears have gone down the same route, at first I thought they looked goofy and silly, and now a week later I don’t want to live without them.  

Though they still look silly, the convenience and features easily justify it.

Battery life is Best life.

The first thing is the battery life. When you charge them in their case it first charges the buds, then the case itself. You will carry the case around with you throughout the day and pop them in when they aren’t in use. This means they get topped up every time you aren’t listening, and I easily got two days out of them with some to spare.

If you are wondering about whether you will carry the case around with you, you will.  The only way to turn the earbuds off is to put them in the case, so it forces you to treat them as one unit. You won’t lose the buds either because your new learned habit will have you keeping them in that case when they aren’t in your ears.

I thought this would be cumbersome but it absolutely wasn’t.  My little white case sat on my desk next to the keyboard, or in my pocket when out and about.  Exactly the same as my other Bluetooth headsets, only smaller and more convenient.

Who needs friends when you can cancel out the noise?

The best thing the RZ-S500W earbuds offer is proper noise cancelling.  You can choose to use them in Noise Cancelling mode, Ambient sound mode, or none of the above. The most shocking thing was when you accidentally turned on ambient sound which suddenly gives you a bunch of white noise. That caught me off guard a few times when I was readjusting an earbud and left my finger on the sensor pad.

The noise cancelling is outstanding. You will hear some noise like cars and people talking, but barely. I straight up didn’t hear quiet talkers when they were talking to me, and I didnt hear my car start when I had them on.  

To get my head around it I tried turning off the noise cancelling as I walked down Featherston Street. I hadn’t realised I was walking past a Big Chill truck parked on the side of the road with it’s units blasting a heap of white noise.

I should probably spend more time looking at my surroundings.

With phone calls they did a decent job when in a building but the moment I was out on the street the caller really struggled to hear me.

Noise cancelling is but a touch away.

The other benefit to the bulky shape is it allows the ease of use. The big circle on the outside of the earbuds are a touch sensor to control settings.  Holding your finger on the left one activates google assistant. Holding your finger on the right one changes the noise cancelling mode.  Triple tapping the left one turns the volume up, double turns it down, etc.  

It takes little time to master, but because of this you need the bulky shape so that removing and inserting them doesn’t change your settings.  A few accidental ambient sound modes taught me that, and again once you know it, it’s super easy to learn to remove them with no issues.  Keeping them in your pocket and not in the case will also screw with your settings when you fish them back out, so keep that case on you.

The cynic has been converted

RZ-S500W True Wireless Bluetooth Earphones were something I wanted to test out as a cynic of the tech, but I am now converted.  Honestly the battery life and quality of the noise cancelling is easily enough to justify the price tag, and the lack of a cable joining them becomes especially useful at times like the gym, or when you are working on physical tasks like cabling a desk.

The post Panasonic RZ-S500W True Wireless Bluetooth Earphones Noise Cancelling Earbuds Review appeared first on 8-Bit Island.