Sony Ericsson MBW-100 Bluetooth watch

[seadweller]

Had the watch about 5 days now so thought I would write a quick review.

Was very excited about receiving it, as it is a fairly cool gadget.

The box was quite nice, it comes with a standard charger and a charging clip to connect to the watch itself. I charged it overnight and it still shows a full battery five days later.

The strap was to big, but luckily there is a shoe repair/key cutting shop next door to my work, so that was soon sorted.

It is fairly big, something I noticed from the pics on Sony's e-shop site. I was worried it would not fit in my shirt cuff, but it does, just about.

Don't get me wrong, I like chunky watches, but it dwarfs my Seadweller! I have put that back on once since, and it feels like a mid size (or boys, as I think they are meant to be) one now .

It's a shame about the size, as I think other than that it's a nicely designed watch.

Mine is silver, but it also comes in a 'special edition' black.

Although it makes you feel a bit like James Bond, you cannot actually make a call using it, and to be honest, it's usability is a bit limited, which is a shame.

So what does it do?

It is supposed to vibrate and flash up an envelope symbol, to alert you of a text. This funtion is noted in the instructions as not being availiable with all phones. I have a W810i, but it only works now and then. I am not sure why, but to be honest the funtion is pretty useless anyway as the vibration is so faint you would have to be looking at the watch to notice it, or in such a quite location you would hear the watch vibrate, rather than feel it. But if that were the case you would hear your phone alert you to the text as, and this is the biggest diapointment, the range is so bad you kind of have to be in the same room as your phone anyway

The other two functions are a little more useful, you get the callers phone number/name displayed on the watch (this unlike the text alert, works every time) and you can mute and/or reject (but not answer) a call via the watch. I am thinking this might be useful to divert a call to our car phone when in the car?

The other main thing it will do is play/pause/fast forward music tracks played on your phone. I have found this quite useful.

All in all, it's not really worth buying for any of it's features (IMO) mainly due to it's poor range, poor vibrate.

It could really do with an alarm/audio alert as well. This would be good especially if it tied in with the alarm funtions of the phone.

So overall I am disapointed with it (oh, another anoying thing is that you cannot change the date format from yyyy-mm-dd or the digital time format ( which you pretty much need in the dark) from 24 hr)).

But hey, I needed a watch for work and I love gadgets, so Like the Murphy's, I am not bitter.

Roll on the MBW-200

[ashleyadam]

Damn seen one of these on sony site yesterday confirmed exactly what I thought waste of time, sorry dont mean to be rude but what benefit did you expect to get from it?

[seadweller]

Well, I pretty much dump my phone on the side or just leave it in my pocket when I get home, and often find I have a missed call or text. It never makes it upstairs, so the watch would be very useful to me if the bluetooth range was a lot better.

It just about works if I have it on charge/downloading in the study while I am in the living room watching T.V. and it is cool/very useful in that situation.

The music control funtion is pretty much as I expected and works well.

The call handling seems quite handy, but I have not needed to use it that much yet, so time will tell.

Overall, as I said, unless you are looking for a new watch, there is no point. And even if you are it's questionable.

The concept is good though, and I am sure future models will be a lot better.

I also work in the mobile phone industry, so that might have been an influencing factor