Smartwatches are here and they are slowly but surely getting a lot better. They’ve turned from ugly nerdy looking things into fashionable and every day comfortable watches. However, they still haven’t quite caught on like many manufacturers hoped they would. Yet, companies are going to keep trying, that’s for sure. Apple will bring out an Apple Watch 2 later this year and Google will keep on upgrading their Android Wear platform to be competitive and innovative as always.
However, there is one piece of software that hasn’t been thought about as a great Watch OS until now. This watch called the CoWatch has Amazon Alexa enabled. For those of you who don’t know, Amazon Alexa is what comes in the Amazon Echo which will arguably revolutionise how we control our homes in the future. Check out the video below for more!
So this watch isn’t actually out yet, however, it is a project on Indiegogo where they’re selling it for $159 at the moment. However, when the watch comes to full retail, it’ll bump up quite significantly to $279 in June.
The initial downside of the CoWatch is the fact that it is quite a big watch. This is the company’s first foray into making smartwatches and so is yet to have time to refine it be quite as thin and sleek as other manufacturer’s offerings out there. The watch has a 42mm watch face but is 12 mm thick.
Unfortunately, unlike with the Echo and Amazon’s other own devices, Alexa isn’t completely handsfree. You have to actually press a button for Alexa to start listening which makes the experience a little less fun. However, this is still an unreleased version and the company behind it has said they would obviously love to include hands-free Alexa as soon as possible.
Despite some of its drawbacks, this watch still has us very excited that another company has come along and built a completely new OS (based off of Android) and is incorporating Amazon’s Alexa which is arguably one of the best voice-recognising UXs out there.
