REVIEWED: Cookoo smart watch for Facebook check-ins
This ‘Facebook watch’ for the iPhone helps you check-in, but it’s useless for Twitter and text messages
Buy the Cookoo smart watch
Price at time of review: US$129.99
Cookoo is a smart watch, but really it’s a Facebook watch. But there’s no screen. A short, medium or long press of the watch’s ‘command’ button lets out a ‘cuckoo’ sound on the phone itself (handy if you’ve lost your phone), reminds you of calendar events (but only as a beep), check-in on Facebook, or drop a pin on a map to share on Facebook.
Twitter is ignored
To complete either of those last two features, however, requires the phone; all Cookoo does is initiate the process. Oddly, Twitter users are ignored, and so too are text messages. Works with Works with: iPhone 4S/5/5S, iPad mini, iPad 3/4 & iPod touch 5th gen.
Time To Connect App
It’s all governed by a free Cookoo Time To Connect app, which logs into Facebook and configures how the watch reacts to incoming data from a Bluetooth-paired smartphone. It beeps and vibrates whenever the paired phone receives an incoming call, email, or a message on Facebook, and again when the phone is running low on battery.
Waterproof
Elsewhere the waterproof Cookoo looks and feels like a regular watch. Powered only by a regular CR202 watch battery that lasts a month and with no cables whatsoever, the clock face’s analogue hands spin round as normal completely divorced from its smart features. It’s easy to live and travel with and doesn’t bring attention to the user as a touchscreen watch might, but smart features are only partially useful.