(upbeat music)
- Seven days.
That's how long ago I first strapped on
the "Matrix PowerWatch 2".
And today, the power meter still reads 100%.
How?
Well because at it turns out I am a battery.
And you know what?
You are too.
(upbeat music)
Okay, to phrase it more accurately,
humans aren't necessarily batteries.
At least not until the machines take over.
But we are great sources of heat.
And within the difference between our hot bodies
and the cooler outside air,
is the potential to generate power.
Maybe you remember a review I ran last year
featuring a personal cooling bracelet
called the "Ember Wave".
That device used battery power to essentially turn itself
into an ice cube on your wrist.
By harnessing something called the Peltier effect.
Well watch what happens when YouTube Channel LudicScience
takes a similar Peltier unit and puts his hand on it.
The difference between his warm skin
and the ambient temperature, generates electric current.
That's called the Seebeck effect.
And it's how the PowerWatch 2 recharges its own battery.
See the aluminum back plate of the watch is the hot side
and the cold side is the metal bezel
and the rest of the casing.
The greater the temperature difference
between your skin and the outside air,
the more current the watch can put back into itself.
Watch the charging meter on the perimeter of this watch face
peter off from max to zero when I take it off
and put it on the cool surface of my dining room table.
But maybe you already see the problem.
In the summer, sometimes there's not much difference
between your body temperature and the surrounding air.
And above 90 degrees fahrenheit, about 32 degrees celsius,
the thermo-electric generator doesn't produce
enough current to charge the battery at all.
Well, that's where the PowerWatch 2
takes a page out of Len's book.
This bezel, beneath the sapphire cover glass,
it's actually an annular solar cell
and it's much more efficient than the thermo-electric
generator at putting power back into the battery.
During my time with the watch here in June.
Far and away, the most power generated on a given day
has been from solar.
Now, I imagine if it were the dead of February
these figures could well be reversed.
But the bottom line is, until I started filming with it
and leaving the watch off my wrist a lot
I never saw a power level below 100%.
And it's been seven days since I first put it on.
This watch literally comes with a charger
and it's FAQ's says you probably never have to use it.
In an era where Apple adds sleep tracking
to the Apple Watch, but hastily adds
that you'll have to charge it the morning after,
this is incredible.
And it's why I've wanted to cover
the PowerWatch 2 for months.
Even though it was first announced a long time ago.
Of course something that lasts forever
is only good if you enjoy it.
Like my marriage.
Folks, and here's where the PowerWatch 2
still needs a lot of work.
While it delivers on the fundamentals of a timepiece,
with the watch face visible in all conditions.
Backlight, step-tracking and all that,
it's a pretty weak smart watch.
It has the trappings of one.
It'll connect to your phone via Blutooth
and buzz your wrist for notifications.
You can use GPS to track workouts
and it's got a heart rate sensor
that can feed data to Google Fit or Strava
to help you with your health, yes.
For a grown-at-home smartwatch platform
it's got surprisingly robust functionality.
But just like in that other Matrix, there are glitches.
About once a day, I'll realize
"Hey, I haven't gotten a wrist buzz in a while.".
Turns out I was still getting emails and texts
but my watch had just lost the Bluetooth connection
to my phone.
No notification, no alert, no buzz,
just drops offline and never reconnects.
I had to go to the Matrix discord channel
to learn that I had to toggle Bluetooth
and restart the watch to fix that bug.
I assume that this is what Matrix is referring to
in it's FAQ when it says
you should sync regularly in order to avoid slow syncing.
(soft music)
Other bugs are easier to live with.
Just by virtue of the fact that Matrix knows about them
and says it's actively working on them.
The lack of milliseconds on the stopwatch,
the occasional nonsense notifications
with corrupted unicode, the lack of customizable watch face,
take your pick.
They're all over the discord.
You know the company is on top of it's communication.
It hosts "Ask Me Anything" sessions
once every month or once every couple months.
And it keeps people informed about forthcoming features
and software updates.
It would all be so much easier to live with
if the watch had just come out.
But these are the kind of bugs you expect
from an early BETA product, not one first announced
in January 2019.
Of course Matrix didn't get into this business
to make the world's next great smartwatch.
It's business is thermo-electric power generation.
This is a convenient platform to demo that.
Honestly, even with all the bugs,
I almost wanna keep wearing it,
just cause it's so incredible
not to worry about charging my smartwatch.
This is the kind of technological achievement
that can even make you forgive a watch that
on your wrist is the size of a water main pipe flange
but at a price that starts at $499
and goes all the way up to $699
for the top shelf Luxe trim here,
well, as fun as it can be to beta test
space-age technology, I typically prefer not to pay
for the privilege.
Now that's unless of course, you're talking
about folding phones.
We all draw our own lines at different places.
Check out my recurring series called "Into the Fold"
where I explore that delightfully strange world
of folding screens.
And if you decide you do want to join
the small but vibrant community of PowerWatch 2 owners,
I'll drop a link to purchase below.
As always, Mr. Mobile works for you
and not the manufacturers, folks.
Matrix was given no copy approval or editorial input
into this review video.
They're seeing it for the first time,
right along side you.
Please subscribe to theMrMobile on YouTube
if that's the kind of video you'd like to see more of.
Till next time, thanks for watching
and if you can't stay home, then stay safe
and keep wearing those masks
while you stay mobile my friends.