Wifi Finder Watch review

17 December 2008 14:00 GMT / By Chris Hall

Ever been walking around and wondered if there was Wi-Fi in a particular area? Ever needed to tell the time? Ever wanted a watch that will tell you if there is Wi-Fi nearby? Well, fret not, because your prayers have been answered. Introducing the Wifi Finder Watch! But would you want one for Christmas?

On paper it sounds like a sensible idea, combining a Wi-Fi finder into a common object. Of course, if you want to use a Wi-Fi network, you probably already have something that detects Wi-Fi, such as your mobile phone or laptop that you intend to use on said network, but let’s skip over that concept-killing problem.

Designed with a squared-off metal body and a rubber strap, it looks like many other digital sports watches you find on market stalls. The strap has a reassuring thickness to it, outlining this as a gentleman’s watch rather than one for the ladies. A metal backplate boasts 100m water resistance, although we didn’t put this claim to the test.

Around the sides of the body of the watch you’ll find four main controller buttons: Mode, Set/EL, St/Stp, Reset. The main modes are pretty standard for many digital watches, including a clock mode; stopwatch with lap functions and a memory recall; timer; alarm and world time, so there is plenty here for the Wi-Fi wanting gentleman world traveller.

Control overall is very simple and to be truthful the features packed in make it a useful multi-function watch. The backlighting is also pretty cool, as rather than the dim side lighting of digital watches of yesteryear, it makes the digits glow turquoise, like the Timex Indiglo watches.

The screen is also pretty large, large enough to display three lines of information, time zone, day, time and date in normal clock mode. But if you are reading this, you probably want to know about the Wi-Fi detection and how that manifests itself.

Lurking below the screen, front and centre, is a button labelled "WiFi". A single press and the watch goes into scanning mode. After a quick scan, about 10 seconds, it will report back the details. Except it doesn’t. It doesn’t give you any details. The only thing it tells you is the number of Wi-Fi networks it found. Walk down any street in any major city and you’ll find plenty of Wi-Fi networks. You don’t need a watch to tell you that.

Its detection is pretty rocky too. We put it alongside a BlackBerry and scanned in both locations. The watch sometimes found nothing, but in the main test, the watch found five networks to the BlackBerry’s 12, which means it doesn’t really work very well.

Verdict

What sounds like a potentially interesting idea serves absolutely no purpose. Especially as many mobile phones can now scan for Wi-Fi anyway. The thing that really disappoints is that finding Wi-Fi is not really an issue – finding Wi-Fi you can access is. If the watch would alert you to free Wi-Fi connections, or even report back the names of networks so you could find one you are a member of, then it would be genius!

Instead this is just an overpriced digital watch. Fingers crossed you don’t get one in your Christmas stocking.

This product was kindly loaned to us by iwantoneofthose.com

Score

Review Recap

Made by: IWOOT
Price as reviewed: £19.99
The good: Does what it says on the packet, but see review
The bad: Utterly pointless
Quick verdict: What sounds like a potentially interesting idea serves absolutely no purpose. Fingers crossed you don’t get one in your Christmas stocking
Score