Home > Consumer Reviews > Fossil Wrist Net Smart Watch for MSN Direct (AU4000)

I heard about Microsoft's Smart Personal Object Technology (SPOT) devices a while back, and it intrigued me. Although as a certified gadget geek I have a number of wireless devices that can receive news, weather, and sports, I had always thought that the perfect device would replace my existing watch. While this first generation device isn't perfect, it's not bad.

Opening the box containing the Abacus Wrist Net Smart Watch for MSN Direct (there's a mouthful!), you'll find two small manuals, the watch, and a two-piece charger. The charger consists of a plug (thoughtfully made to fold flat) and a rather clunky charger with an "arm" that rotates into place to hold the watch. You just lay the watch onto the arm and it starts charging through induction - no charging port or contacts to get dirty!

You need to activate the watch through MSN Direct to get your news, and it's best to take the $59 one-year subscription rather than go with the $9.95 monthly plan. You will need a credit card to subscribe. Once you've entered your unique watch ID and personal information, you get to pick the type of content you want sent to your watch. At this time (1/7/04) the sports channel powered by ESPN isn't available, but it's supposed to be ready soon.

It takes about 10 minutes to get a confirmation message on the watch telling you everything's OK, and then it can take up to 12 hours for all of your info to show up.

There are five buttons on the device that are used to turn on the white backlight (rather uneven, I thought), change channels, and navigate (enter, next, and previous). The buttons seem a little spongy, but not too bad. The Abacus AU4000 isn't waterproof but will survive splashes. If you're used to very expensive thin watches you'll hate this, but anyone who likes clunky multifunction watches will love this. From a design standpoint, the $299 Suunto N3 sure looks a lot nicer, but functionally it doesn't do anything different than this watch.

A charge is supposed to last 2 - 3 days, and I think I may just put my watch on the charging arm every night when I go to bed. Heavy use of animated screens will drain the battery faster; like any first-generation electronic device, battery life is an issue.

So far I'm fairly impressed, and find the display to be clear and easy to read. Just showing the Weather Channel info to friends has been good for a lot of positive comments, and folks have been sending me MSN Messenger "pages" just for fun. If you're an early adopter, you'll probably want to get one of these new watches; if not, wait for the second generation devices.

Wow, that guy from Boise sure has a lot of watch rage! Most of what he/she says doesn't make sense and is not even accurate. Anyway, I've had this watch for a little over a week now, and let me give you a quick review.

The upshot is, at first I found a lot to complain about, but after a week, it started to grow on me, and right now, I like it a lot, and everyone I show it to is impressed, although most don't think it's worth the price + subscription fee. Anyway, I don't regret this purchase like I did with the T-Mobile Sidekick.

Pros:
- Lots of geek appeal with real-time information updates
- Changeable watch faces
- Can receive updates from Outlook Calendar
- Atomic clock auto-syncing
- ESPN channel coming at end of January
- 10-second white backlight at the touch of a button
- Alarm clock, chronograph (stop watch), timer, time zones
- FM radio frequency, so low power and potentially low chances of us getting tumors from wearing this

Cons:
- Kinda large, not for slim wrists
- Not particularly attractive physically
- No color
- Battery life can be an issue; I've recharged only once but it's only because I use the animations sparingly and turn off the radio at night
- The wrist band is hard to use and adjust (this is one thing the rage man from Boise got right)
- Update can be slow at times
- You need to set up a travel schedule to receive personalized information (i.e., Outlook appointments) when you travel, which is totally stupid, especially as the set-up page on the Web is a perfect example of stupid programming (but not unlike the typical Microsoft goofs) -- too complicated to explain here, let's just say it doesn't work the way it should.
- Coverage is not consistent, and only works in the U.S. and Canada

My initial impression was this deserved no more than 2 stars, as the watch was kinda ugly and all the information you get (weather, news headlines, up to 15 stock quotes, Outlook calendar, etc.) is nice to have but totally not necessary, especially for people like myself who sit in front of the Internet all day and half night. Plus, set up was more confusing than warranted, and the battery life issue was a big turn off.

But there is just so much gadget-freak factor in this watch. It's actually more useful than my Casio camera watch or some prototypes of communicator watches I've seen in Asia, because, at least for a guy, the size is acceptable, and there's something about getting real-time weather and stock quotes that just fascinate me. The weather channel is especially impressive, especially on cold wintry days like these in New York. Pressing the channel button to cycle through the various channels -- BTW there's also a special channel that automatically cycles through the channels for you -- has a certain magical power of its own, and I just love showing this off to friends and coworkers, and get lots of pleasure when people come into my office to ask "oh what is like outside?" or "hey show me your watch again."

Should you buy this? It's very hard to say. Luckily MSN Direct offers a free month if you sign up with the monthly plan. Then if you like it, you can switch to the annual plan and save 50%. If you don't, at least Amazon offers a nice 30-day MBG policy.

I found a great website to discuss these watches. Beyond-spot.com they have reviews forums and more! I had many questions about the watch and they answered them all!

Many of the features of this device are awesome and show a clear path into the future of wrist-watches. Heaving your watch know your calendar just makes sense.

However, there are problems!

The watch simply resets itself all the time! This means that it does not keep track of time well at all, because every time it resets itself, the time of the watch goes to 2am, Jan 1st 2003. Granted, over the next few minutes, the watch re-aquires the correct time from the server, but even that does not make it OK when the watch resets itself sometimes several times within an hour.

Example: I went to the park jogging today. I tried to use the built in chronograph to see how long it took me to run my usual lap. However, within a few minutes, the watch reset itself and with it the chronograph. In all, the watch must have reset itself close to 10 times within that hour it took me to complete my lap.

And not only is this a problem for just plain time-keeping. How much do you trust calendar reminders when the watch more often than not has the wrong time? Also, you end up reading the same news over and over, since the watch looses track of what it had already downloaded. Argh!

The concept here is great. I just can not believe that MS would let such a severe bug slip into the release version of this product! And it's not just that the watch resets/reboots, but what I really do not understand is why it looses track of time in that process?!? When I reboot any other computer, the system clock does not get set back! I mean: C'mon! With all the hurdles they had to clear to make this device a reality, they could not make a watch that keeps track of time?!?

For now, I really can not recommend this product. However, once they have this bug ironed out (and the coverage area expanded), this will be one awesome device!

Well I must start by saying the watch is bigger than you might think. The students in my classes said, "Dang, that's one big watch". However, when I showed them the features they were quite impressed. If I was only out to impress people this would be quite an expensive status symbol. Being a self-comfirmed Gadget FREAK I enjoy new technology and try to find ways to incorperate it into my so-called life as a teacher. I jumped on board when the first PDAs went on the market and haven't looked back since. The Abacus by Fossil works very well (once it's charged) and instant messaging seems to be quite speedy at 2:03 minutes per message (an average of 30 attempts). Set up is an absolute breeze. For this item I had my non-tech-savvy wife set it up and she had NO problems whatsoever. After the initial set-up it took only 30 minutes for all of the channel content to appear. Most channels were ready to view in 5 minutes or less but it was my local weather channel that took 30 minutes. The channels are easy to switch to and news content and messages are easily erased. The cool feature with this watch is that you can set-up breaking news to be instant messaged to you. On early Wednesday morning, when the trains in Madrid were targeted by a terrorist organization, I was quickly informed of this news. (I would suggest that you set your tones to off or to sound only when an instant message comes in, otherwise your watch will be beeping with every news flash that is stored in you news channel.) The band is a bit odd. However, on the fifth day of owning this watch I have figure out "the trick". I would tell you "the trick", but I want you to have a huge sense of accomplishment after you have placed it on your arm in under 1 minute. Overall, this is a great product. I subract a star because of the band learning curve, and the thickness of the watch.

Will the second-generation devices be better?.....yes, but until then I can check the news while using the bathroom. And if that's not cool, and geeky, I don't know what is!!!!!!!!!