Smartwatches and wearables are the trending technology buzz at the moment and it’s only poised to get crazier with the Apple watch around the corner. Some will praise Apple as being first in the smartwatch space once it does hit the market but those of us in the know, know better. Samsung, LG, Pebble and Omate are just a few manufacturers who have been doing wearables for some time and this is the Omate X review.
Specs
Design
The Omate X design is something that really makes this watch shine. The aluminum housing has very nicely machined angles and gives it a sleek and sexy looking body. Move around top and the pitch black glass display (with sapphire coating) shines nicely under light making it look like you’re wearing a mirror on your wrist. The Omate X strap is leather and is constructed fairly well. While it has held up over the past two months I’ve used it I don’t expect that it will hold up as long as a more premium leather band. The band is an easy enough replacement though. Overall the Omate X design is right up there with the looks of the LG and Samsung smartwatches. It goes well as a casual watch but can also pass well in a more formal situation, of course personal preference will creep into that assessment but from my point of view it works in both applications. The UI and icons aren’t the greatest in the world but they are decent enough, the more important watch faces are well done though and look good.
Function
First let’s understand that the Omate X is not a full fledged smartwatch meant to compete with Apple, LG or Samsung. Instead, the Omate X concentrates on notifications and delivering those to your wrist so you don’t have to pull out your phone. There are a few other things the Omate X offers inside such as a built in pedometer, music control, answering phone calls just to name a few. But overall this watch is not designed to run applications or browse the web, this is strictly a push notification to your wrist piece.
Omate X works with both Android and iOS devices. Testing it on both platforms I found the Omate X notification system seemed to work better on Android. Not that it was bad with iOS but notifications on Android seemed to be delivered to the Omate from a wider variety of apps than from the apps in iOS. That being said, it does a great job of getting those notifications on your wrist. The nice thing about a watch like this is being able to leave your phone on your pocket in meetings, social settings and other situations where you don’t necessarily want to pull out your phone.
The Omate X can also take calls over bluetooth and does come equipped with both a microphone and speaker. This kind of sort of makes you look like Dick Tracy when actually using the function (Google Dick Tracy if you have no clue), but I didn’t find the experience all that good. The speaker is tinny and you literally need to have your mouth up to your wrist for callers to hear you. I can appreciate the effort but personally, it’s a function I used a few times before leaving it behind. While the screen is touch sensitive and you can swipe through notifications and other settings, you can’t touch the screen to turn it on. This was a bit of a bummer for me, having to push the power button to wake it up was a bit annoying.
Battery life was great on the Omate X. They advertise 7 days of battery life and I probably got very close to that but not quite there. It comes with a small charging cradle that is magnetic and the watch sits in it charging through pin connection. Even without hitting a full 7 days of battery life the battery is pretty decent for what its worth. Overall the Omate X does exactly what it says it does, delivers notifications to your wrist where you can quickly decide if it’s important enough to pull your phone out or not.
Value
This is where the Omate X stands out. Priced at $149 it’s really not a bad entry level notification/smartwatch and it’s really well designed with high quality materials. Omate dipped its foot into the full on smartwatch arena with the Truemate awhile back and there were some issues with that particular overall concept that didn’t seem to work. Omate X takes a step back and away from App stores and full on smart functionality and packs in great value into a decently priced timepiece that will look sleek and nice on any wrist.
Wrap-Up
If you’re looking for a notification smartwatch that’s well designed with a great build quality then Omate X is something you might consider. The $149 price point is affordable and battery life is pretty decent. The Omate X’s real direct competition would be something like the Pebble Steel so this isn’t really for full on smartwatch lovers. Hit the link below to check out Omate’s website.
https://youtu.be/A4jFIBtuRk8
[rwp-review id=”0″]*We were sent a demo unit of the Omate X for the purposes of this review.
Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
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