Review: A Crappy $40 "Smart Watch"

Two months ago while scrolling through recent Facebook activity, one of those embedded advertisements jumped out at me regarding a smart watch.

After careful review of the product description at the time, I figured for $40.79 USD, it was worth the gamble. Low expectations were set from the start....

Here is a product review of the "Radiance Z3" and to possibly save you the read, what a bloody disappointment this purchase was and totally not worth the long shipping time from China!!

Note: This has no "ham radio" or "electronic maker" relevance since that is what most of HVDN's content focuses around, but should be of interest to anyone who loves cheap electronics and making them do something other than intended (maybe)!

What was advertised included:

• Wireless charging
• IP67 water resistance
• Standalone GPS
• Rotatable bezel for navigation
• Embedded cellular connectivity
• Fitness tracking functions
• Outdoor view-able display
• 3 different band colors!!!

None of these features were included, save for cellular connectivity.

All is not lost....

However, pairing over Bluetooth works just fine to initiate wrist worn phone calls via the watch's built in speaker. If I put a SIM card in the provided slot, this smart watch could also make calls on its own over a 3G network.

There is also a built in camera to take pictures with the watch, do remote shutter from a smartphone and play music stored on a user supplied SD card.

So, I figured even though this smart watch was not what was advertised, it still may have a sort of  "If it breaks, no big deal" value to it. 

However, the back casing of the watch is the biggest piece of crap imagined and would worry about it falling off - even with it secured on my wrist. It is friction fit to hold it on which means no claimed water or dust resistance.

The 32GB SD card was not included in the purchase of this smart watch, for the record.

So, now it is time to go back to the "Do not buy crap via Facebook, Instagram, etc websites at 12:00 AM!!" strategy I usually employ.  CAVEAT EMPTOUR!!

VGA camera resolution in all its 320x240 glory.

While doing a search for some other info for this review since I did not want to spend much time on this myself, I came across this nice video on YouTube not available when I purchased this item  that pretty much nails everything bad about this product.

Without a deep dive analysis, I am pretty sure this is nothing more than a poorly copied knock off version of the Samsung Gear S3 Frontier smartwatch minus all the more expensive components and better overall user experience.

So give it a view and prepare to be NOT amazed!! This product is now a well documented scam and this review being one of many.