WYZE Band Fitness Tracker

UPDATE: With updates to the Wyze Band software, "Cons/Nitpicky Things" (see below) numbers 3, 4, 6, 8, and 9 have all been resolved! Wish I could give 6 stars. I wanted to give this 4.7 stars, but since I can’t do tenths of stars, and since my critiques are fairly minor, 5 is appropriate enough. This is my first Wyze product. I was not paid or sponsored in any way. Just a normal consumer satisfied with her product. (: From the first time I opened the app, I knew I was going to love this watch. And I do! So much functionality for a tiny watch. Cool Features/Pros: 1. You can customize the background pretty extensively (for a watch). Wyze has premade backgrounds and clock styles, and you can choose any combination of them. You can also choose any photo from your phone to put as the background on the home screen, which I think is a pretty cool feature. To top it off, you can change the font color (of the clock, steps, date, etc.). This way, if you have a picture with a white background on your home screen, you can change the color of the font so that you can always see what time it is. 2. There are multiple menus that you can not only customize the settings for, but you can reorder the menus so that they are in whatever positions you’d like as you swipe on your watch. Additionally, the menus are in a loop, so once you get to the bottom menu, if you keep swiping up, you’ll come back to the home screen. Furthermore, you can swipe down from the home screen and be back at the bottom menu. I like this because I can have 2 important-to-me menus (weather and notifications) on either side of my home screen, so they’re each just one swipe away. 3. There are no side buttons. Just one touch-screen button on the bottom of the watch face. I like how small and sleek the watch is. I prefer this conspicuous look to the large, Apple-watch-looking watch. 4. It has a “shortcuts” menu. I don’t use them, so it doesn’t mean anything to me, but I thought it was cool that it was available for users that might rely on them. 5. ALEXA!!!!!!! I have a number of smart outlets in my house, and only one Echo dot. The echo is in my bedroom, and I always have windows open and/or fans running. Alexa often can’t hear my commands to turn things on and off. I love that I can control my smart devices directly from my watch. It also will give you answers to simple questions written out on the watch screen, so it’s not just for controlling in-home devices. 6. The battery life is pretty darn long. I think it lasts for 7 or 8 days with normal use. In 3 weeks I’ve charged it once (it came almost fully charged). 7. I like that the alarms can be named. I have one set to take my medication that specifically says “meds.” But I’m not sure you if you can only name them specific things or with only a few characters. I take diabetes medication to regulate my insulin. I’m not diabetic, but I think it’s funny to say “diabeetus!” When I typed that as the name of the alarm, it wouldn’t save it, and defaulted back to “wake up.” I changed it to “meds” and it was fine. Not sure what that’s about. Maybe it was the special character “!” that it didn’t like. 8. You can change the brightness of the screen from the app or the phone. 9. There is a setting in the app that allows the watch to turn on do not disturb automatically when it detects that you’re sleeping. You can also turn it on manually, but I sleep at different times throughout the week. Cons/Nitpicky Things: 1. There are only 2 sport modes (with the new/recent update; there used to only be “run”): “run” and “freestyle.” Not that it is really THAT important to me to have different modes, but I liked that I did on my old watch. I do a lot of hikes and I feel this is a normal-enough activity that it should be on there. 2. You can’t change the watch band, and I’m pretty sure there is only black available. I actually don’t know if I can take the band off at all… kind of gross. I like to change them because they get dirty. 3. I like that there’s a “find my phone” option, but it only vibrates. It doesn’t ring. That, to me, is fairly pointless. 4. You cannot hang up phone calls from the watch. Only see who's calling. 5. There is no “timer” option. HOWEVER, if you have it paired with Alexa, all you do is tell it to set a timer. I’m not sure how/if this would work if you’re a google home person or something… 6. Sometimes the phone disconnects from the app and it won’t reconnect unless I restart my phone. This can be frustrating and inconvenient. I’ve had the watch for about 3 weeks and I’ve had to restart my phone to reboot the connection about 5 times. BUT this has always fixed the issue. 7. The step counter is just a bit low; I’ve counted myself and compared to the watch. 8. Sometimes when I wake the device with the finger motion (not by raising it up to my face), and then try to swipe through the menus, it doesn’t register that I’m swiping, and these 3 arrows appear at the bottom of the screen, indicating that I need to swipe to move through menus. That’s annoying and I really don’t like it. Because then you HAVE to swipe up to go down through your menus, but sometimes I want to swipe up to get to my bottom menu (weather) right away. 9. You can’t control Alexa from the home screen if you’ve woken the watch with the finger swipe. You have to either bring your arm up the natural way or go to another menu before you can long press the watch button. I HATE this. Overall, HIGHLY recommend. Excellent watch at such a low price. BUY IT.