Review: Koopower Blade IV wristwatch

As one who’s been wearing one smart watch another daily for the last few years, I was intrigued at the prospect of trying out something closer to a conventional watch again. While I am sticking with smart watches for the foreseeable future, the Blade IV was more useful than I’d anticipated. It also has it’s drawbacks.

The physical watch unit is HUGE, while the face containing the info is of something closer to a traditional size, leaving the bezel to be MASSIVE. So the appearance of this watch will definitely come down to taste. I happen to not be put off by larger watches, so I would have little reservation about wearing this. That being said, I’m just about six feet tall, and I’m not sure I can picture someone at the petite end of the spectrum wearing this without its size being noticed. The watch is plastic. The band is also plastic, and the entire unit is black in its coloring. The watch face is bracketed by four buttons, that all have more than one duty. The one I used the most was the one that enabled the backlight. Others toggle the mode, such as the time, stopwatch, world time, and so one. The watch face lights up only when I click on the button, in the same shade of green that Timex made popular years back, and is easy enough to read. The surface of the watch face isn’t as easy to read at evening/night though, unless I held the watch under the direct light of the lamp, or use the aforementioned back light. The watch is also water resistant to 5ATM/50 meters.

The functionality of the unit was surprising, given that I was expecting a strait digital watch, akin to the Casio units that were so popular when I was a kid in the mid eighties. It has an alarm, hourly chime, and stopwatch as one might expect, but also includes some weather oriented features. For example, the watch is able to show the current temperature, barometric pressure, as well as whether it’s sunny, precipitating, or partly/fully cloudy. It grades the weather on a scale, with sunny being the best, precipitation the worst, and the two cloudy levels in between. It also has an unusual way of forecasting, by showing a graph of sorts.

If the graph trends downward, the weather will be heading toward precipitation, upward indicating a trend towards fairer weather, and a steady line for no change from the current status. In addition to the weather, and also indicates the altitude and barometric pressure. Oddly enough, the manual gives no indication as to how the watch measures any of these metrics. Watch doesn’t compare to anything like a smart watch would, so I’m left to guess work as to how it is her change the information it does. The manual does give instructions on how to adjust it in case it’s off, but that did not appear to be necessary in my case. Another place where the manual wasn’t helpful was in specifying how far out the weather forecast was going. I have no way to tell if it’s one hour out, or one week out. As I checked the weather in my town last night, it was expected to be somewhat fair for another day or so, before thunderstorms roll in. However far out the watch is looking, it was only showing a continuation of the current weather. Assuming it’s accurate, I can deduce from this that it’s not looking out more than 48 hours or so, and is likely using things like change in temperature and pressure to extrapolate the other facets of weather. Checking the subsequent night, with the anticipated rain being a little over twelve hours away, it was predicting a “downturn” in weather, but again it doesn’t seem to indicate how soon this change in weather is expected. All told though, this strikes me as clever way to do things, even if they’re a bit opaque on how far out it works. The last bit of functionality that I’d like to touch on is the chirping for things like the alarm and hourly chime. It works as expected, but I’d have to say that it’s not quite as loud as I’d have liked. I guess I’ve been spoiled by the volume of things like phones and smart watches, for my alarms.

All in all, this isn’t a bad watch. In bright light, the face is easy to read, as is the backlight for low lighting conditions. I was pleasantly surprised by the weather functionally, while finding the other “classic” functions to be what I expected. For those that want something that’s oriented towards athletics and outdoor activities, and aren’t concerned with smart watches, this can be a solid choice. I’d give this an 8. It delivers on what it claims, and doesn’t fall short.