MP4 Watch

At Tech2 we don’t review too many Chinese products unless they seem absolutely worth it, or are just quirky. But quirkiness doesn’t always guarantee brilliance. We heard the Chinese were the first to pitch a watch that plays movies on to the shelves of Mumbai's Lamington Road. It beats me how anyone can watch movies on a teeny-weeny screen with one arm held high. Then again, much of what I see or hear these days don't make any sense anymore.

The watch is simply called 'MP4 Watch' and it's made, I’m sure, by one of those tiny enterprising setups that currently flourish in China. I say this because there are no traces of ownership anywhere on the box, and the biggest giveaway are the instructions.

The watch isn’t good to look at. Far from it, it’s boxy in shape, and downright cheesy. The display is a 1.8-inch, 56K TFT screen with 160 x 128 pixels. The buttons are placed around the side of the player, and a speaker is provided just below the screen. The strap accommodates the USB connector, which when needed should be taken out and plugged into the earphone jack. The USB is not a high-speed one, so it takes ages for anything to get transfered to the device.

The earphone jack is a 2.5mm one, which requires you to keep a 3.5mm adapter at all times if you need to use regular earphones. Even though it’s a PMP built into a watch, there's no way you can use the player only like a wristwatch. The display goes off every few seconds if nothing is on. If you need to check the time when the player is inactive, you need to press and hold the Mode button for two seconds.

The MP4 watch is supposed to play NX-AVI format, which in practice means nothing will work unless you use the bundled software. The software doesn't take much time to convert files, and could manage all the avi files we threw at it. However, while playing back you have to take the watch off, or else it's damn uncomfortable. The small size of the screen only makes matters worse. While resizing, the video gets squeezed and the characters take on an elongated alien look.

You can play MP3 and WMA formats, which are done perfectly, and there's also support for WAV. The FM Radio is kinda nutty. It doesn’t auto-scan, and the reception sucks! If you're indoors, just forget about it. The player has 6 preset EQ modes and a voice recorder. The player can also read text files, but using this feature can be a pain.

As far as sound quality is concerned, with the given set of earphones you can manage a great deal of decent output. When I say this, I mean pure volume (it’s loud). The sound is okay, with bad bass response and troubling trebles. I tried it out with my 3.5mm converter and the sound was just bearable.

Having said all this, you probably don’t need to read the verdict. But hang on if you made it so far. The real stunner is the cost. It has a price tag of Rs 6,500; isn’t that just brilliant? You need to cough up over 6K for nothing at all. I'd say you could easily give this one a miss.