MyKronoz ZeNeo Full Review

MyKronoz is a Swiss watchmaker but not of the variety most of us will automatically conjure up in our minds of an intricately designed watches with moving mechanical parts. Instead, MyKronoz is a smartwatch maker offering a little different take on smartwatches than I’m used to but I’ll get into that.  I’ll be reviewing the ZeNeo which harkens back to my early days with fitness trackers.

The watch that started my love affair with smartwatches and fitness trackers with the Samsung Gear Fit.  This was a bracelet style fitness tracker with a gorgeous screen and nice features but a rather lackluster heart rate sensor.  It left something to be desired as did all smartwatches and fitness trackers back in the olden days.

Quick Take 

Pros:

• affordable
• comfortable
• accurate resting heart rate
• counts steps reasonably well
• supports notifications
• can respond to text messages with canned responses*
• has a mic and speaker to answer phone calls*

Cons:

• not super intuitive or easy to use
• the MyKronoz app isn’t the easiest to navigate
• connectivity issues
• speaker is on the quiet side for phone calls
• no sleep tracking

*Feature only works when paired with an Android smartphone

But I do style like the form factor of a bracelet style fitness tracker because they make sense.  The size doesn’t constrict wrist flex and they’re comfortable to wear.  Okay, the Microsoft Band 2 was a bracelet style tracker and horribly uncomfortable to wear but that’s another story.

In general, bracelet style trackers are very comfortable and lightweight on the wrist.

The strap of the NeZeo goes all out as being secure.  One of the problems with Samsung’s Gear Fit was that it was susceptible to falling off due to strap design and then it was goodbye tracker and $149 if you didn’t notice it falling off.

You shouldn’t have to worry about that with the NeZeo.  The strap has a clasp, a loop, and and a snap to securely keep it on your wrist.  The strap is also removable so it can be replaced.

What is unique about the NeZeo is that it is equipped with both a mic and speaker.  These aren’t typically found on bracelet style fitness trackers and certainly not at its price point. View the current price on Amazon. If you have it paired with an Android smartphone you’ll be able to answer phone calls on it which is always handy and feature many people are desiring these days.

You can respond to text messages with a handful of canned replies.

An interesting thing is that when paired with an Android phone you can speak into the watch to use Google Assistant, assuming Google Assistant is enabled on your phone.  You’ll need your phone nearby since a Bluetooth connection is required.

In the menu of the NeZeo there is a mic icon and selecting that will allow you to talk to your phone and use Google Assistant.

Unfortunately that connection is a bit fickle but that’s something else I’ll be getting into.

The NeZeo is equipped with a heart rate sensor and you can have the watch measure your heart rate throughout the day, as frequently as every 5 minutes, although it takes some digging around in the MyKronoz phone app to find this setting.

The NeZeo tracks your steps and active minutes but doesn’t support any fitness activities.  So if you’re wanting a fitness tracker to take to the gym and track your treadmill, biking, elliptical or whatever activities you plan on doing, it won’t track those.  It will track the active minutes but that’s all.

There’s no built-in or connected GPS but I wouldn’t expect that since it doesn’t track outdoor (or indoor) activities.

The NeZeo is essentially a pedometer that also tracks your heart rate and the heart rate sensor has tested out to be accurate.

So if you’re just wanting a fitness tracker to track your daily steps, keep tabs on your heart rate, receive phone notifications, and have the ability to answer a phone call through it if you’re in range of your phone then this may be an option.

And there are quite a few people out there in which this smartwatch makes sense.  If you’re just wanting something affordable to track your steps and keep you connected then, well, it does that.  Well…most of the time.

There’s two major complaints I have of the NeZeo.  One of them is connectivity.  When it is connected to my phone it performs well and syncs over step and heart rate data in a short amount of time but when I step out of range of Bluetooth and then come back into range it takes a while to reconnect and/or a message appears, on the Google Pixel 3a I’m using it to test it, asking me to grant call and contact list permissions.

That gets annoying.  It’s a bug I see others complaining of too.

Also, a firmware update is available, version 1.1.19, but I’m unable to download it to the watch.  Whenever I try to the app immediately tells me that the process has failed.

I was able to download two previous firmware updates so I’m not sure what the issue is.  Hopefully it will be resolved soon.

The other issue I have is that both the watch and app aren’t particularly intuitively designed.  There’s no physical button on the watch so it’s all swiping, double tapping, triple tapping, and kinda getting lost in the process.

There’s a bit of a learning curve but once I got the hang of it I could find what menu item I was looking for, such as screen brightness or turning on or off notification sounds.

By default you’ll hear a chiming sound when a notification is received but this can be turned off and you can instead be notified by vibration or both sound and vibration.

It is equipped with an alarm and it’s great to have both vibration and sound to make sure I wake up.  It saved me the other morning when I needed to drive my son to school early in the morning for his driver’s ed lesson!

There are 10 watch faces to choose from and you can select them either through the app or on the watch.  It’s nice to be able to make the selection directly on the watch.

Something else that irks me as when I receive a text message it pops up on the screen which is terrific but it took me a while to figure out how to reply to it or even see the message once it disappeared from the main screen.

Swiping up on the screen will show a list of notifications but only those from apps not text messages.

I thought I could double tap on the notification when it appeared and then read it in its entirety and respond but nope that doesn’t do anything and like I said, the message doesn’t appear with the other notifications.

However, it does appear as you swipe through the menu and select the messaging icon.  The problem was I didn’t know that’s what that icon meant but whatever.

There you’ll be able to see past text messages and reply to them but only with a canned message and there’s only five of them.  Unless I’m missing something there’s no way to create your own canned replies in the app.

Notifications will remain on the home screen until you dismiss them and I actually like that.  It’s a unique feature to MyKronoz watches.  Double tapping on the notification will dismiss it temporarily but you’ll have to open the notification by selecting it in the list of  notifications or it will continue to pop up on the screen.

Weather is also supported on the NeZeo so you’ll see the current temperature of your location on the watch as long as it is connected to your phone.

Step tracking is on par with other watches I’ve tested. I’ve driven my car while wearing it and I never noticed it counting steps and I live in a city with a lot of pothole filled roads.

So overall, I like the concept of the watch.  It would nice if it tracked activities like running, bike riding, etc., but I’ve reviewed a lot of budget friendly smartwatches and fitness trackers in this price range and many promise more than they can really deliver.  The internal components just aren’t robust enough to accurately track higher intensity workouts so I like that the NeZeo doesn’t promise to do things it may do poorly.

However, I would like to see sleep tracking added but that may not be important to you.

Battery life depends upon how many notifications the watch receives, screen brightness,  and if you’re taking phone calls through it but you can expect 2-3 days.  It does recharge quickly.

With an IP67 rating it’s not suitable for swimming or submerging in water.  It should be able to without splashes and rain but just don’t wear it in the pool.

The NeZeo does have its connectivity issues and if MyKronoz can work those out I would feel comfortable recommending it.  If you have an iPhone I wouldn’t recommend getting this watch because its main selling point is the ability to answer phone calls through it since its equipped with a mic and speaker but Apple doesn’t allow watches to do this except for the Apple Watch.

You know how Apple is…

Since it is affordable priced and fits some people’s needs quite well it’s worth a try.  You can check the current price and availability of the NeZeo on Amazon.