Review: Anex Monkey Smart Watch

Hello Readers, 

Welcome back. While browsing through a weekly flyer by Canadian Tire, my eyes got hold of a smart watch, primarily for its name - Monkey Smart Watch. It's original price was $89.99. On account of Father's Day, the price was slashed 70% and offered for just $24.99 (from June 9th to June 16th). 

As it was listed on Canadian Tire website, I thought the product should be genuine and googled to know more about the product. But there weren't sufficient reviews online. So I decided to try it myself and booked it online. This smart watch was launched in the last quarter of 2021 as Anex Monkey Smart Watch. Last year, it had been sold for just $19.99 as part of Black Friday deal. Even after 5 days of waiting, Canadian Tire didn't process my order. On the other hand, the stock was vanishing real quick and only 80 watches were available in our near by store. When checked with their customer service executive, I was told to cancel my online order or wait until they process the order 😐The response couldn't be weirder than this.

In the past, one of my online orders with Canadian Tire was unprocessed until the offer was over and later they cancelled my order quoting insufficient stock. So, I decided to buy it from the store instead. Caution: If you plan to buy anything from Canadian Tire, my piece of advice is to buckle your shoes, go and buy it in person. The next day when I went to the store, only 2 watches were left - one an open box and another one, unopened. I thanked my stars and picked up the later. And yes, finally I got hold of one 'Monkey' Smart Watch. 

Naturally after all the wait and stock depleting at fast pace, I was very curious to see how well the watch functions.

Features:

• The watch comes with a band, USB charger and user manual
• It is an unisex model and designed for youth (13-18 years) and adults (18+)
• It is compatible with both Android and Apple devices
• The band is made of silicone material and is available only in one colour - black
• The manufacturer claims the watch to be water resistant
• It is designed to monitor foot count, distance, calories, heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen level, sleep duration (deep and light sleep)
• It also has a sports feature to measure the duration of our walking, running, biking and hiking activities
• It boasts to have a remote enabled camera
• Apart from these features, it has stop watch, find the phone option, option to set alarms and notifies user of the incoming calls and texts (including many social media accounts like facebook, twitter, insta etc.)

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The watch has to be integrated with our mobile using Thefit app, downloadable from play store and app store. I used the watch for close to a week, and below is my take. 

Pros:

• The touch charger fully charged the watch in less than 2 hours
• Charge lasts for more than 2 days, which is pretty good
• Decent display and the watch has 4 clock faces
  
• Has quite a good amount of features to track our physical activities
• Notifies incoming calls and texts 
• Messages from sms, whatsapp, twitter etc. are readable. However, emojis aren't displayed

Cons:

• Watch doesn't have a back option. So while navigating through the options in the watch, if we miss to stop at what we were looking for, we have to do it all over, which is quite annoying.
• Thefit app is the biggest downside of this watch. 
• I found it to be poorly developed and launched it without a thorough testing. Many features in the app like display settings, notification don't list a fixed set of options. The options keep vanishing and reappearing. All of a sudden, I saw Gmail listed under the notifications tab, just to find it disappear the very next day😕 
• It doesn't store past data. It just displays the data (pedometer, heart beat, blood pressure etc.) tracked on that particular day. One wouldn't need an app for that. We can just peep into the watch.   
• Watch gets unpaired if you move beyond 20 meters from your mobile. Notifications will work as long as your mobile is only within this vicinity. I am ok if the watch gets automatically paired once I am closer to the mobile, but it doesn't. We have to manually pair it again.
• Remote enabled camera doesn't work. They just mentioned this feature as a crowd puller

So if you are wondering what's my verdict on this device, though I didn't find any issues with the watch, I am much disappointed with the app due to its poor design and fails to make the watch, SMART. 

After all this, you may still buy this product, but only on a sale. Spending $20-$25 won't hurt much, if you want to

• add this device to your watch collection
• measure your foot count and other metrics on a given day  
• gift it to your teenager who had been nagging you for a smart watch. Considering the price point, you won't feel bad if they lose or break it 

Do not buy, if you are looking for a watch

• smart enough to retain data, so that you can evaluate and do better to achieve your fitness goals
• well integrated with mobile phone to receive prompt notifications, attend calls and send texts

Invest few more dollars and buy better brands like Garmin, Samsung, Apple or Fitbit. You may find better deals as part of Back to School offer that might start soon.

Check out the below link for my video review: