The disappointing Kreyos watch

Way, way, way back in June of last year, I backed the Kreyos watch on Indiegogo. At the time, the Kreyos was positioned to be the most amazing watch the world had seen. And I blogged about it in my post, 11 Reasons I Backed the Kreyos Smartwatch. Unfortunately, after I wrote that post, 708 people clicked through to the Kreyos website and 16 people backed the watch, spending a total of $1,850. I say “unfortunately”, because so far the watch is a real dud.

You can read more about why the watch completely stinks on this blog, this blog, or by searching things like “Kreyos watch terrible”. Or take a look at the App Store ratings for the app itself – a dismal 1 star.

To save you the effort though, it barely can keep a connection via bluetooth to the phone, and almost none of the features seem to work. At best, a friend who bought it says the actual “watch” part of it does in fact tell time.

I had the same experience when I opened mine. It just doesn’t work. And that’s so frustrating because it shipped over six months later than it was supposed to! 

When we back products on sites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter, we know we’re taking a chance. These are typically unestablished new companies trying to do something that hasn’t been done before. We all know the risks associated with crowdfunding, but I can’t help but feel responsible for influencing so many people to buy this product :(

But I do believe there is still hope with the Kreyos. It’s possible that most if not all of the problems it is experiencing are software based, which would mean updates to the firmware or the app could fix the problems. I hope the Kreyos team is working night and day to resolve these problems, but several friends of mine have reached out to them about these problems with no response. That is not a good sign.

In light of all this, I still intend to continue backing products via crowdfunding sites. But I do intend to put prominent disclaimers on my blog posts going forward so everyone knows the risks.