Some absolutely shocking things about this watch that you might want to know before you buy and also one incredible feature. Welcome back to another episode of steves reviews, Music, before we begin, if you enjoyed todays episode and find the information useful id really appreciate, if you turn the favor and hit that thumbs up, subscribe and notification bell, but on to the chronobee now nearly everyone these days Has a smartwatch in some form or another, but what about those who dont want another screen about their persons? Well, thats, where hybrid smartwatch brands like cronaby come in now the reason im doing this episode is because i wanted a chronobee watch for ages and facebook was doing its job and serving me all the ads about them. So around six months ago i decided to take the plunge. Let me show you what i got. This is the chronobee secco. It looks just like any normal watch. It has a leather band, stainless steel enclosure, sapphire crystal face three chronograph style buttons and is water resistant to a depth of 100 meters, but this watch is far from normal. Hiding beneath its 41 millimeter face is a ton of neat tech. Firstly, it features bluetooth 5.0 to connect to your phone to allow notifications to be sent through the built in vibration motor. It also has an accelerometer to track your step count and its hands can move independently to display information in simplified form. You can do things like decline, calls control your music and even remotely trigger your shutter using the buttons and much much more, which well look at very shortly.
But all of this comes with an inbuilt battery life of two years and is replaceable with a standard watch battery when that one runs out now before we take a deep dive into this model and some of the incredible smart functionality. Let me get some elephants out of the room and give you some information about the company and the watch that might shock you a little bit. I know it did with me and ive certainly burst open some truths that i wish i knew before buying it. Now, when you see an advert pop up, you always see the tagline kronaby sweden when buying a chronography watch online. The website is branded cronobee, sweden and when it arrives, they even send you a little watch back as if youve been to an actual shop. Look, i guess and look it even says: corona. Be sweden now theres a pretty shocking truth behind this, because corona b watches arent, in fact swedish or at least not anymore. Originally crony was owned by its swedish parent company anima, a b which unfortunately went bankrupt. Then, in 2019, anime and kronaby were bought out by another company called fastina, who are the current owners of cronby the brand? Now? Why is this important its important because festina arent swedish and are in fact headquartered in spain, which is where the majority of chronobee operations now reside and even when ordering from cronby.com guess where my watch ship from whats even more interesting, is that the majority of the Parts are manufactured in china according to the website calibercorner.
Com, although this isnt specified anywhere on the chronoview website as far as im aware so really the fact that its still labelled as crony b, sweden is a little bit of a porcupine corona b. Spain is much more of an accurate representation of the brand in its current situation. So does it matter in the grand scheme of things no, not really, but at the very least i do think its a bit misleading if it was kronaby, spain would that affect sales. Possibly i dont think spain is known for its particularly prestigious watches, so it might put people off, but the million dollar question is: should all this put people off buying one? Absolutely not because this smart watch has some incredible features and one absolutely killer feature, but lets start with the tech inside this for a hybrid smartwatch, its certainly more. On the simple side, many hybrid models tend to have some form small screen or other tech. That makes it noticeably smart when on wrist. Well, this is one way: chrono b stands out from the crown of it because from every single angle, this thing looks like a regular watch and i love it. Ive always said i love traditional timepieces, and this really does have that perfectly traditional look without compromise. Now the hands on the watch act as a rudimentary display. Turning to certain positions on the dial to signify different things happening on your phone and other events throughout the day, specifically, what they can display can be customized in the app so lets take a look at that now.
The app is almost as simplistic as the watch itself to customize what can be displayed on the watch. We can tap on the watch face and then choose from nine different pieces of information such as second time stopwatch temperature. This displays, when you tap on the large crown on the side of the watch, and you can choose to have different pieces of information displayed when you double press the ground with notifications. Again, this is displayed by selecting what you want the hands to turn to in the app. There are a few limitations here. You can only choose four notifications for the three handsets that give you different vibrations. You can choose all calls or texts or even filtered calls for specific people, but for other apps, its more limited having to choose which app you want to set, as which type of notifications. So, with a limit of 16 possible choices, it means you might have to be a lot pickier about the type of notifications you want on the watch now with the vast amount of stuff the hands can do in response to what you want. It can get a little confusing, but as it is, i still love being able to see your notifications displayed on a mechanical dial through this method. Now this is pretty cool, but if we move on down to the pushes section, this is where things get really cool. In here you can choose what you would like to do with the other buttons on the watch, find your phone record, your location or trigger your camera.
These, to be honest, you can find on almost any smart watch these days, but theres. One thing on here that ive never seen implemented into a physical button on a smartwatch and the killer feature that this watch has, and that is ifttt integration through one of the physical buttons. This opens up a huge world of opportunity and you can set up to three ifttt triggers through a single press, a double press or a triple press of the button. Now this means that when i press the button once on my wrist, it boils the bloody kettlebell. I press it twice and it plays music from the speakers in my study i press it three times and it arms all the security cameras in my house and turns off most of the lights but thats just how ive got it set up with ift integration. Its such a ridiculously powerful tool, its unbelievable and because its baked directly into the physical hardware of the button it makes it super super fast to trigger, without faffing, around raising your hand messing around with a cramped one, each one inch screen and then finding the routine. You want to run and speaking of routines because you can pair up ifttt to amazon echo. You can then trigger full echo routines with a single button press. This whole physical button feature is very similar to the flick buttons. I reviewed a few months back. Those things are incredible and ill leave a link in the description if you want to check those out, but chronobee watches essentially gives us the same function of a physical button, shrunk right down and placed on the wrist, and i cannot stress enough how much i love This feature and how much i wish other smartwatch makers would do something similar and allow greater control of the physical buttons on the device, and this, i think, makes the chronobee in my eyes a perfect smart watch for the modern, smart home enthusiast and integrates extremely well Into most existing setups and to give kronerbee credit where its due the whole experience has been extremely stable, but that doesnt mean that i havent found something that i think could be improved to be completely honest.
Theres only two things that i would want to see in the future from chronobee. The first is fitness tracking. Now as it is, it only records your steps and it can sync those to your native health app on your phone, but i would love to see more options, record specific activities or have the ability to partner your phone with gps, because i found that steps alone. The algorithm theyre using can be a little bit over generous, but it would be nice to see sleep tracking as well as part of this. And although i know it, wouldnt be as accurate as potentially other options on the market with heart rate, sensors and other types of sensors, it could still give you a rudimentary form of sleep tracking via its sensors that are built into it already now. The second thing i want to see from chronobee in the future is some form of mobile payment integration. Now, interestingly, kronaby brought out a retrofit option in the form of a watch strap with built in nfc. That could be used as a payment method in the uk, but that seems to have disappeared completely and is out of stock on all the websites its mentioned on and its not on theirs at all. So, im not sure really what happened to that. But it would be great to see it come back at some point and it may even make me upgrade from this particular model, and those unbelievably are the only two things that i could find to criticize about the whole experience.
However, there is perhaps just one other thing and thats the cost. The cost of a cronby watch massively varies dependent on the style that you choose and theres a hell of a lot of choice in both masculine and feminine designs. The cheapest possible option is 245 euros, which is actually the second range which im wearing right now now this equates to about 200 pounds which i think is pretty reasonable, but thats, not the average price of a chronic watch. Most of them sit between four and 500 euros, making that around three to four hundred pounds, maybe even a little bit more and thats a bit on the pricey side. If you ask me, im not sure watch with the quartz movement and very limited smartwatch functionality, despite the killer integration on the ifttt buttons, is worth quite that much 200 pound. I was more than happy to pay for this piece. 250. I think that i wouldnt have complained but 350 450 yeah thats too rich for my blood in this particular brand, but then they do offer a style for everybody. So although i wouldnt pay that much, i can see that some would be quite happy to pay a little bit more to get the style that they want. So what are my final thoughts on the chronobee smartwatch? Well, despite the slight porkies about sweden, and if we ignore some of the more expensive models and look at the price that i paid for this sequel, this absolutely takes the crown from my previous favorite, hybrid smartwatch, by nysw that i did a review of about two Years ago, it really is a bare bones experience, which is exactly what i want from a hybrid smart watch and although it might not be as smart as other smart watches, it manages to do something that even the top of the range ones cant do and thats Create a physical interface with your smart life through the physical buttons on the watch and ifttt.
So this thing gets my thumbs up for the best hybrid smartwatch that i have ever tried, and that concludes todays review guys. If you enjoyed todays episode and found the information useful id really appreciate you hitting that thumbs up, subscribe and notification bell for more student reviews and ill see you back in another episode, soon fitness tracking.D8CPbE705hM
