Cenuya Smart Watch W5

Watch performs badly on almost every use scenario – This kids watch is sold on AliExpress under varying names such as "Android 9.0 4G Smart Watch W5 Child GPS Positioning Recording Phone Shooting Video Google Store Student Wifi Video Calling Phone" or "4G Smart Watch Children Gps Positioning Phone Wifi Internet Chat Video Call Recording Android 9.0 Boys And Girls Smartwatch" or a combination of these words. Mostly the five of them are present "4G Smart Watch Android W5". While its advertisement looks impressive and many positive rates are given to this watch careful reading reveals that none of them go beyond the fact that watch has arrived and it is working and it is Android 9, yay! Aside from that this watch performs badly on almost every use scenario.

The very first and major flaw is that this watch requires that the network you use must support VoLTE. For Australia this means that you can use it only if you have an account with one of the major mobile providers such as Optus and Telstra. If you use one of mobile virtual network operators this watch will not make or receive calls, while everything else like sending of SMS or access to Internet will work. This in its own turn means that in order to be able to make calls you will need to connect to one of the expensive plans from these operators. For example, a cheapest postpaid SIM plan from Optus at the moment of writing of this review is $45/month and it includes 20MB of data. You can of course go for pre-paid plans, which may be cheaper, but they have their own caveats. Consider the whole expenses comparing to the watch price. ~$100 for watch and then $550+ for connection per year. The alternative is that you can buy one of the expensive watches in Australian shops like ~$300 - $350 for watch and then about $250 for connection to one of the virtual mobile operators. First year expenses are almost the same, the second year an "expensive" alternative definitely wins.

If the watch is operating in a network that supports VoLTE, you would expect a crystal clear sound during the calls. However, not in this case. The quality of calls is mediocre, probably because of the quality or settings of the watch microphone. I understand that one of the features of the watch is to secretly listen to what is happening around the child and thereby is a different microphone sensitivity, but when you are talking to your kid the microphone hears everything - how wind blows, what people are talking about around, all car tires, etc, etc, etc. As a result of this the only option to have a decent talk is for the kid to go away far from everybody and better in a quiet room.

I remember once I got a call from my kid and the first thing I heard was 'As-Salaam-Alaikum' pronounced by a thick male voice. I got worried immediately and the first intent was to shout 'Who are you and what are you doing with my kid's watch?' However, it turned out that that was somebody's father standing near my kid and picking up his own child from the school. So, the watch microphone picked up somebody's speech instead of the person who actually called.

The software. This watch runs Android 9, so you can install any Android 9 compatible programs. And they will work! Even games. That's right, this is an advantage. However, if you think that you will be able to use any of these, this is wrong. Almost all usual Android programs are unusable because of a tiny screen. There is a couple of special things about the WiFi settings. The watch constantly forgets that it should reconnect to WiFi whenever possible. This happens rather on random. E.g. some times watch can restore a connection to home WiFi and some times it simply disables auto-connect and keeps using mobile data from now, eating out the mobile data that the provider gave to you.

The reachability over mobile network. Apparently, to conserve the energy the watch goes into some super-sleep mode so if the kid doesn't use watch right now a call to the kid has little chances to succeed. You call. The operator immediately responds you that the phone number is switched off. There is no calling tone. You call again. Switched off. Call N-th time and you get the waiting tone and the kid picks up the call. Very safe.

This watch has a companion application called "Aladeng", it supposes to take screenshots from watch camera, listen to the microphone, and find the watch position. The application is extremely badly written as it is slow and frequently hangs up or crashes. Also, the translation to English is very bad or non-existent. Where you see English letters instead of Chinese, you'll have to guess what the hell did they mean by writing this. For example, instead of something like "Ok" or "Continue", you'll see "Experience"... or try translate this to English "Set trajectory mode to succeed".

GPS positioning is simply horrible or doesn't work at all. When you request watch position what you'll see in the application is location that is about 30 minutes in the past and with the precision +-500m to 1km. The only thing you can say for sure is that the child is somewhere in the suburb he or she is expected to be. Switching between accuracy and power saving modes doesn't appear to change anything.

The watch is neither water resistant nor water proof. Moreover, the construction of the watch case is so bad so even a minor splash when the child washes his or her hands has a fair chance to get inside.

Battery is probably the only good feature of the watch. If the kid actively uses watch the battery will survive at least until the evening. If the kid is simply wears it and makes a few calls, then it is pretty realistic that the battery will have 30-40% of charge remaining. Still not enough for the two full days.

However, kids will love this watch as it looks stylish and there is some level of excitement for any electronic device they own, especially if this is the first one.

Update: After three months of usage the watch stopped to register in the Optus network. Factory reset didn't help. This made the watch effectively unusable. I consider the money and time spent on this watch as wasted.

So the verdict: 1. The affordable price turns into a requirement to buy a relatively expensive contract in Australian conditions. 2. The watch performs from bad to very bad in almost every use scenario. 3. The watch ended up being unusable.

Recommendation: Do not buy! Better buy a cheap phone instead.