The Martian Notifier is a good pick for those who want a watch that just happens to have some smart features. But then again, why would you want to spend nearly Rs. 8,000 on such a device? It lacks enough smart functions and is often inconsistent in providing you with your notifications.
Build & Design
The Martian Notifier looks very similar to some of the G Shock watches from Casio. This automatically means that the watch looks really good. There are two buttons on the left side and one on the right side along with the USB charging port. The watch comes with a special USB cable, which needs to be used to charge it.
It’s essentially an analog wristwatch, with an integrated OLED screen on the dial. The screen is small and thin, used for showing you your notifications etc. The button on the bottom left is used for scrolling through the menu, while the one on the top left is used to select the option that you want. Our review unit came with the black silicone band, but Martian sells these in other colours as well.
Overall, the Martian Notifier looks like a classic analog watch, which is very good. It’s definitely better looking than any other smartwatch that we’ve used till now.
Features
That’s where the good part ends though. The Notifier gets the watch aspect right with its analog dial, but that’s about all it gets right. The OLED screen is too small to be of any use whatsover and shows you your notifications, with no way to respond to them except to pick up your phone. The watch also has a ‘leash’ feature, which notifies you when you have left your phone behind. The leash function also shows you how long you have been away from your phone. You have to download the Martian Notifier app on your phone in order to set up the watch and allow it to sync with your phone.
The watch can also act as the camera shutter button. You can use the button on the bottom left of the watch to activate the camera mode and then press the button on the top left to take pictures. There is also a ‘do not disturb’ mode, where the watch will stop notifying you about activities on your phone.
Performance
While the Martian Notifier doesn’t quite have enough features to be an actual smartwatch, the device also falters sometimes with the ones it does have. For example, during our regular use, the watch didn’t once give us notifications from Twitter and Gmail, even though all these apps were supposed to show up and were selected in the app. In fact, sometimes the watch even missed text messages delivered to the phone.
Further, you can only see the notifications that you get and not respond to them in any way, which further reduces the functionality. In addition, notifications scroll across the small screen, which means that if you happen to miss a notification within the 5 second window, then you have to go to your phone to check it.
Battery
This is another area where the Notifier tops the Moto 360. The Martian Notifier went up to five days on a single charge, which is not surprising considering that it doesn’t do much by way of smart activities. In addition, the battery indicator on the app isn’t very accurate. At one point, the indicator remained at 67% for two whole days, before dropping down suddenly to 30%.
The good part though is that it has two batteries. The Notifier has one button cell for the analog watch and a Li-Po battery for the smart functions. This means that you can still use it as a watch even after switching the smart functions off.
Bottomline
The Martian Notifier is a good looking device, which fails to justify its price as a smartwatch. The device is priced at Rs. 7,499 right now, but doesn’t have enough smart features of functionality to justify the price. If you want a watch, which just happens to have some smart features then go ahead and buy this, but if it is a smartwatch that you want then this is not the best one available.
That said, no smartwatch today is as refined as it needs to be and the Martian Notifier, though below the others, is just another failed effort at making an effective smartwatch. It looks good, but looks aren’t everything.
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Prasid Banerjee
Trying to explain technology to my parents. Failing miserably. View Full Profile
