Aigo's F209 MP3 / video playing wristwatch
By Darren Murph 
posted Aug 17th 2006 1:48AM
posted Aug 17th 2006 1:48AM
In case you don't already own one of the bajillion DAPs on the market, or if your cellphone doesn't sport some sort of musical playback function, Aigo figures it could interest you in wrapping those capabilities around your wrist. Clearly another example of consolidation in action, this watch / DAP / movie viewer is yet another Chinese all-in-one-style gadget that probably doesn't perform exceptionally well at any of its claimed tasks. Although the F209 sports a relatively unfashionable black plastic band, and a color scheme on the faceplate reminiscent of the early 90s, it manages to include a very respectable 160 x 128 resolution OLED display for viewing MPEG-4, XviD, and AVI movie clips. When not watching a flick or determining just how late you're running for that ever-important meeting, there's always the built-in MP3 / WMA / WMA-DRM player to pass the time (ahem). Two models will reportedly be available, with the only difference being the internal storage space (512MB or 1GB), and both will rock a headphone jack, playback controls, and a mini-USB port for PC-to-watch transfers. While the design of this timepiece isn't likely to attract any new friends, it appears to be a fairly decent way to carry a few tunes / video clips without adding even more weight to your knapsack -- but with prices ranging from 799 CNY ($100) for the 512MB model to 1,099 CNY ($125) for the 1GB version, this less-than-stylish wristwatch conglomerate may not be worth your time (nor money).[Via DAPreview]
A horrible idea. First of all, video is completely useless; the screen and storage are far too small. Second, imagine how annoying it would be having headphones come out of these things for listening to music.
I think this would be great. but I would manage a way to make a minature projector out of it.
Scrap the video playback and add Bluetooth support and they'd get some interest. No one wants a cord tieing their wrist to their ear!
What's the battery life? Is it enough to watch 10 min of video while sitting in an unnatural position?
Im just thinking...woudlnt that thing get hot! XD
this thing is fcking stupid, what kind of freak show would sport one of these
hmm. i actually like the idea. could bring it in class and just watch some vids before class starts. dont have to carry the bigger players around. give it little better quality, or even a better selection out there than this i just might get one.
Bah! And Bah! some more! I think this watch is a great idea! It's like a cross between the calculator watches from my youth and the Dick Tracy wrist communicators from the 1950's. Now if the watch actually let you call up your friends for a video chat, nobody could deny its greatness.
JR
others
Aigo! Is this thing from Korea? Aigo!
Ok, I just bought one of these (It's really "Aigo UW-F029" available at www.geeks.com). And actually, it's pretty sweet. The OLED screen is small, but surprisingly bright, clear and colorful for 160x128 resolution, with 260K colors- high quality & cool new technology. Videos look excellent on this thing, I was very surprised. If you convert them down, a full-length Xvid movie can be as small as 150MB and still look exceptional at that size. The audio is extremely loud (20mW... it can blow many headphone drivers) and it sounds good. Not advertised, but it is a voice recorder too. The battery life is excellent (I get about 2.5hrs for video/5hrs for Audio), considering the battery's size and all of the things it does during operation (screen, audio amplifier, basic operating system, constant memory accessing, Audio & video decoding...) and it only takes about an hour and a half to fully recharge.
CONS: Video conversion software shipped with the unit is corrupt (had to download it from some Chinese site). The audio output uses a 2.5mm stereo jack. Faceplate is less-than stylish :) Bluetooth would be nice, but not expected in a device this small and complicated.
Overall; I give it a 9 out of 10 mainly because I've always wanted a watch that plays videos, and it works really well so far. Though I guess you have to be a bit of a geek to truly appreciate it.
i just bought the aigo f209 wristwatrch, and it didnt come with the disk at all. what site did u get your nedia transcoder off of??????????
I am also facing the same problem - can someone help us in finding the aigo transcoder - I tried using gspot to find the codec and use another converter to convert the files - but it doesn't seem to work.
I wrote to the aigo folks - sales_america@huaqi.com - and received an immediate response on the same - they initially tried sending it to my email id - it didnt work because of size restrictions.
I then requested them to host it on their same and they obliged immediately.
The media transcoder is now available at their website - http://www.aigo.com/us/en/Support/Downloads.asp
I am looking at http://www.geeks.com/. What colour is that watch? Can I bay it in black colour? Are they delivering to Europe?
I bought the Aigo F029 video watch but I use this software to convert my files, http://www.movkit.com/MovKitMobileVideoConverter.html
Just make sure your output is 160x128 or else the file won't open and that your audio bitrate is proportionately correct for the frame rate or else it will get out of sync. I've used it at 24fps with no problems.