Overhyped and under-delivered; an ambitious, kinetic, smartwatch concept left me disappointed. My experience has been marred by lacklustre features, missing functionality, a buggy iOS app, suspect build quality, and two serious watch malfunctions. Unless you enjoy wearing disappointment on your wrist, do not buy a Sequent watch, do not back any of their crowdfunding campaigns.

In August 2017 I backed a Kickstarter campaign for the world’s first self-charging smartwatch. The idea of a watch that provided core smartwatch features, but wasn’t constrained by a daily recharge cycle, really appealed to me. Despite a wildy successful campaign that collected thirteen times their goal, it wasn’t until November 2019 that my watch arrived.

The watch

The face doesn’t have a second hand. The hour and minute hands update on the minute. I assume that’s an easy way to conserve power.

The dial has three complications:

  1. power reserve on the left
  2. biofeedback (step counter) on the right
  3. notifications LED at the bottom (also used for interaction feedback)
    • red for Sport Mode activation
    • green for charging, and heart rate reading
    • blue for Bluetooth

The crown isn’t used to set the time, that happens when you sync with the app. The crown can be partially depressed without triggering anything. It has a definite, tactile bump when fully depressed. Turning the crown does nothing.

The watch is 14.8 mm thick. That’s 3 mm thicker than the chubbiest Apple Watch, but about as deep as a middling Casio G-Shock. Some users have complained about the size, but it wasn’t a surprise, there were plenty of photos and videos of the actual watch on the campaign page.

Calibration frustration

One of the oddest things about the watch is the ability to calibrate the hands. Using the app, you can slightly tweak the angle of each hand, including the complications.

Screenshot of Sequent app watch calibration

This is required due to the inability to line two things up during the assembly process. What the hell Sequent, why is the end user calibrating the hands? Calibration isn’t a feature, it’s your job as the watchmaker. The maddening thing is that the smallest degree of adjustment the calibration can apply, is larger than the degree of misalignment between the hands and the dial markers!

Animation of calibration futility

In Sequent’s own words:

Building upon traditional Swiss watchmaking we allowed ourselves no compromises.

I’m pretty confident traditional Swiss watchmaking has had the ability to line the hands up with the dial since the 16th century. Sequent, you should be ashamed. What’s worse is that it appears to forget the calibration sometimes (I notice the hands have shifted from an adjusted position). They designed a calibration feature to compensate for the lack of calibration during manufacturing, only to disregard the calibration.

Infinite power

The heart of the SuperCharger is a smart, micro, energy generator manufactured by Kinetron, that turns your arm movement into energy. This isn’t a completely new concept, automatic watches have been around since the late 18th century. What is novel is the wearable technology to generate and store enough electrical energy to power a smartwatch. This is what got me so excited about the product.

The generator makes a noticeable noise when winding - a subtle zizzing. My partner has compared it to the sporadic buzzing of a dying fly. Whether you find this annoying or not depends on the setting. You won’t notice it in a social setting. It’s very noticeable when jogging in the quiet of the morning. I habitually fidget - drumming my fingers or feet, clicking a pen, my fidget spinner or Rubik’s cube are nearby. I don’t find the sound annoying.

However, I was very annoyed when the watch abruptly stopped working eighteen days after I received it.

23 November 2019
  • I contacted Sequent via TestFlight informing them that my watch had stopped despite displaying 89% on the power reserve dial
  • After unsuccessfully attempting to charge and wake the watch (no lights, no response), I amended my initial email sharing that the watch was completely non-functional
  • Sequent replied later that day:

    This problem can be solved by putting your watch to the charger and wait for at least 2 hours.

  • Sequent replied again later that evening:

    Please can you make a video of your watch during try to connect it to your phone so we can understand the problem and solve the issue.

24 November 2019
  • I emailed videos of the watch failing to charge, failing to respond to crown taps, and failing to connect with the app
  • No response from Sequent
25 November 2019
After it had failed to charge on the 23rd, I took it off the charger and left it on the bench. Each time I walked past I would pick it up, shake it, and tap the crown a few times, hoping to rouse it from death. The watch inexplicably started responding again!
11 December 2019
  • Eighteen days after my last email Sequent eventually replied:

    We saw your video and we have one more doubt. When you hold the crown for 4 seconds is there any flash, any reaction?

    WTF Sequent?! Why didn’t you share that nugget of support information weeks ago?

  • I replied, informing them that the watch had started working again. I was a little miffed. I asked some questions:
    1. Why did it stop working?
    2. Why did it start working again?
    3. Will it continue to work?
    4. Does the power reserve complication work properly?
  • Sequent replied with this gem of Zen wisdom:

    There can be some reason to that.

Reflecting on the malfunction, I suspect the power reserve dial is inaccurate. I wear the watch daily and despite regular gym classes and jogging, the power reserve value has only ever decreased (it’s worth noting that the GPS and notifications features are disabled, and power is still lacking). Sequent’s pledge of infinite power from normal use is simply too good to be true.

Creative step counting

I’d never used a pedometer before. I was curious to see how wearing an activity tracker would affect my daily behaviour. I certainly felt the gamification pull of wanting to max out my activity dial each day. While there is definitely a correlation between increased walking or running and an increased step count, my engagement lessened after I noticed some inconsistencies:

  • after extended periods of mostly sitting at a desk, the activity dial would sometimes show a notable increase
  • after leaving the watch on the nightstand overnight, syncing first thing in the morning would often show over 100 steps

When setting up my watch, I selected the Regular fitness goal, 10,000 steps (5.5 km). Sequent estimates I should be able to reach this goal with a: thirty minute walk, or a ten minute run, or a fifteen minutes swim. After a thirty minute jog covering 6.2 km, the biofeedback dial only reaches 55%, estimating 5500 steps and 4.17 km.

Whatever method they are using to identify steps, it is at best immature.

Limited heart rate monitoring

The heart rate monitoring feature is only available through what Sequent call Sport Mode. It comes in two flavours, basic and detailed, and the collected heart rate data is not shared with Apple HealthKit.

Basic Sport Mode
records heart rate every five minutes, lasts thirty minutes
Detailed Sport Mode
records hearts rate every two minutes, lasts one hour

Screenshot of Basic Sport Mode instructions Screenshot of Detailed Sport Mode instructions

The first time I used Sport Mode was for a one hour gym class on Thursday 7 November 2019 at 6 am AEST. I synced with the app soon after I returned home. There was no session data showing for 7 November, it was displayed on the day before on 6 November.

The red dots are heart rate readings. The green dots are step activity between the readings. Notice that it failed to collect two readings between 6:08 am and 6:14 am due to the high activity (the watch likely moved on my wrist).

I suspected it could perhaps be a time zone related issue. However, when looking at the week and month views the data is correctly displayed under Thursday 7 November. The day view is just faulty. I notified Sequent of the issue on 13 November via TestFlight - they never replied.

GPS tracking got lost

April 2018
Project Update #26

There will be a charger in the box with your Sequent watch. … Heavy users might need to charge - if they set frequent HR measuring, turned on GPS all day long etc.

August 2018
Project Update #35

[regarding testing and tuning] here is a short list of some of the tasks that need to be done and things that need to be checked:

  • …
  • GPS readings
September 2018
Project Update #38

last 2 weeks have been focused on tuning everything to work together … GPS into the smallest module combined on the market … auto-setting time via GPS

October 2018
Project Update #40

Sequent watches support following:

  • …
  • phone-free GPS time setting

Reading those updates you could be fooled into thinking that GPS was a working feature - shame on you for being so gullible.

August 2019
Project Update #59

The watches do have GPS, but reports from initial backers indicated that reception was very poor in many situations, so for now we have disabled it to conserve energy. Once we have a FW and App fix, we will release the feature. The primary function of the on-board GPS is for time auto-fix, GPS recording is possible, but that is still under testing.

Here we are months on and still no word about GPS tracking. Sequent, you failed.

Notifications are missing

March 2019
Project Update #50

we have prepared a roadmap so that you can be checking on the progress with us, when each of the features should be released:

  • …
  • Week 19 > Notifications
May 2019
Project Update #52

Currently we are working on notifications and Google Fit integration.

August 2019
Project Update #59

Notifications in the app will be rolled out soon. Our testing group has already given their feedback and we are preparing a wider release soon.

It’s been months since that update and the iOS app has no functionality for configuring notifications. Sequent, you failed again.

Sleep tracking

I participate in the beta stream for the Sequent SuperCharger iOS app via TestFlight. In early December 2019 they released a firmware update to introduce the sleep tracking functionality. I wore the watch to bed for the first time on 3 December. The next morning I synced with the app, curious to see how the feature worked. Nothing showed up under the December period. The first sleep data entry was under 27 November. Of all the things to foul up, they managed to organise the data such that it was out by a week.

Again, the sleep data is not shared with Apple HealthKit.

The strap

I selected a Hi-Tech Cordura, black strap for my Sequent SuperCharger. I was anticipating something similar to previous Cordura watch straps I’ve worn, much like every other Cordura watch strap you’ve seen. Sequent failed to mention that the Cordura strap is really just the rubber strap with a thin layer of Cordura glued to it. This thin layer catches, frays, and peels. I’ve had the watch two months, and it already looks tatty. Sequent, you should be embarrassed. When it gets worse, I imagine I’ll either peel the layer off, or source a different 22 mm strap.

Photo of frayed and peeling watch strap

Campaign feedback

The campaign’s backers have already shared a lot of feedback, and it continues to roll in. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to throw together a script to scrape all the project’s comments, and run them through IBM’s Natural Language Understanding service for sentiment analysis. The results aren’t surprising. I’m certainly not alone in my disappointment with the watch. Not all comments could be analysed, many have been deleted, and some were written in unsupported languages.

As of 28 December 2019

Sentiment Count
negative 2567
positive 1640
neutral 814

Pie chart of comment sentiment results

The feedback has been mostly negative. Many people feel diddled by Sequent, waiting so long for such a disappointing product. Customers remember bad experiences, and are more likely to share them. Sequent have failed to build satisfaction, trust, and commitment with their backers.

The end of time

Perhaps as a fitting end to this tale of disappointment, the day before I published this article I encountered another serious malfunction.

I hadn’t used the Sport Mode since the last malfunction in late November. Now that the new year has settled in, I’m returning to my exercise routine. I attended a gym class and actived Detailed Sport Mode. Midway through the class I noticed the hands weren’t moving, and I wasn’t seeing the usual green notifications LED flash when the heart rate reading is being taken. Upon returning home I removed the watch and discovered that the heart rate monitoring unit was malfunctioning. The two LEDs on the underside of the watch, used for optical heart rate monitoring, were flashing rapidly, without end. The watch is completely unresponsive. I’m unable to deactivate Sport Mode. I’m unable to reset the watch with a four second hold of the crown. Placing the watch on the charger has no effect, there is no indication of charging, and the heart rate LEDs continue to flash. I’ll have to wait until the LED flashing completely drains the power. I’ve informed Sequent of this second malfunction, and I’m seeking a refund for this bad joke they call a smartwatch.