So i just want to start off by saying a huge thank you to dot incorporated for sending me the dot watch um so that i could try it out and review it for you guys today. I also want to preface this video by saying that honesty and transparency is something that’s very important to me and something that i pride myself on here on my channel. So i want you viewers to know that you can always count on me to be 100 honest when i’m doing a product review, even though it is incredibly kind of companies to send me products, it does not influence how i feel about the product or what i Say about the product so just want to let you viewers know you can always trust me to be honest with you. So now we can just jump right into the video. I want to start off by giving just a little bit of background on dot incorporated the company um, so they are not just a company that makes assistive tech um. They are very passionate about braille literacy. They are involved with several um initiatives and outreach for braille literacy. They also are developing software as well as devices, and they are um, i believe, currently trying to get tactile and braille kiosks in like malls and subway stations. So i think that’s really cool that they are very passionate about promoting braille literacy. They are not just here to manufacture and sell assistive tech.
They are really committed to the cause. So i think that’s really great. As a blind person myself. I do think that braille literacy is very important um. I have talked on my channel before i’ve mentioned. Like i cannot spell. I am the worst speller because all of my information is auditory, and so, since i don’t see words spelled out like i, i do not know how to spell them, or i don’t remember how they’re spelled so. Braille is a really good way to just increase that literacy um, because you are actually kind of reading instead of just listening. I only learned braille a few years ago, so i’m still kind of at a beginner’s level. With my braille reading i definitely should practice more um, but this watch has helped me practice and definitely helped me increase my braille literacy, so that has been awesome. Okay. So now we can talk about the watch itself. So here is the dot watch um. It has a white face that has four braille cells and for those of you who may be unfamiliar with refreshable braille devices, what it is um. It has four cells that have like six very small holes for the braille dots and like these little um pins. I guess kind of like come up through the hole to make the braille dots, um and it’s it’s electronic, so it’s pretty neat. So it has that and then it has um two touch: sensors underneath the braille cells and that are forward and backwards.
So that will go to the next set of four braille cells um. Then it has on the side. It has two buttons a select button and then a home button, and then in the middle has a crown or a knob. If you will to that turns um and then the strap on the watch is silver and it’s magnetic so it’s adjustable so that’s pretty cool, because i have a small wrist, so it’s able to fit me um, i will say like the face like the watch itself. Is pretty big it’s wider than my wrist um, but i have teeny tiny baby wrists, so probably most people won’t have that same issue. So one thing personally for me is, i feel, like this watch it’s, not the cutest thing ever um it’s not super fashionable. I don’t really know how to make a braille watch fashionable i’m, not sure i mean it’s, not awful, but like it’s, not something that i would really like love to wear all the time um. So just you know some people may not care anything about that. I care somewhat about that because you know i’m, a 28 year old woman and i like to look cute so yeah, okay, so now let’s talk about the functions of the watch so gosh. This is such an awkward angle to try and show the watch. I don’t know what’s best to do this. Just do it this way. I guess so. If you hit the select button, your braille cells pop up and it comes up with the time.
So it has four cells. It has zero two three two. So it is two. Thirty two: that is the time um. So then you turn. If you turn the crown up um it has your battery percentage, so it has the number symbol and then um two cells for numbers. It has a three three, oh so thirty percent also will mention this battery lasts for a very long time. I was surprised i have been using this for over a week, maybe even two weeks, and it still has 30 battery, so that’s pretty cool. And then, if you turn the crown up, one more time um, it says connected or disconnected and that’s, because it can pair with your phone there’s like an app and it pairs through bluetooth. So i will talk about that. A little more um in in a minute. So if i press the home button, the cells go down, and so the watch face is just flat, so that’s kind of like resting mode and then, if i click the select button, it comes back up with the time that it always pops up with the time. So then, if i scroll the crown down um, it has notifications and so that’s, where it pairs with your smartphone, and you can get notifications on the watch i’m going to circle. Back to that, we can talk about notifications in a minute um. I just want to get through the functions on the watch first.
So if you turn it again, you have stop watch and then, if you turn it again, you have timer so i’m gon na lump these two together, because they’re kind of similar stopwatch counts up. Timers countdown, you guys know what those are um so yeah it does that. What is what i like about this? So if i do stopwatch and i select and then i’ll select again it’s zero, zero, zero, zero i’ll start, it starts counting. I don’t know if you can hear like the braille cells like clicking as they’re refreshing um, so it’s counting. But if i click the home button um, you know the the cells go down, but the stopwatch continues to count, and so i think that was really well designed because you may not want it just sitting there ticking and refreshing every second, so um. I think that it’s it’s good, that it it kind of goes down. So if you hit select and you go to your stop watch and you bring it up like there, it is still counting so um that’s, pretty cool um and then so. We’Ve got notification stopwatch timer. The last um option here on the little menu says memo so on the app on the phone. You can type a memo and it will be here. I think you can do up to ten. So if i hit select on memo, you can go through the numbers, so there’s, one two um you can like scroll through and then hit select and then your memo is on there.
So if you want like a short little memo of some sort or like a phone number or something whatever on there um, you can do that so that’s pretty neat, so that is all that’s kind of like on the main braille menu that you can scroll through. Using the crown okay, so now we can talk about pairing it with the app there is a dot watch app and you can pair the watch to your phone via bluetooth and then on. The app is different settings for the watch and it also has the um kind of like instruction guide on the app so that’s cool. The watch does come with a instruction manual in braille, slash print, but as someone who is still a beginner level braille reader reading, an instruction manual in braille was very overwhelming to me so i’m glad that the instructions are in the app as well. So you can read that with your voiceover, if you would like to and then they have just general settings for your watch and that’s, where you can type your memos that go to your watch and there’s also a learn, braille function so um this you can like In the app hit a number and the number will pop up on your watch, you can also do it with the alphabet. You can either just have it put like the whole alphabet on your uh on the watch and you can scroll through it with the little touch sensors or you can type in any letter that you want and hit send and the letter pops up on your watch.
There is also a setting, i think, it’s called playground where you can type in anything and it pops up on your watch. So personally, that was my favorite part for like the learning braille, because you know i i know the numbers and the letters pretty well, but with this you can type in whatever and it comes up in contracted braille. So if you have trouble remembering all of those hundreds of contractions um, you can just type in whatever and it’ll come up in contracted braille on the watch. So i think that was really helpful and circling back to getting notifications on your watch so, like i said you can pair it with your smartphone, so you can get notifications for different apps um. You can also get notified when you get a phone call. So the watch will vibrate and it’ll come up and it’ll say call on the braille cells and, if you hit select, it will tell you who is calling you. So i think that’s really cool because sometimes like. If you’re, you know in a meeting or something and your phone is ringing – and you want to know like, is this important or is this a robot calling to tell me about my car’s extended warranty um, you can check you know quietly and discreetly, who is calling You to know like, if you need to take that call and then once you see who it is, if you hit select again, it will answer the call um.
It does not answer it on this watch. This watch has no audio. There is no speaker, no sound, but it answers it on your phone, so i guess you, you know you want to make sure your phone is nearby if you answer it on your watch, because you can’t can’t, talk on this and then for the smartphone notifications. So if you go to notifications, um it it has them numbered. So like the first thing that pops up is just the number symbol and then a one. If i scroll down it’ll, tell me how many i have so i have 16 notifications and then you will click on it and it’ll. Tell you what app it’s from and then read the notification. So um, mainly mine, are all youtube comments, because i have most of my notifications from other apps on my phone turned off, because i just don’t like to get a lot of notifications. One of my biggest complaints about the notifications and it’s kind of a significant one is that i don’t get text messages on the watch um. I think that you’re supposed to – and i don’t know if it’s, because i have an iphone, so they are imessages and not text messages. I don’t know if that’s the difference, but i don’t get any of them on the watch and i feel like that’s a really big bummer, because i think that would really add to the watch to be able to check your text like you know again, if you’re In a meeting or something and someone texts, you and you want to know who it’s from or, if it’s anything important to be able to quietly read that on your wrist, i think, would be a lot more beneficial than like.
Reading your youtube comments on my watch. Like i don’t feel like, i really necessarily like need to do that, but i would really like to be able to get my imessages on the watch. Another thing about the notifications is that um, you know there are four cells at a time, so that’s like four letters at a time and then you scroll there is an option um it can auto scroll. So um you can set the rate for auto scroll within the app of how fast or slow you want it to refresh. So once you read those four cells, it will automatically refresh to the next four um. I turned mine off and was just using the touch. Sensors um just to go to next, because i’m i’m i’m really slow like i’m i’m, still learning quite a bit. So i just like, i said, turned my auto scroll all the way down to use the touch sensors but um. You know again to like read four cells and then hit next and four cells and then hit next is not ideal. Like i said, i think it would be a lot better if you’re just trying to like read a text real quick, then you know someone would really want to like read all of their youtube comments on their braille watch, and i will say you know i’m, not Complaining about the watch only having four cells like that’s, how you have to do it if there were any more cells or if this was any bigger like it wouldn’t be a watch anymore.
So, like i don’t know how you could do that differently. Four cells is about all you can get on a wrist watch so i’m. Not complaining about that. Just just like my opinion on the whole notifications thing something else i noticed which was like kind of buggy is that when i would be reading a notification or like a memo or something it would like, it almost seemed like it thinks i was like just pressing Down on the touch sensor, because it would just continuously vibrate and the cells would just like be rapidly changing, and so that was kind of frustrating because i’d be trying to read and it’s like freaking out, and i would be like ah what what’s happening. Please. Please stop so um that is kind of one little bug that i noticed it’s not a huge deal but um it did get kind of frustrating when that would happen. So my overall thoughts about this, i think this is a really cool device. I think i liked it quite a bit more than i thought i would i really like being able to check the time quietly. I just like press my button and read my braille and then press the other button, and it goes back down. That’S really nice, especially at work. If i’m, you know in a meeting and want to check the time that i can do that quietly um. That is really nice. I think it’s also really cool that it has um.
You know not only the time but the stopwatch and the timer so for people who um do like presentations or give speeches or anything like that, it’s, a really great way to be able to quietly and discreetly keep track of your time, which is um. I feel like an issue that blind people have been trying to solve for uh a long time now. Also, like i said, it’s really helped me with my braille literacy and being to practice braille because, like i said i’m, not great about practicing braille but it’s a lot easier when it’s like right here on my wrist or right in front of me, um it’s also Really helped me to practice my numbers. I have been really bad with numbers. I would be one of those people that would be like okay, that’s, an f and then have to count on my fingers. A b c d e, f it’s, a six um. So it’s really helped me to know the numbers, so that has been really good. Oh also, i forgot to mention that there is also a tactile mode that you can do instead of the braille mode for people who don’t know braille um, where like, for example, the time instead of being in braille numbers, would um just be like they have this System where it’s, like you, essentially count the dots i i don’t know if the tactile uh format was kind of confusing to me, probably because i do know braille.
So that was just like a lot easier and i didn’t really pay a whole lot of attention to that. But there is that option. If you are wanting a way to tactilely tactilely tell time um and you don’t know braille, it does have that option as well. Tactily is that right, tactily, tactilely, okay, i don’t know words um anyways, so that pretty much sums up the watch and my thoughts on it um this watch, i believe, retails for 300. I will have a link to it in the description below in case. You want to check it out, um again a huge thank you to dot incorporated for sending me a dot, watch um and you guys can leave any questions that you have in the comments below.2GtMSa-4bt0
