Unnecessary overloading of features results in lower user satisfaction – Noise ColorFit Pro 4 GPS Smartwatch Reviews Analysis

Indian brand Noise has seen unprecedented growth in recent years within the wearables category, especially smartwatches. We analysed customer reviews of one of its popular watches Noise ColorFit Pro 4 GPS to gauge the user satisfaction.

The good part for the brand is that there were 71% positive reviews for this smartwatch among 1413 verified customers who were randomly selected from Amazon reviews.  These users had mainly rated 3,4 and 5 for the product basis their experience with the smartwatch ranging anywhere between few days to a couple of months.  86% of the positive reviewers did not attribute their sentiment to any feature, function or element of the watch. Rather they felt good about the watch at an overall level.  Very few reviewers did attribute their satisfaction with regards to design, touch quality, specific features and functions.  The next highest reason for positive sentiment was pricing with 11% of the reviewers finding purchasing the smartwatch as a value for money.

In absolute number terms, 71% positive sentiment looks wow.  But, when it comes to measuring customer satisfaction, this means, almost 3 out of 10 customers aren’t happy.  As a brand, the endeavour should be to make every customer happy.  This can only happen if the product is optimally designed for the target group.  Unfortunately, in consumer technology, especially smart gadgets, the OEMs are in a kind of ‘rat-race’ to overload the products so that either they are seen offering maximum features or their products are not seen missing out the specifications that the competition might be offering.  That should not be the approach of a long-term player like Noise which has also been now enjoying the market leader’s position for the product.

On a granular breakdown analysis of the negative sentiments to find out the triggers, one can easily find that the distribution is skewed because of two functions or function sets that Noise ColorFit Pro 4 GPS is capable of.  The first one is the health and fitness features like measuring of SpO2, Heart rate, Sleep monitoring, etc.  Among the customers having developed a negative sentiment about the product, 17% find the measurements inaccurate.  This may not be the isolated case for this specific smartwatch as the other watches from the competition could also be showing similar issues and at a higher rate.  The reason for this inaccuracy is that the sensors used in such watches are not reliable as the suppliers of such sensors are not quality conscious.  Rather they produce volumes to cater to a very price sensitive segment.  Similarly, 12% of the customers faced pairing issues.  They did not find it easy to connect their watch with their smartphone. Some of them also did not find the connection reliable as it would disconnect in between.  Again, the components used for this feature at this price point cannot offer a reliable and dependable experience.

This poor functioning of health and fitness features as well as pairing with the smartphone has affected other features of the smartwatch as well.  For instance, 14% of the customers see the battery draining faster than the promised duration of 7 days backup.

Overall, the entire customer experience goes for a toss.  Even the features and functions where the smartwatch would have performed and delivered as promised got affected.  Battery life is one such example.  These top 3 distinct reasons of negative sentiments could have been easily avoided by Noise, if they would not have overloaded ColorFit Pro 4 GPS model with features and functions that the smartwatch isn’t capable of handling efficiently due to hardware and software constraints.  That would have meant 53% less negative sentiments taking the overall satisfaction above 80%. 

The issue with the entire smart devices’ ecosystem, especially the OEMs is that they attempt to bring features and functions across each price or user segment without gauging the impact on the user experience and satisfaction of the primary features and functions that are more critical to the segment users.  In this case, Noise could have taken a stand different than the industry that they will only include the features and functions that are relevant to the segment offering reliable and dependable experience.  That is what would make them a market leader and not the shipment or sales ranking which isn’t longstanding.

The analysis of reviews of verified customers who bought this smartwatch from Amazon, clearly shows that adding features and functions that cannot ensure reliable and dependable experience at that price point is counterproductive.  Not only do the customers get frustrated when these so called ‘wow’ factors don’t work accurately, it also impacts the other functions and promises that the device is supposed to deliver.

Using this as a reference analysis, the smart devices ecosystem in general and the wearables brands in particular need to revisit their product planning and focus on the experience and promise they can deliver within a price range to define the features and functions specific models should carry rather than trying to bring in all the features and functions across different price points.  Agreed customers are demanding, but they are also rational.  Even while analysing the comments, customers were conscious of the fact that they cannot expect everything under the sun for the price they were paying for Noise ColorFit 4 Pro GPS.  It’s time to change the rules of the game!