Photo gallery: Sony Ericsson MBW-200 Bluetooth watchDesign
Deciding on whether or not a particular watch looks any good is always going to be a matter of personal taste. Sony Ericsson's breathless marketing hype for the MBW-200 describes it as "An alluring, everyday time-piece for the elegant woman." The MBW-200 comes in three styles, dubbed "Contemporary Elegance", "Sparkling Allure" and "Evening Classic". Our review sample was the white-leather strapped "Sparkling Allure" model.
There's no doubting that the MBW-200 is designed as a ladies' watch, and the technical reviewer for this watch wasn't, in any appreciable sense of the word, a lady. No, not even in the Little Britain sense.
With that in mind, we tested the "Sparkling Allure" MBW-200's visual appeal with a representative sample of the target market instead of just using our own assessment. The MBW-200 elicited a range of responses as to the style of the unit, ranging all the way from "classy" to "it looks like something that Liberace might have worn on a bad day". You can judge for yourself from the pictures above.
One thing the MBW-200 isn't, for a ladies watch, is small. Like the MBW-150 and MBW-100, this is a chunky timepiece that splits between a regular analogue face, and a smaller OLED display nestled at the base. If you particularly care, the presence of the OLED means there's no space for the "6" at the base of the watch face. There's a standard winder (for setting time) along with two buttons on the right-hand side, and three dedicated music playback buttons on the left-hand side.
Like the previously reviewed MBW-100, recharging the MBW-200 is an interesting proposition that involves a charger that clips over the face of the watch and then into an AC socket.
Features
Do we really need to tell you that the MBW-200 will tell you the time — and be right at least twice a day even if you don't set it? No, we didn't think so.
Then again, that's not the supposed point of the MBW-200, which trades on its Bluetooth connectivity to Sony Ericsson mobile phones. A limited range of compatible handsets is listed on Sony Ericsson's site, and that matches up with the moderately limited feature set of the watch itself. All of the watch's Bluetooth functions relate to the small OLED screen, and it's capable of listing the number of an incoming call — with the option to take or reject a call — as well as alert you to incoming SMS messages and control your phone's music playback choices at a basic level.
Performance
Pairing up the MBW-200 to a compatible phone is pretty easy. You just throw it into pairing mode — where it'll remain for a number of minutes — and initiate pairing at the phone side, with a default "0000" password the only obstacle.
We successfully paired the MBW-200 with a Sony Ericsson W705 mobile for our testing. We did experiment with phones from other vendors, and while many of them could see and pair with the MBW-200, that pairing didn't extend beyond simply draining our batteries. In other words, unless you're a big fan of Sony Ericsson handsets, there's no real point in buying the MBW-200.
The phone's music playback controls work moderately well — you can really only adjust volume and track skip, but that's arguably enough for most users. Phone call rejection also works swiftly, although naturally enough if you want to take a call you'll have to dig the handset out of your pocket to talk to anybody. Well, or shout really loudly at your pants pocket, but the last time we did that the police got involved. We don't recommend it.
The one area where the MBW-200 really disappointed us was in regard to SMS messages. When you get an incoming text, the watch vibrates gently and pops a little envelope icon up on the OLED — and that's all you get. Given the OLED can happily display both phone numbers and music track names, quite why it can't display at least the first section of an SMS befuddles us. It'd be an absolute killer feature to have if you're a heavy text junkie, but all you get is the infuriating envelope icon instead.
The MBW-200 is the very definition of a niche product. First of all, it's marketed to 51 per cent of the population. Then to those who like large watches. Then to those who like the particular style. Then to those who have Sony Ericsson handsets. Then to those who have compatible Sony Ericsson handsets. And finally, to those who can put up with the MBW-200's rather odd set of limitations. If that's not a niche, then we don't know what is.
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