One Man's Trash Is Another Meh Treasure

When we heard somebody was sitting on a pile of these luxury Olio smartwatches, our eyes lit up. Why? Because Olio has gone out of business. Where lesser retailers might worry about the problems with selling a product from a defunct company, we saw an opportunity:We could sell a hecka nice wristwatch at a hecka low price it just might not do all the things it was originally designed to.Olio was part of the initial smartwatch explosion and positioned itself to compete as the luxury alternative to the Apple Watch. That meant it was expensive (starting at $595), featured good build quality and fashion-forward looks, and had a pompous trailer that felt like Silicon-Valley-style self-parody.Then Olio achieved that goal of all young startups and failed fast, putting their remaining inventory out to pasture. We got these for a crazy low price because nobody knew what to do with them. And, lets be real, a smartwatch that is no longer supported by the company that created them is not an easy sell.(They already dont perform some of their marketed features, like providing weather updates, but the core of the software (which well get to) still works.)But heres the crux: Even if all the smart features eventually failed, these are still good enough dumb watches in their own right to make them a good deal at this price. They have a great build quality, look better than most watches at this price, and who knows you might be able to recoup the value of the gold ones just by melting them down.Meh was born to sell crap like this because we can explain the complicated tradeoffs. Other stores would just be selling a watch that didnt do all the things it professed to.What Olio professed to do, and still does for the most part, is manage notifications. It doesnt try to act like a miniature version of your phone, it mostly organizes and prioritizes your notifications so you can stay on top of all your important business without pulling your phone out every few minutes. It connects to iPhones and Android devices via an app (and Bluetooth). The app doesnt require a central server, which means it still runs without anyone behind the wheel. And the App Store should support the app for the next two years.That said, we want to temper your expectations. Its best to think of this as simply a nice watch, and any other functions it performs are bonus. At press time most of its smart capabilities are operational, but should things go wrong theres nobody in the customer support center to support you, customer. You can consider it the Wild West of smartwatch ownership, but wed push you to think of it as the Tamed East of regular watch ownership, and you might get to watch a John Wayne movie.Hows that analogy doing? Struggling?The point is: We saw intrinsic value in these watches. Theyre really nice watches. The fact that they perform other feats that may fail in the future doesnt affect that value. Thats what intrinsic means … we think.The more important point is: If you buy these and in two years they stop giving you Slack notifications, youre not allowed to complain.