Just how smart is the Baggizmo Wiseward Smart Wallet ?
View(s):Review
Pix and text by Mahesh De Andrado
The Baggizmo Wiseward Smart Wallet is hailed as the world’s smartest and most technologically advanced bi-fold wallet. It seemed the ideal solution to keep your device safe from pickpockets, hackers, and our own forgetfulness. So we decided to put one to the test. The wallet is available through the Kickstarter or the Priduct website.
It fits everything and the kitchen sink, well almost
According to the official specifications by Baggizmo, the Wiseward can accommodate up to 15 credit cards, USD, EUR, GBP bank notes and up to 5 coins in the vertical card pocket. Depending on if you habitually carry around small change in coins, you can either use the vertical side pocket for coins or to hold more cards. Planning out the migration for the Baggizmo Wiseward found myself comfortably putting all my usual wallet contents, so far so good.
So, what’s so special about it?
Thus far, the Baggizmo Wiseward has been acting like a regular wallet. Well, a thinner wallet compared to my usual wallet. So what makes it so special?
Well for starters, there’s the technology that is imbued into the wallet itself. The Baggizmo Wiseward smart wallet packs a lot of security features into a wallet. As such it has RFID blocking, an anti-theft alarm, a UV Lamp and even a fall detection sensor.
Setting up the Wallet
To fully make use of the features of the wallet, I had to download the accompanying app from the Google Play Store or the Apple App store. Once downloaded, I began the process of setting up the Baggizmo Wiseward. The app is relatively easy to setup and requires you to create or log in to an account to manage your smart wallet. Once that is done, I was able to configure the more advanced settings of the Baggizmo Wiseward.
The main interface of the app gives you access to a number of features. These include the last seen location of the Wiseward wallet, the ability to turn on the ringer alarm, LED bulb, and the UV lamp as well. Clicking the gear icon on the top left gives you access to more advanced features such as changing your name, email address and password. You can also set a secret key for your Baggizmo Wiseward wallet. This means that if you want to set up your wallet with another device, you will need this passcode when pairing the wallet with your phone.
You can also configure your wallet by giving it a name, specify who else can connect with the wallet, enable/disable notification and configure sensors. That feature was a tad buggy because no matter what sensors you switch off; they all turn back on again. Perhaps it was a buggy app or maybe the sensors were not supposed to be switched off. This then begs the question of why include the feature in the first place.
Lastly, you can set up an NFC tag and additional Baggizmo Wiseward wallets to your account as well. You can also pair/unpair the current wallet and set it up from scratch.
An alarming situation indeed
While the alarm is supposed to ring on your phone if the wallet falls, the plot twist here was that the alarm kept ringing saying that I had dropped my wallet, when in fact it was in my pocket all along. It just kept saying that it fell because of the movement of the bus I was in. Ironically, there was also a feature in the app to disable device notifications. This means that if the wallet falls, your phone would not generate an alarm.
The sensor is either really sensitive or really stupid because it rings for the slightest bump in the road which shouldn’t really because for an alarm (literally). When all seemed quiet and no alarms were blaring, I checked the status of the wallet via the Wiseward app only to find out that the wallet had actually disconnected from the app (hence the lull in alarms).
We’re experiencing some connectivity issues
After a while, the wallet and app simply refused to communicate, causing me to uninstall and reinstall the app and to also reset the wallet itself. It seemed such a shame that a device with so much potential would succumb to issues of this nature, especially given that its supposedly the “world’s smartest and most technologically advanced bi-fold wallet”.
Would I buy it? Well if Baggizmo can work out the software and hardware better and release a more polished version, then perhaps, I will consider it. But for now, the Baggizmo Wiseward smart wallet has much to be desired.
(The author is a senior writer for ReadMe. Learn more by logging onto readme.lk)