In July 2017, we wrote about an interesting take on a wallet. This was the Baggizmo Wiseward Smart Wallet. It was hailed as the world’s smartest and most technologically advanced bi-fold wallet. The Baggizmo Wiseward seemed the ideal solution to keep your device safe from pickpockets, hackers, and our own forgetfulness.
How reliable is the Baggizmo Wiseward Smart Wallet?
Well, thanks to my friend Isuru Abeywickrama, I was able to get one try it out for a few days. Kicking things off, the Baggizmo Wiseward Smart Wallet focuses a lot on delivering a high-quality product at an affordable price. As such, the packaging is not exactly high end, but more budget oriented. It comes with a black folded carton that has instructions when unfolded. If you are looking for better packaging, there were Kickstarter packages for that as well. These in turn, would cost more.
The Baggizmo Wiseward Smart Wallet
The wallet itself looks and feels like a regular wallet. Measuring 3.7 Inches by 7.8 Inches when fully open, the Baggizmo Wiseward sits at a comfortable 10mm thickness which is actually less thick than my actual wallet. That being said though, it doesn’t compromise on storage compartments. Rather, it fits everything that I use on a regular basis and still manages to retain its slim form factor..
The Baggizmo Wiseward Smart Wallet vs my regular wallet (Black)
The wallet is crafted from FSC certified eco-friendly materials. The materials make the Baggizmo Wiseward water repellant and also give it a diamond-shaped pattern on the outside and matte material on the inside.
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.
4 Cards, cash, coins, my NIC and a few other items? Check 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.
Setting up the Baggizmo Wiseward Smart Wallet
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.
My life with the Baggizmo Wiseward
In the 4 days that I’ve used the Baggizmo Wiseward smart wallet, I haven’t had any problem with the wallet as a wallet. It works quite well. I’ve even tested it out with my colleague Mazin’s keycard that he uses to unlock the gate to his apartment. The fact that we didn’t have to keep pulling out the correct card and simply swiped the wallet was helpful indeed.
Having a light in the wallet is indeed a welcome addition, especially if you’re in a hurry to go somewhere and you need quick access to a light. But it also seems a bit stupid that we would have to rely on the app alone to toggle the light. It would have been more suited if there was a hardware switch on the wallet itself to toggle the lights as well.
The inbuilt LED Bulb certainly helps shine a light on things
What I did have problems with was everything else about it. For starters, the Wiseward app itself is buggy. The app seems to forget that it’s connected to the wallet, generating a notification that keeps looping till I relaunch the app and let it discover the wallet again.
In addition, the PCB that houses all the electronics and sensors is located at the back of the wallet. This makes it a tad difficult to keep in your back pocket because you might accidentally sit on it. While it does allow a certain amount of flex, if you sit down really hard or are cramped up in a vehicle, chances are quite high that you can damage the circuit.
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.
It’s either a false alarm or the wallet just disconnects from the app, Quite annoying indeed.
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.
If you are interested in the Baggizmo Wiseward smart wallet and want to give it a go, you can get yourself one by clicking here.
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