Any experience with WeWALK?

Greetings. I tested the WeWalk smart cane 2 and for me, it was a waste of time. Tried it on different routes but for me personally, it does nothing more than the classic cane. It is true that if you check the product, you will see obstacle detection sensor, navigation turn by turn and Chat GPT support, but here is the thing. First, the obstacle detection sensor does not work properly. It beeps even if there are no obstacles around you or sometimes it does nothing so you will smash the obstacle while walking. Second, turn by turn navigation. I didn't find it relyable so if you don't know already the route where are you walking, it will cause more stress than helping you. It is not precise. Third, CHAT GPT support. I can agree that this is not a bad idea but if you buy an 800 dollars cane only for this thing, you must be insane. The good thing about this cane in comparison with the first gen, is the ergonomic handle, better water proof and replacing the handle touch screen with distinguishable buttons.

I got this as a Christmas present after it had a Black Friday discount. My main use case was using it whilst walking my dog so it would alert me of brambles and branches that would otherwise go in my face.

This year the weather has been absolutely terrible in the UK. The walks I mostly go on at the moment aren't that overgrown so I've not been out many times with the WeWalk.

So bear in mind that I've not really spent enough time trying to master this - think of it more like first impressions.

The obstacle detection seems pretty useless as has been said before. I used this a few times on a walk that always has brambles and branches at head head and I was just walking down this path and it kept beeping away at me seemingly for no reason as there didn't seem to be anything overhead at at that point. After a while you just ignore it because it doesn't seem to be saying anything useful. Then out of the blue a bramble goes in my face and I wonder why I am bothering.

The other issue I've had is that when walking my dog she tends to zigzag in front of me a bit and this also sets the sensor off. While trying to master the cane I've ended up giving the dog to mrs grieves to lead so I don't have this problem but it still gives false alarms all the time.

I'd like to think that with a bit of effort and training it might be possible to make sense of the beeps and get some use of it. However, I am concerned that how well it works will depend entirely on where you are going and that it is maybe not going to work for me in the environments I was intending to use it in. When the weather improves we will be a bit more adventurous with our walking so maybe I will find a niche for it, but so far I am really regretting the purchase.

Regarding the other features. I've got to say I don't really see them as a selling point of the cane. If you have a phone and a pair of bluetooth headphones you can wear outside, then you already have the navigation tools you need. The advantage of the ones in the cane are that you can control it through the cane. It is pretty handy, and the sound still will play through your headphones if you are wearing some. I've only tried this in one place, which was in a shopping mall, and it only found a small number of shops there, so I'm not convinced it has the best mapping data around. I've not tried turn by turn because it didn't find any of the places I wanted to go to.

You can also hold down a button and talk to it. This is probably good if you can use it with the directions but not sure I need a voice assistant here otherwise given I'm already wearing my Meta Ray-bans.

Also if there is a problem with the app - maybe it gives an error message - then the cane buttons become unusable and you will need to fish the app out to fix it. This is hopefully something they will fix but it just means the cane suddenly goes quiet and doesn't work until you figure out what to do.

There are a couple of training videos. They didn't really explain how best to use the obstacle detection at all. But they did give a demo of someone asking their cane how to bake cookies. I can't imagine any of us have ever thought of this as a use case for a cane. But the fact they took time to demo it compared to showing the obstacle detection doesn't fill you with a lot of confidence. Again it's just a case of shoving AI in everywhere.

I'm also not impressed with the battery. Again remember I'm not using this cane that often yet. But I will charge it up in the weekend, then put it in the car. A few days later I might try it and the battery has run out even though it's been off the whole time. They basically say that they expect you to charge it up every day even if you aren't using it. This is probably fine if you really are using it every day but not good for me. I've not really been able to test it but my guess if you might get about 4 hours on the battery but please don't take my word for that as I've not really put it to the test.

The app is also fairly poor. It has a habit of starting up without the resource labels in so you just get placeholder text where the labels should be. Also if you don't use it for a few days you need to sign in again. This is painful because you need to enter your email address in and there's no autocomplete. Then you need to find the email, copy the code in it and go back to the app to paste it. If you are standing in a car park when you realise you need to do this, it's not ideal. They have said that this might be fixed or improved now but I've not tried since.

The other thing that was a tad disappointing - they say it comes with an AmbuTech graphite cane. but I guess it's the cheapest one. The last time I bought an AmbuTech graphite it had anti-jab and a mechanism that helped you change the tips - the hook kinda locks into place. Well the WeWalk one doesn't have this. Also I got a cheap ball cane, not the durable version. I ended up swapping it pretty much straight away.

Things I like about it? Well it's good that it is a regular cane so you don't have to use the smart things. And it's nice you can transfer the handle (apparently) if you need to. I like that you can use obstacle detection without the app. The navigation system requires the app, and it's nice that it plays well with the Meta Ray-bans. The buttons are nice and chunky and easy to use.

The handle is a lot thicker than what I am used to. It doesn't seem to add a huge amount of weight though. But I think the tip makes the biggest difference with how heavy a cane feels anyway.

Steven from Double Tap was very impressed with the WeWalk but never got round to doing the Q&A episode he promised which was a shame. I'm guessing it's possible to have a better time with it than me but so far I'm very disappointed. I'm sure your mileage might vary depending on your use cases.

But the main selling point feels extremely basic to me.