Having made note of the TI Chronos when it was released, I was very pleased to be selected to roadtest one. I've been very happy with TI products in the past, and I'm pleased to say I am most impressed with this device from a technical standpoint. Overall, it's amazing how much they managed to package into one watch that's only slightly larger than a normal-size man's watch.
Physically, the watch measures about 3cm wide by 4cm "long" at the face. If you have the standard "nerd wrists," this watch will be a little large, but not as bad as those old calculator watches. The band is much nicer than I expected, and is a soft plastic. Although the watch doesn't claim to be waterproof, I accidentally wore it in the shower, and it survived (though it did have a small trace of condensed water on the inside of the screen until I cleaned it out.) Display contrast is good and it's easier to read than most watches, thanks to the negative contrast (white letters on black background). Backlight is similar to most other LCD watches. Takes a 3V Lithium coin cell (included).
It comes loaded from the box with the firmware necessary to act like a watch, and to talk to the included TI Control Center software. Within a few minutes of unboxing, I was using the control center software on the PC with the included USB RF Access Point stick (thumbdrive size) to display 3 axes of acceleration data, control powerpoint (very cool!), and set the watch time from the PC.
Reprogramming is easy through the wireless update feature, assuming your firmware will include the capability to run the wireless update. If not, you're stuck taking apart the watch to plug it into the included USB programmer/debugger. Taking apart the watch is easy, thanks to the included screwdriver, but it's not something you will want to do repeatedly, especially since you have to remove the battery to attach to the USB programmer board.
The downloadable software (CCS or IAR) operates like a typical microcontroller development environment, although it's code size limited to a size less than the full factory firmware compiles to, so you're stuck with a reduced function set if you want to tweak the factory firmware.
Two features I found to be useless were the altimeter (varies with changing barometric pressure by hundreds of meters), and the temperature sensor (was reading about 7C when it was closer to 20C). I haven't looked into the temperature inaccuracy, but it may be due to a calibration issue.
I'm not really sure who the intended market is for this device (it comes marketed as a sports watch, but it's clearly packaged and set-up with the nerdy in mind), but it's definitely a fun device to play with and learn on if you're new to microcontrollers. It's a good tool also for those looking into working with small RF transceivers links.
Overall, I highly recommend this device.