No need to charge? Must be a wind-up

Matrix Powerwatch £200

I COULD probably create a decent-sized museum of historic charger cables, just using the terrifying nest of wires lurking in a drawer in my office.

Naturally, when I actually want one, it’s so hard to tell them apart that I end up giving up in despair and buying a new one on eBay.

But could we get rid of charger cables altogether one day?

I did a double-take when I took the Matrix PowerWatch out of its box. Unlike almost every smartwatch that has launched so far, there is no power cable, and no wall plug.

It’s powered by a thermoelectric gizmo on the inside of the wrist, which harvests heat from the human body. This has been done before, but only on concept devices that made the wearer look like a cyborg.

The PowerWatch is somewhat on the beefy side, but it’s not the cuff-shredding monster you might expect.

It’s a cool idea, and it works, but there’s no escaping the fact that the PowerWatch is still fairly rough round the edges.

The screen is dim, it doesn’t ‘do’ notifications (like WhatsApp or email, the main selling point of any smartwatch) and so all you get is step count and sleep data, delivered to a basic app via Bluetooth.

More functions are coming, but at the moment, it’s a glorified, bloated Fitbit. This is an exciting technology, but it’s probably worth waiting a while.