There are so many things wrong with Will.i.am's Puls smartwatch, er ... smart bangle wearable that I don't even know where to begin.

I tried to go into this review with an extremely open mind since there was a ton of scathing coverage when Will.i.am first let a select few check out the Puls late last year. We got to play with a prototype model, and our early impression was that it was a "cool curiosity" but not an Apple Watch or Moto 360 competitor. Maybe things got better in the last couple of months....

Nope.

The Puls, a $399.99 wearable designed to replace your smartphone (because it is a phone), is the most uncomfortable and most frustrating wearable I have ever used. Allow me to tell you why.

Beyond uncomfortable

The Puls is clunky at first sight and makes an awful first impression. It's a big, ugly plastic bracelet with a screen and processor crammed inside.

Moreover, almost everybody whom I showed the Puls to — and everybody seemed curious about it — couldn't figure out how to put it on. FYI: It uses a weak magnetic clasp that often opens when you don't want it to and usually clips onto your skin right after.

Smartphones can get away with bigger screens because our pockets are big and we have jackets and bags and purses to carry them. Wearables, especially ones worn on a wrist, follow a different rule of design: They have to fit well and look good.

An ugly smartphone can be hidden away in a pocket, but a big chunky wrist-shackle can't. Like watches, wrist-worn wearables are personal fashion statements; they're reflections of who we are.

Will.i.am Puls review

The Puls is one-size-only, and even on my skinny wrist it hurt wearing it. I'm not exaggerating when I say it feels like a handcuff. But even handcuffs aren't so thick and wide.

There's a magnetic extender piece to accommodate thicker wrists, but anecdotal tests on a bunch of bigger-boned subjects suggests it's still not wide enough.

User interface nightmare

Designing a user interface and controls for a tiny screen is challenging. With so little surface area, it's hard to have a lot of nuanced control.

You navigate the Puls through swipes on the 1.7-inch touchscreen, which, by the way, is not the brightest even on the highest brightness level. It's also prone to nasty reflections on its curved surface. I could barely see the screen properly while indoors, and it's near impossible to see under the sun.

A swipe in from the right brings up three icons: apps, notifications and AneedA, the voice-controlled personal assistant. (AneedA's like Siri, minus the personality.)

You've got your basic phone features like a phone dialer, contacts, messaging, email, calendar, music player, clock and maps. And then there's Whooter (a Twitter app), Facebook, and Instagram. These are arranged vertically and you can scroll through them. I found myself always opening the wrong app by accident and it wasn't until the hundredth time or so that I figured out you need to swipe down and up from the bezel as opposed to simply on the screen, in order not to accidentally open an app.

There's no real way to go back to a previous screen like you can on Android so you always end up swiping in from the right, which as I said brings up the three apps overlay — every single time.

Totally looks nothing like a house arrest anklet. Nope! Image: Christina Ascani

Within apps, you can also swipe in from the left bezel to bring up a menu. It can get convoluted to the point where you're not sure how deep into the menu you are. I wanted to give up and fling the Puls against the wall a couple of times. (The sad thing: It'd probably survive.)

If you do a long-press from the top bezel and then swipe down, a quick-settings pane comes down with info on signal strength, battery life and toggles for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, volume and GPS. The problem is sometimes apps, like Facebook, have their own pull-down panes that slide from the top of the screen, too.

But the worst part about the Puls's software isits awful typing experience — it's a real nightmare.

Puls uses a version of the Minuum keyboard. When you need to enter text, a tiny QWERTY keyboard appears on the already tiny screen. Nobody expects you to be able to actually peck at the tiny letters; you simply tap close enough and pray the letter you intended to press gets enlarged so you can select it. Just take a look at the Vine below; it's worth a thousand words.

I still struggle to type quickly after a week of wearing the Puls every day. There's a silver lining: The dictation is pretty good. Dictate your texts, emails and status updates and you'll have a higher chance of not wasting 10-15 minutes pecking around at the tiny keys.

What is good

While it's easy to quickly declare the Puls a turd and move on with my life, my job as a reviewer is to be fair.

There are some good things about Will.i.am's shackle, like how accurate (but not always quick) AneedA is when you ask her a question. AneedA is powered by Nuance and taps into Wolfram Alpha so it knows a bunch of factoids. The dictation, as I mentioned, is also usually spot-on.

The Puls has its own voice-assistant called AneedA. It's not as quick as Siri, Google Now or Cortana, but she works pretty well if you're only asking her questions.

As a phone, the Puls isn't total crap. Call quality is clear — not crystal clear — but not as tinny as I expected from its single speaker. The Puls even picks up whispers as long as it's within about 12 inches of your mouth. For private calls, you can pair a Bluetooth headset or headphones to the Puls. (You also listen to music the same way, unless you actually like blasting your tunes outta your wrist like a hooligan.)

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Oh, and there are 94 ringtones to pick from, just in case you're the type of person who worries about not having enough ringtones.

Having Instagram on your wrist is also cool. Instagram's my favorite social network, so it was great to be able to browse and like 'grams on the fly. The downside is you can't post pics to Instagram since there's no camera on the Puls.

A beta product

Unlike Android Wear and the upcoming Apple Watch, the Puls is not a companion device to your smartphone. It's designed to replace your smartphone, much like the Samsung Gear S.

The Puls is an ambitious device. Cramming in a phone, a music player, Instagram and more into a standalone wrist-worn wearable is a difficult challenge for any company. In order to replace your smartphone, its tradeoffs — like the smaller screen and UI — need to be worth it. In its current form, they're not. The Puls is a completely unintuitive wearable that is literally painful to wear and operate. Its battery life also sucks. On several days, I took the Puls off the charger at 8 a.m. and left it on my wrist idling and it lost almost 20 percent in three hours.

The Puls' awfulness is further worsened by the fact some core apps weren't even ready at launch. Using my.puls.com to sync emails and social media accounts (so you don't need to spend all day typing them in) didn't work and the unique "Vibe emotion detector app" and fitness tracking functions weren't available to check out.

The gadget wins a consolation prize, though: The tube-shaped packaging the Puls comes in is awesome (see below), despite the instruction booklet and cardboard packaging smelling like rotten fish.

The Puls is a lesson in how not to design a wearable. In no way is it worth $400. (Note: The Puls isn't available at retail yet. Similar to Google Glass's now dead "Explorer" program, you have to be invited to join the "Make It Great" program from Puls' website. If you're selected, then you can throw your $400 at Will.i.am's company and pay for service on AT&T.)

If Will.i.am's intent was to make a house arrest anklet for your wrist, then congrats because the Puls looks and feels like one.