Bulky, sluggish and unintuitive, Samsung’s Galaxy Gear hasn't exactly lived up the hype or the expectations of a ‘smartwatch’.

The Galaxy Gear wasn't Samsung’s first stab at a smartwatch. In 1999 and again in 2009, it had a go at chunky digital watches but neither took off with consumers. Samsung’s grand vision for the Galaxy Gear was "a companion device that will keep us constantly connected," as Samsung‘s executive vice-president of marketing Lee Young-hee described it.

Whether it was through bad timing - a rush to beat Apple’s much rumoured ‘iWatch’ to the market - or through the limitation of current technology, including the lack of viable curved displays and battery technology restrictions, the Galaxy Gear was released as very much a limited product, with a confused and slow interface, a lack of device support, and very little in the way of ‘killer’ functionality to justify its £299 price tag.

'Our Gear lacks something special'

Samsung has admitted that the Gear isn't up to scratch, as a Samsung official told the Korean Times, “We've acknowledged that our Gear lacks something special. With more investment for user interface and user experience, Samsung devices will be better in terms of customer satisfaction.”

This is despite Young-hee telling reporters that the Gear is "definitely receiving warm response," at a launch event for the smartwatch in southern Seoul yesterday. "The Galaxy Gear is a wow product. It's a wholly new and must-have accessory."reporters.

Not so much Dick Tracy...

The Galaxy Gear promises Dick Tracy-style phone calls and messaging from your wrist, and connects via Bluetooth only to Samsung's Galaxy Note 3 phablet, although support for others like the Galaxy S4 is being added at a later date according to Samsung.

As well as letting you make and receive calls via a microphone on its wrist strap and speakers embedded in the Gear's main body, it pulls messages, contacts and alerts from your phone, placing at-a-glance information on your wrist.

The Gear also has its own bespoke third-party apps like Evernote, Path, Pocket and RunKeeper, plus Samsung's own applications like the instant messaging service ChatON, its S Voice digital assistant, and a pedometer, which takes advantage of the built-in sensors including an accelerometer and gyroscope within the watch.

The Gear feels awfully sluggish

While promising much, on initial testing Samsung's Galaxy Gear hasn't lived up to the hype.

In my own hands-on experience at the launch event in Berlin on 4 September I found it to be sluggish during navigation, with an awkward swipe-based interface that, although simple compared to Samsung's Galaxy Android smartphones, was unintuitive and confusing at times.

The smartwatch was also bulky on the wrist and difficult to use as an actual timepiece, with the time display only visible when you shook your wrist, not at a glance when you are likely to want to see the time.

Other initial hands-on testers had similar experiences.

"The Gear feels awfully sluggish, whether you're launching an app such as Evernote or Path, or swiping down from the home screen to activate the camera. The interface also feels a bit clunky and unpolished at times," wrote Zach Honig for gadget site Engadget.

Likewise Vlad Savov writing for the Verge found there to be "a tangible lag to anything you do with the Gear, while the swipe gestures are hard to figure out and do different things depending on where you are in the menus".

Ian Fogg, director for mobile and telecoms at research company IHS, described the Gear as "a prototype masquerading as a commercial product - and because of that, it is unlikely to be successful in the market".

Fogg explained that "the device exhibits multiple shortcomings, including a high price tag, a short battery life, its status as a companion device and its limited compatibility. The bottom line is the Galaxy Gear smartwatch probably will not succeed in the market and Samsung will need to try again with a more refined product."

'A prototype to determine market reaction'

A report in Daum, which is based in Samsung's homeland of South Korea, suggests that the Galaxy Gear was indeed "just the first… to determine the market reaction", and that an upgraded version could be announced as soon as January at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas or Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona in March, complete with GPS and location-based services.

Despite a its high price tag of £299, Ben Wood, chief of research at CCS Insight, reckons that Samsung will sell one million units, "although compared to the expectation of 1bn in overall smartphone sales it's a drop in the ocean".

"Given the 125 million install base of Samsung's Galaxy S3, S4 and Note series, plus the fact that Samsung's likely to bundle them with the purchase of new phones as it has done with tablets in the past, I can see them selling at least one million units," Wood told the Guardian.

"It is very much a 'version 0.1' product, however, but Samsung has a history of rapid evolution of products - I suspect the Galaxy Gear 2 is very close behind."

Samsung's Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Gear went on sale on 25 September priced at around £599 for the phablet and £299 for the smartwatch.

• Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder, wants more than just a smartwatch - he wants the entire internet on his wrist.