Watches often have special value to people, for sentimental reasons or practical interests. With a watch like the Samsung Galaxy Gear -- somewhat utilitarian and probably only perceived as fashionable at a tech convention -- I found it was hard to get attached to it.

I've been testing the Gear, a new 'smart' watch that connects via Bluetooth to a Samsung mobile device and shows you notifications. It showed me calendar reminders and text messages, and told me when I had new email. And since the Gear has a microphone and speaker, you can even make phone calls through the watch (technically, the call is happening through your smartphone). It's certainly an improvement over the Sony SmartWatch I reviewed a year and a half ago.

But it has some serious drawbacks. For one, it costs $300, and that doesn't include the pricey smartphone you'll need to tote along with it. Also, it only works with Samsung smartphones, like the Note 3, which I tested it with.

Having to charge a wristwatch once a day or every other day might not thrill some people. Lastly, there are some limitations to what this watch will actually show on its display.

I'll be superficial and talk appearances first. There's no way around it: The Galaxy Gear looks like a geek watch. It has a textured rubber band, a thick, adjustable metal clasp and visible screws around the face of the watch. The 1.6-inch touch screen is pretty sleek-looking. There is a lone button on the right-hand side of the watch that takes you back to the home screen, which displays the time and date.

Possibly the geekiest part is the round eye of a camera on the band. This is, presumably, so you can talk to fellow spies through the watch and then stealthily take photos of an unsuspecting subject.

How the Gear fits will depend on the size of your wrist. I was a 'tweener' -- one setting was too tight and the next was a little bit loose. It weighs 2.6 ounces and comes with four gigabytes of internal storage.

The Gear watch comes with a charging cradle, a small, square-shaped plastic nest. But this charging cradle serves another purpose: It's part of the Gear setup. I had to tap the Note 3 against the back of the cradle to install the Galaxy Gear manager app on the smartphone. This app is where I would manage all of the Gear settings and apps.

The next step of the setup involved wirelessly connecting the watch, via Bluetooth, to the smartphone. This was pretty straightforward.

However, whenever I wandered more than 30 feet or so away from the Note 3, the Gear watch on my wrist would disconnect from the smartphone. I could still see the time on the watch, but some apps wouldn't work without a connection to the smartphone.

Setting up those apps can be confusing. The watch comes with a few preinstalled, like the pedometer and a weather app. And there are Android-based apps on the smartphone, like Gmail, that you can opt in for notifications on the watch.

Then there are other Samsung-branded apps -- like S Health, Samsung's proprietary fitness-tracking app, which I used with the watch's pedometer -- that require a Samsung login and password.

Finally, there are Gear-specific apps, such as FB Quickview and Tweet Quickview, that aren't the 'real' Facebook and Twitter apps, but allow you to get social-network notifications on the watch.

Swiping through the watch felt somewhat intuitive. From the home screen, swiping from side to side will take you through the key apps of the watch. Once you're in an app, swiping down will bring you back to the previous screen.

On some occasions, I found the Gear watch useful. I was out bike riding when a Google Calendar appointment popped up on the screen, reminding me I needed to be home in 10 minutes to accept a scheduled package delivery. If the watch buzzed or beeped while I was driving, I could look down and see I had new messages. I couldn't read Gmail content on the watch; the watch told me to read it on my mobile device.

I also couldn't see pictures friends sent me via text message. And when I tried responding using S Voice, Samsung's voice-recognition app, it was super-slow to recognize my commands.

Taking photos with the watch was admittedly fun. You access the camera by swiping down from the home screen and snap a photo with a quick tap on the screen. But you can't share these from the watch. You have to send them to the smartphone first.

It's almost impossible to talk about a smartwatch as a two-way communicator without mentioning Dick Tracy, but the Gear is just that. I called my boss and he said the call quality was good on his end, too. I called my mom and told her I was calling her from a watch and she laughed.

The call quality was good because you're basically using the watch as a Bluetooth speaker. You can dial a number or call up a contact from the watch as long as the smartphone is nearby.

Samsung says the battery life of the Gear watch should be about the same as your average smartphone. In my experience, it lasted close to two days.

And when I put it in its cradle to rest and recharge, I didn't exactly miss it.