BitcoinInformation's review of the HW.1
PackagingThe cards arrived in a plain letter, which I like and dislike at the same moment. I love simplicity, but on the other hand, having some kind of casing or box would have been awesome as well. This might be safer, since mail isn't handled that carefully (nor carefull at all at some points).
The cards themselfThe cards look amazing if you ask me. It feels like someone spend a lot of time designing them and it paid off in my opinion. These look like something you could buy in a store, bring home and get started with (and I would love to see something like this).
I snapped one of the cards out of its "casing" and it felt nice and sturdy, even though it's tiny. After that I broke off the clip part and put the HW.1 inside my USB port. It wasn't recognized by Windows and it kept falling out. I
asked btchip about this and he told me that the clip should be folded. At that moment I realized that I made a mistake, but some superglue, luckily, fixed it.
Using the HW.1Setting up the HW.1 is quite easy, once you get that you need to create a new wallet and use the HW.1 to generate the seed (which will be stored on the HW.1 as well). I first tried to use the KryptoKit that was made for the HW.1, but I was told that this was outdated and not recommended, so I switched to GreenAddress.it (which is the recommended software at this moment).
I first installed the necarrasy driver from the website, after which I downloaded the GreenAddress.it extension for Chrome and selected that I wanted to create a new wallet. I plugged in the HW.1 wallet and it was quickly recognized by Windows and an extra option appeared on the GreenAddress.it wallet creation menu.
I set up a wallet and was able to login with the HW.1 wallet, so that worked perfectly. The next step is testing it with my Android phone (which happened to have OTG). I installed the GreenAddress.it for Android and plugged in my HW.1. It was instantly recognized by Android (4.2.2) and asked me if I wanted to open the GreenAddress.it app. This time I didn't want to create a new wallet, but simply login. It asked me for the Pin Code I set during the Wallet Creation and was then asked if I wanted to logout my computer, because you can only have one session at a time. I accepted that and was logged in successfully.
ConclusionIt's a fun thing to have with a lot of potential. The setup is a bit hard, but the btchip team is working on a startup page, so it should be more clear in the future. I think it's a very handy device for those Bitcoiners that can spend a little.
NOTE: I'm not a professional reviewer and I never will be. Keep that in mind.