Wearables have been on the market for a few years now. If you have one, do you still like it? Is it worth the money? The last thread I found on this was pretty old.
I have a Fitbit, but nothing fancy like a Google or Apple watch. I mainly use the Fitbit as a watch and sleep tracker, to be honest, and also because work gives me money to track my steps.
I’m pretty deep in the Android ecosystem - I have Fi, I’ve had Google phones since the early Nexus offerings, currently have a Pixel, etc. And they are finally coming out with a Pixel watch. I was thinking about getting it, but I’m just not sure it’s worth the cost. It seems like almost everyone at work has an Apple Watch. I’d love to hear others’ experiences and what it is most useful for.
I got an Apple Watch years ago as a birthday present and thought I would only use it as a watch. It supports many apps, and I use those apps daily to tell me what the stock market is doing, what the weather is going to do, count my steps, show me my heart rate, and tell me the time. I also use it for alarms, a stopwatch, and reading my text messages. My iPhone can do all that of course, but it’s more convenient to look at my watch than to pull out my iPhone and log into it. Could I live without it? Of course. Is it a nice thing to have? You bet.
I’ve had an Apple Watch for a year or so. It’s nice, but not life-changing. I ended up turning a lot of notifications off, to reduce the interruptions.
I got a hand-me-down Apple Watch 3 when my wife upgraded. I mostly find it annoying. I don’t bother tracking fitness, I don’t use it for texting, and mostly it’s just a distraction. “Time to Stand!” “Your circles are almost complete!” “You hit your move goal for the day!” It’s basically a wrist-based nagging device. I don’t really care about any of that. I’m just about ready to go back to my old automatic analog watch.
My wife, however, uses hers constantly. She uses it to chat with friends using voice, she checks the weather constantly, takes notes with it, etc. I don’t think she could live without it now. So your mileage will definitely vary.
I have a WearOS watch (Mobi Ticwatch Pro 3), and I like it quite a lot, with qualifications. One, WearOS still stucks. It’s better than it has been, but Google has been extremely half-assed about supporting, optimizing, or updating it. The ongoing issues with google have also lead to a real dearth of ‘fun’ apps - it’s almost all cosmetic or fitness still. Hopefully, with Pixel watches becoming a thing, this will change, but I’m certainly not getting another smartwatch until it happens.
Still, it’s really useful for basic smartwatch functions - fitness/movement reminders, timers, alarms, handling a quick phone call on your wrist w/out having to get in your pocket, which is nice if you’re jogging or carrying something in your hands. I mostly use it secretly at work where you are not allowed to check your phone at your desk, since everyone tends to look for square Apple watches, not one that looks more or less normal.
I will say though that if you have a WearOS watch and an Apple phone, you’ll have major compromises, although fewer than trying to use an AppleWatch with an android device. I do wish I didn’t have to match quite so closely as I go back and forth between operating systems for my phone semi-regularly, although the most recent iPhone has pissed me off so much that may change.
Buuuut, even as an owner who enjoys it, I have to admit that the price point for most smartwatches are high enough to not be a big draw. The Mobi’s I’ve bought (I’m on my second) were bought during Amazon Prime days, at roughly 50% off, so my first was just under $100, and my current one $175. The next Apple and Pixel watches normally start @ $300, and have a lot fewer sales, and at that price point I’d be super hesitant unless I had a desire for a specific feature I couldn’t find on a cheaper option.
This, so very, very much. What is even more irritating is that it’s not very accurate for those things:
Me, sitting in front of the computer, basically the whole day, breaks for bathroom, snack, meal.
What the f…?
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With that said, there is much to like. I’m in the deep end of the Apple ecosystem, and there are quite a few apps that get a lot of use, but…
As with everything Apple, there are some apps that can’t be hidden/disabled/deleted. This clutters up the tiny screen or makes for long scrolling, depending on what UI you picked.
I can hide apps on my iPad, Macbook, iPhone and stationary Mac. Not on the watch.
I know the OP is probably not in the market for an Apple watch, but for others: Apple’s wristbands are fugly, if you don’t want to spend way too much. 3rd party bands are available, which can make the device less…devise-ey. And a lot cheaper too.
I just recently called it quits with my Apple Watch.
I had a Series 2 watch. It was still new when I got it, so I had it for a long time. The reason I got rid of it was because it kept glitching over and over again; it would get stuck on the Apple logo screen, and I had to force it to restart and then wait for it to slowly boot up. Not very handy when I just want to conveniently check the time.
But the real kicker was that it was driving my wife nuts. When it’s not in use, it stays on a magnetic charger. When it connects to power, it makes a “ding” sound. But lately it started losing connection and re-establishing it; not physically, but because the watch would just sleep and wake up, or reboot, or whatever over and over again, it kept doing it. It was waking her up at night. That was the final straw to get rid of it.
I even tried a full wipe and set up from scratch, the “nuclear option”, to get it to behave. But even that didn’t work. It was clear that it was just too old and worn out.
I ended up buying a cheap $20 watch off Amazon that is water/shock resistant and has regular features (stop watch, backlight). The kind of watch I used to wear before my Apple Watch investment.
Here are the pros and cons I went through with my watch:
Pros
Being able to get more info than a regular watch, such as local weather conditions. This was customizable, and I had it only show me things I regularly cared about, like time/date, weather, and battery status.
If I lost my phone I could ping it from my watch and vice versa. Luckily, I didn’t need to do it too often, but when I needed it, it was very nice.
Being able to dictate a text by talking into my watch. This was the only thing I did on a regular basis with my watch that a regular watch couldn’t do. Though I just do the same thing into my phone, and it’s not much more of a hassle.
Cons
It was freaking expensive to buy. Seriously. I can’t believe I spent what I did. At the time it was about $600! What was I thinking? My wife was the one who talked me into getting it. The fact that I replaced it with a $20 watch makes me feel really dumb. Though to be fair, it lasted almost 6 years, so there’s that.
It’s a computer on your wrist, and comes with all of that baggage. You have to sometimes troubleshoot it, update it, keep it charged, buy accessories when the old ones go bad, and so on. It’s much more hassle just to own it than a normal watch. (I am an IT professional by trade so I can’t imagine how much more it would suck for someone not used to dealing with technology on a regular basis.)
While it seems like such a small thing, having to wake up the device to see the time over and over and over again sucks. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I went back to a regular watch, and I still have to remind myself that I don’t need to do that anymore. While you can opt to have the Apple Watch on all of the time, it really kills the battery life (see my previous gripe).
It was yet another device I had to remember to put on silent, or airplane mode, or whatever in different scenarios. Going back to an old school watch is a relief after years of having the other thing on my wrist.
Things That Should Have Been Pros But Weren’t
The apps. There were a lot of apps for the watch that seemed neat but weren’t practical. The tiny screen size and awkward interface made it difficult. Case in point: I got a calculator app for the watch. But the buttons are so tiny that I never used it and just used the app on my phone.
The health features. My wife sleeps with a smart watch to monitor her sleep cycles, but I can’t get comfortable enough to sleep with the watch on. I also just don’t have enough interest in my heartrate or oxygen level or other things that my watch could have told me. The only thing that was useful was the pedometer, and only when I had joined a “wellness” group at work and it let me record my steps. But I carry my phone even more often than I wear my watch, and the phone also measures my steps, so I don’t even need the watch for that.
Okay, I’ll admit. One of the main reasons I wanted the watch was to talk into it like Dick Tracy. Make fun of me, go on, I deserve it. Once I actually got the watch though, holding the watch in front of my face to talk into it would wear my shoulder out, especially on a long call. And I looked stupid doing it, like I was playing spy. And the sound quality was terrible; it was a tiny speakerphone. I’m carrying a real freaking phone everywhere, the idea of using my watch for this was dumb.
Bottom line… In my experience, if you have use of some of the features that I found no use for, maybe it’s worth it if you get a watch on discount (I could have bought a slightly-newer Apple Watch on Amazon for only $100 if I wanted to). There are also much cheaper brands. I could have gotten a very dumbed-down no-name smart watch for as little as $30 to replace what I had. But what finally convinced me to go back to my old school digital watch is that I didn’t want to deal with the phone synchronization, battery charging, and updates. I don’t need the headache.
Mrs. Nott and I have Samsung watches and phones. When I go out on my recumbent trike, and she on foot, the Samsung watch and phone fitness app tracks speed, distance, and heartbeat, producing a map and charts for speed, heart rate, & elevation.
Before the Samsung, I had a (more expensive) Garmin watch that claimed to be able to do all that. I could never get the dang thing to even link to a satellite, let alone track my ride. All it would do was nag me about getting up to move around. I finally talked it out of the nagging.
By the way, if you get a plastic overlay to protect the watch face, it reduces its sensitivity to touch commands.
I have a Galaxy Watch 4. It’s ok, but so far I haven’t found a really compelling use-case. The fitness tracking is fine, but ultimately I’m not a fitness freak and I have no real need to track that. Same with sleep tracking. I have healthy sleep patterns and don’t need a reminder.
I was working on a custom watch face, but ran into some battery life issues and put a pause on that. I also can’t stand Google’s APIs and development model.
I was hoping it would be useful for payments, but it requires an unlock pattern after removing the watch. I think that’s dumb. It should know by WiFi and Bluetooth proximity that it is in a “safe” location when charging (the only time I remove it). I make maybe one purchase a day and it’s currently easier to just get my credit card out than input a pattern on the tiny screen.
The stopwatch and timers are semi-useful, but creating a custom timer is annoying enough that I grab my phone if I need something other than one of the presets. And in the kitchen, it’s more likely that my hands are dirty, in which case I use Alexa for timers.
I’ve found it useful for sending texts in the car, using voice-to-text. Not a super-common occurrence, since I’d only use it with Autopilot on the highway, but it’s been useful on occasion.
It occasionally has some weird battery glitches where it runs out of juice in a few hours. Rebooting and/or repairing seems to fix it. Normally I get >24 hrs out of it, and it recharges enough in the 30 minutes-ish I spend doing bathroom stuff.
Weather? The watch-face indicator doesn’t give me more information than looking out the window. If I need a forecast, I look at my phone.
It’s not a life-changer by any means. Not remotely suitable as a replacement for carrying a phone around. Still, it’s useful enough to put on every day.
I love my Apple watch with the Infograph Modular watchface. It has the date, time, text, high low and current temps, plus a five day forecast, phone, email, and a countdown timer. A useful feature for someone like me is the button that makes the phone ping when I misplace it. Controlling the music on the phone and Pandora is sometimes useful.
I bought a Garmin watch with GPS. The GPS was pretty good – in particular, it doesn’t just have streets, it also has walking trails and stuff (and golf courses, although I never used that) and I liked it when I went walking in the woods. “Where is that nice cliff? Oh, over there.” I had it set to always show the time, unless I was using it for something else. It tracked my steps, which was okay.
But it was large and heavy, and of course, it needed to be charged every night or three. Which basically means you charge it every night.
At some point I wore it while doing something that involved a lot of moving my wrist, and it actually bruised me, because it was large. So I took it off, and went back to my Citizen eco-drive (a small, old-fashioned quartz watch with a built-in solar panel, so it never needs a new battery.) I’m still wearing that lovely lightweight Citizen watch, that requires no attention at all, and just tells me the time.
I don’t like touchscreens on a watch, or having to make an exaggerated gesture to turn the screen on, I also don’t like charging every night. So have a Garmin Fenix watch, it lasts about 14 days between charges, uses buttons instead of a touchscreen and has a level of functionality that I appreciate. I can surreptitiously glance at it to get an idea of the time without looking like I’m hinting for someone to leave. I use it for discrete early morning alarms (vibration, no sound). It has a torch function that is just enough to find something in the middle of the night without waking up my partner. I also make use of its calendar sync to my phone and it’s ability to broadcast my heart rate to a hotel treadmill. Notifications are useful, even though I can’t reply from the watch to a message, I can see if the message is important enough to get the phone out for.
I did like the notifications on the phone. Yes, i could discretely glance at my wrist and see if the notification was urgent. And yes, i liked that it had buttons rather than a teeny tiny touch screen.
For others who are reading, this is because this was an Apple Watch series 2. Always On Display became standard with Series 5 (they are now on Series 8.) You don’t have to do anything to see the screen, it dims when your wrist is down but is always readable, and I have no issues with battery life.
I love my Apple Watch (and I love all the bands they make for it. I have a very large collection of Apple Watch bands in all different colors and styles, I always switch them out every day. Their braided loop bands are so comfy.) I like having notifications ping my wrist so I don’t miss texts or phone calls if my phone is not with me. I turned off the annoying Breathe and Stand alerts. Being able to see the weather at a glance is nice, and all the other apps that are right there. The best is using it to pay in stores, I just tap my wrist to the payment console, no need to pull out my phone/wallet or type in a passcode.
Thanks, everyone! These are great responses and I appreciate your perspectives.
This is one of the main reasons I’m interested in them. I spend a lot of time in Toronto where tap to pay is much more common than it is in my (admittedly small) US town. Just tapping the watch part seems nice.
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