My wife never wore her Apple Watch, so I appropriated it. For "free" it's great, but I don't know if I would have paid for it. I use it for:
1) reminding me of meetings
2) easy to set timers
3) weather at a glance
4) quick look at text messages without pulling out my phone
I heard you can get them to beep if your heart stops. Then somebody can come along and take your wallet.
I bought myself a Garmin when I started running a lot this summer, but I only wear it when exercising. As a heart-monitor/GPS and speedometer/thing that tells me to do intervals it's a great toy, and it could notify me of emails and texts and all that, but it's huge and hideous and I don't want to be notified of anything ever so I don't wear it.
I like the idea of the newer ones - Versa or whatever - that are waterproof, because that would be convenient in the summer, but I'm wary of things with "built in Alexa", which is apparently sometimes a feature.
I have been surprised by how much I like the watch. The wrist-flashlight comes in handy; I can reject (or, more rarely, answer) a phone call from my wrist; I get texts; I like the constant heart-rate monitor; and the vibrating wrist alarm lets me wake up a couple of minutes before my noisy alarm. (It's a Fitbit Versa, which I gather interacts less well with an Apple phone.)
Turns out it's occasionally convenient to have the correct time on my wrist, too.
Your options are pretty much the Apple Watch or something that's a fitness tracker. The category of "smartwatch" that's not a fitness tracker has pretty much withered and died (he says, wearing one).
I have a Fitbit Versa II. I love it, but there are a lot of features that I don't actually use (I mostly use it to track steps, but also for notification of texts).
I think if you need one you would know it. I like mine. I had the Samsung Galaxy S3 classic and I like that okay. Now I have a fossil Carlisle I like it a lot. For me the main use is that it reminds me about the notifications I think are important and I can say hey Google to my wrist and feel like I'm living in the future.
I went from a Fitbit to an Apple Watch. I specifically wanted the ECG feature of the Apple Watch as I suffer from palpitations and wanted a way to record them when they happen.* I do like the Apple Watch and now that I have one, I find some of the other features on it really useful, as per ogged in 1, and politicalfootball in 5.
But, if I didn't specifically want the extra features of the Apple Watch, I'd probably have been fine with another Fitbit. That said, the integration between the Apple Watch and other apps is much better than the Fitbit.
* for correlation with whatever it is that triggers them.
I think if you need one you would know it.
I had no idea I needed one until I got one as a gift.
Thanks, all. I'm leaning towards the Versa then, I think. I like the waterproofness - it'd be nice in the summer for swimming. The Versa II is still available, as the cheaper option compared to the Versa III. Or I could find a Versa 1 on ebay.
Is it a bad idea to buy old-but-unused electronics on ebay, due to the natural degradation over time, even if it's unused? Or do electronics basically start their lifespan when you fire them up, and they can sit dormant for a few years with no problem?
I guess the other problem is that they may not be able to handle newer versions of the app that would be forced upon me. Hmm.
Who is selling old, unused electronics? Really lazy shoplifters?
i have an extremely cheap digital watch, i think a casio? that can do a gazillion firmly non-smart things and i only use it to time swims. i keep track of water temp from the crissy field buoy and time length of swims in my copy of tidelog (a marvelous super delightful publication) so that i have a rough idea of how long i can swim for next winter. i only truly overstayed my time in the water once so far this winter, and damn that was unpleasant. i was fully clothed but despite lots of squats etc. had to go under the covers in a better-half-warmed bed with a hot water bottle under my puffy vest for a half hour before i could get up and eat, and daaaammmmmnnnn i was so fucking hungry. better half was holding me to contribute body heat and i was still apparently radiating cold from through multiple layers.
i don't think more watch features would have helped, tbh.
11: Anything with a modern lithium-ion battery is going to age poorly. The batteries age both with calendar time and with cycles, so they fail faster when in use, but 3-year-old batteries and the devices they're in should be considered suspect, unfortunately. The rest of the electronics will last a long time in their own right but evolving software can be a problem.
I used to drive a Versa. I didn't realize Nissan was making them as a wearable now.
Not a consideration for you, h-g, but just in general a reminder that certain smartwatch functions don't work well on darker skin tones. Several of the melanin-rich people I know have been quite frustrated by this.