Do you prefer to wear a smartwatch or a regular watch?
Would love to know what you guys think and your reasoning for it. I’m starting to see a lot of Apple Watches/Fitbits/Galaxy Watches in my area compared to more traditional timepieces.
Casio G-Shock owner here. I prefer a watch to always know the time without checking my phone but I would never use IOT devices, including a smart watch for privacy & security reasons.
Yup, same here. Never really understood the G-Shock thing until I got one. The 5610U is truly one of the best watches hands down, and they’re cheap. I find myself using timers and alarms much more because I may not have my phone at all times (around the house etc). Solar to boot? It really doesnt get much better, they’re fantastic.
What a coincidence! I got the same one, M5610U-1ER here. Truly the best one for my use case. I spent a couple of months researching for a good watch and settled on this. Solar, time syncing, very good modding and aftermarket community, just perfect. A watch for life.
Tried various smartwatches and the problems always came down to one thing: battery.
Some of the watches batteries last a few days or a week but the screen remains dark and to see time you have to touch the screen our flip your wrist which gets on my nerves.
Now wearing a regular watch and each time I look at the time I’m in awe of the miracle of seeing the time displayed clearly.
When they come up with a watch that can keep the screen lit for at least a week without recharge I’ll reconsider…
You should look at garmin. My 7x goes for weeks with all data collection on and the screen is clear enough to see without the back light when there is enough ambient light.
Unless I am recording tons of workouts, I don’t have to charge the battery but every few weeks. I sometimes plug it in when I take a shower so I don’t have to worry about it.
I have a withings scan watch. Battery life is 25+ days. My original one, which hubby now wears, has a battery life of over 30 days but doesn’t record spo2. Both are water resistant up to 5 ATM, sapphire glass face and an analog watch face with a small, touch less, digital display. I will never not have a hybrid watch again.
Wife wanted me to wear my Samsung to our wedding yesterday. Yeah. It was dead after taking it to the camp where we had a cabin. One day, didn’t even wear it and it was dead.
One word, garmin. Garmin has its own special charger but it’s designed for ruggedneas and there are several adapters on the market that let you charge it with usbc. My 7x goes for 3+weeks with spo2 turned on and does everything else a normal smartwatch does like notifications, quick replies, music, etc.
I’d rather not wear anything on my wrists but I like data so wear an Apple watch 7 to collect health data. I use Health Auto Export app on iOS to sync health data to homeassistant. I found straightforward guide to set it up but it is not perfect, need to open the app regularly for the data sync to happen. Battery life sucks, for my usage max it’ll last is a little over 2 days. Quick charging works well enough so usually only gotta charge for a few mins once a day.
Regular analogue silver/black self-winder 99% of the time.
Also, an offline smart-watch with gadgetbridge to record bike riding and badminton(heart rate, steps, GPS, duration, date, etc)
The simple smartwatch I have is older but does the job OK. Amazfit Bip. No need to pair it with a website to enable, just record sport and lift data off to gadgetbridge app.
That honestly sounds like a great balance! Plus, you have some privacy with your health data with that offline Amazfit, so some goons won’t sell that private info to some corner of the internet.
Regular watches - been wearing watches of some kind since middle school, and at this point I feel undressed or like something is missing without anything on my wrist. Like many others here, while I love the tech of smartphones (and admittedly the smart watches are really cool) but don’t want an even more in-my-face screen to further pull me into more phone time. Trying to really cut back on screen time. Also, if I went for a smart watch, I’d feel the want to wear it all the time both because of how much they are and to keep activity tracking data consistent, which would mean my collection of watches would likely get much less wear time.
Watch I have on now is the Citizen Eco-drive I got when I graduated college, years of service and frequent wear in situations I had no business wearing it and it’s held up great. Because of the eco-drive it’s one of my few watches I don’t have to worry about, it just always has the right time.
I really do relate to your reasons. I had been using a smartwatch from spring 2020 until last week, and while it was great for some fitness tracking, it ended up giving me health anxiety due to the constant feeling of ‘needing’ to meet all my fitness goals daily, and the notifications buzzing my wrist regularly breaking my concentration during work, or for slower times of the day such as sitting on the couch with my headphones and just focusing on the music.
Citizen FTW! Their Eco Drive Watches are the real deal. Accurate, reliable, won’t break the bank. Citizen really do live up to their name as a company, they’ve created a practical and economical slew of products that appeal to the everyday working man. Plan on getting one myself soon!
I did have a regular watch back in highschool, and all it gave was the time and date. Now that I can look at my phone or my computer screen, it would be of little benefit.
My smartwatch comes with a step counter, which gives a little goal for every day. Plus it shows notifications from my phone. It makes it so much more comfortable that I don’t have to pull my phone out for every single notification. Just having a look at my watch, and I know if it’s important or not.
I like both, but I mostly wear a smartwatch. I don’t always hear notifications on my phone. Having my watch vibrate at the same time has been a huge improvement. It is also nice to be able to view and dismiss notifications without pulling out my phone.
I started experimenting with smartwatches soon after they first appeared. There were a lot of limitations, but having better access to notifications made them worth the tradeoff for me. Over time, the hardware and software have both gotten steadily better. I have owned and used four previous smartwatches. My latest, a Samsung Galaxy Watch6 Classic, is the first I’ve had with the battery life, display quality, and speed to make me feel like I’m no longer compromising. It works well as a basic watch, in addition to all the other features.
My other reason for sticking with smartwatches was not something I expected. I was able to build my idea of the perfect watch face for myself, using the Watchmaker app. Getting it to do everything I wanted required some serious programming, among other things, but I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to have exactly what I want on my wrist.
I do still wear regular watches, sometimes for particular occasions and sometimes just for fun. I have a Citizen Promaster Skyhawk A-T Titanium that serves as a dress watch and a Casio Pro Trek 3500T for when I’m camping or just need a watch I can’t accidentally break. Both watches are solar powered and both set themselves to the Bureau of Standards radio signals.
I would hate to have to choose one type over the other, but my smartwatch get most a lot more wear time than my others.
I wanted a smart watch for notifications etc but didn’t like any of them; too shiny and short battery life
Ended up buying a Fossil Hybrid watch; the screen is kinda like a Kindle, and it has physical hands too so is always visible. Battery lasts three weeks plus
Really good except for having to sync it with the app every couple of days
The laxer on it burnt a pin sized hole on my wrist that has scarred. This broke the straw for me, never again… Don’t trust them at all.
Other than the above. Taking it on and off daily to charge. Having to update it constantly. Having notifications constantly (easy solve). Having to touch it to wake. They just aren’t designed well.
I had a seiko watch that was nice, but I felt like wearing it daily would damage it.
If I were to get another one, it’d be either a durable mechanical watch, or a dress watch. Wish I’d kept the seiko over the bullshit smart watch replacement.
I’m with this guy. Agree 100% on all points. A friend gave me an automatic waterproof watch with super bright lume. I wear it everywhere. It’s great when you wake up in the middle of the night and need to know how many more hours you have to sleep.
Only waterproof automatic watches for me.
The only issue is that it gains time. But better be early than late!
About a minute every ten days. So reset the hands maybe every two weeks.
Why would you wear either? Have not worn watches since cellphones became a thing in the late 90s and smart watches are just a solution looking for a problem…
I work in an office job and the introduction of an always on display completely solved this need fir me. AoDs have since become ha hard requirement for me, while my wrist can continue to proudly wear an old school analog watch.
Oh, and also, I hate the thought of tech giants even going as far as collection my bio data for whatever abuse they plan to do with it. Can’t collect a lot when my phone is on the table not even facing me.
I have a couple of traditional watches that I occasionally wear and don’t own a smart watch because I don’t need another thing to worry about keeping charged.
Just a few days ago, someone around here was telling me about how they need a charger with 10 usb ports when traveling, because everyone in the family has a smartwatch and other devices that need frequent charging.
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