Abandoning smart watches

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#3074406 10-May-2023 08:08

Gurezaemon:

In all seriousness, what do people use sleep tracking for? Am I missing something obvious?

Obviously apple watch shows you the length of time in each sleep stage, I'm a notoriously restless sleeper and its very interesting to see at what stage of the night my deep & REM sleep is compared to other nights. Sometimes as mentioned this can be affected by workouts/stress/alcohol/caffeine etc

More for me, some nights I can go to bed early yet don't benefit from a better sleep. The watch knows how many minutes you actually slept for compared to how long you were actually in bed. Two years ago I listened to a podcast on how important a minimum 8 hours were to the body so since then I have been focused on sleep quality and length in particular.

YMMV of course

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#3074456 10-May-2023 11:09

jonathan18:
Looks like the Withings watches have something similar - mine arrived today and I see there's a 'smart wake up' setting that allows me to set a period of up to 60 minutes during which the alarm will go. I'd be interested to hear how effective this is, but generally if I need an alarm it needs to be at an exact time.

Don’t those systems use your set time as the latest the alarm will go off?

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#3074525 10-May-2023 12:19

This morning I was musing about watches and my family history and realised that if there is an after life I will have some questions to answer from my Great Grandfather, Grandfather and Dad about my use of smartwatches. They were watchmakers. My Dad started as a watch maker but his eyesight deteriorated and he could no longer do the job and switch to another trade as a motor engineer something he was very good at. He never lost his love of mechanical watches. I had mechanical watches up to recent times when I dabbled in smart watches. I still have my Seiko and my Dads Omega the latter never leaving its case.

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#3074526 10-May-2023 12:27

Geektastic:
jonathan18:

Looks like the Withings watches have something similar - mine arrived today and I see there's a 'smart wake up' setting that allows me to set a period of up to 60 minutes during which the alarm will go. I'd be interested to hear how effective this is, but generally if I need an alarm it needs to be at an exact time.

Don’t those systems use your set time as the latest the alarm will go off?

Yes they do, some will do 60 min window, others 45 mins. Set the alarm as usual (the time you need to be woken up) lets say 6:30am with a 45 min window. If you sleep cycle is on an upwards cycle (towards being awake) it will go off at the closest time to peak or your alarm time whichever comes first. If you are heading downwards it will go off earlier to stop you trying to wake up in a deeper sleep.

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#3075573 12-May-2023 17:51

@jonathan18:
Same for me, but only $5 for delivery. I know both Wellington region stores have stock, but they were the only ones in my neck of the woods.

Email from JB Hi-Fi for the Horizon I ordered

Firstly, we appreciate your patience; unfortunately, at this stage we are still unable to fulfil your order. Our buying team have advised us that this item is currently on back-order with our supplier.

The current ETA for this product is 2-3 weeks

Option to cancel, but I'll wait.

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#3075694 13-May-2023 07:52

That’s annoying, but given the savings it’s probably worth waiting - it’s definitely good value at this price.

After a few days wearing it I’m pretty happy with the transition to a not-so-smart-watch. The Horizon’s nice-looking, and it’s nice to be wearing a ‘real’ watch again rather than having to replicate the look with an analogue watch face on my smart watch! It’s substantial but not as weighty as I’d feared. Metal strap is nice, though I’d have preferred it to have had the micro adjustments in the clasp area, not just rely on adding/removing whole links.

Biggest irritation with the Withings is the sole reliance on the crown as the watch interface - I’m left-handed so wear my watch on the right wrist; as such it’s quite awkward to turn the crown. Would be much better if they’d used the bezel a la Samsung watches, but I get that would have needed a software redesign from the standard ScanWatch, not just the external design changes they went with.

Also having to get used to having to set alarms in the app not the watch; I did wonder if the vibration wouldn’t be enough to wake me but it does the job fine. I’m surprised that I don’t find wearing it at night that annoying - I gave up wearing my Samsung as a sleep tracker as every three nights I needed to charge it, but given the battery life on this I thought I’d take advantage of this feature. Battery life seems good - sat at 100% for the first two days, but once I enabled ECG and SpO2 readings it dropped quickly but has stabilised since; still at 78% after nearly four days.

I think it’ll take a bit longer to determine how much I miss the additional features of a ‘normal’ smart watch - things like the ability to take a call on my watch when I’m unable to get to my phone and the vibration when I leave my phone behind. That said, none of these are critical, and if it reduces my connectedness that could well be a good thing!

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#3075695 13-May-2023 07:58

My old school Casio digital watch arrived from Mighty Ape. It's cheap, it's simple and I love it. I may (will) buy some more.

Edit;I should add it's a Casio G-Shock DW5600E-1

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#3075699 13-May-2023 08:12

jonathan18: That’s annoying, but given the savings it’s probably worth waiting - it’s definitely good value at this price.

After a few days wearing it I’m pretty happy with the transition to a not-so-smart-watch. The Horizon’s nice-looking, and it’s nice to be wearing a ‘real’ watch again rather than having to replicate the look with an analogue watch face on my smart watch! It’s substantial but not as weighty as I’d feared. Metal strap is nice, though I’d have preferred it to have had the micro adjustments in the clasp area, not just rely on adding/removing whole links.

Biggest irritation with the Withings is the sole reliance on the crown as the watch interface - I’m left-handed so wear my watch on the right wrist; as such it’s quite awkward to turn the crown. Would be much better if they’d used the bezel a la Samsung watches, but I get that would have needed a software redesign from the standard ScanWatch, not just the external design changes they went with.

Also having to get used to having to set alarms in the app not the watch; I did wonder if the vibration wouldn’t be enough to wake me but it does the job fine. I’m surprised that I don’t find wearing it at night that annoying - I gave up wearing my Samsung as a sleep tracker as every three nights I needed to charge it, but given the battery life on this I thought I’d take advantage of this feature. Battery life seems good - sat at 100% for the first two days, but once I enabled ECG and SpO2 readings it dropped quickly but has stabilised since; still at 78% after nearly four days.

I think it’ll take a bit longer to determine how much I miss the additional features of a ‘normal’ smart watch - things like the ability to take a call on my watch when I’m unable to get to my phone and the vibration when I leave my phone behind. That said, none of these are critical, and if it reduces my connectedness that could well be a good thing!

Some interesting and excellent observations there, thanks. It certainly seems to be an ideal watch to help reduce the reliance on being connected all the time, without losing the few important notifications altogether.

And you're right, for that price reduction I'm happy to wait.

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#3075700 13-May-2023 08:22

MikeB4:
My old school Casio digital watch arrived from Mighty Ape. It's cheap, it's simple and I love it. I may (will) buy some more.

I have a couple of Citizen Eco watches, which I still wear to formal events (although they're few and far between these days), and a Citizen Eco with GPS time sync which was great for overseas travel. I also have a Casio solar which I'll sometimes use in the garden when I need to be keeping an eye on the time.

When the Withings arrives, I think I'll be sorted.

For now, the Samsung smartwatch will remain for when we go walking under the guise of 'fitness'.

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#3075702 13-May-2023 09:13

I don't like digital that is numeric watch displays. I've had watches with them but I've always gone back to an analogue display, even on my Pebbles though at times I did use their natty sliding display which spelled the time I used an analogue display as I do now on my GTR2.

When I look at my watch very often I don't really look at the time but how far the hands have to move to get to a certain time. Mentally I translate that distance into the time I have available before I need to do something. Wirh a digital display that takes a lot more computation, at least for me anyway.

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#3075719 13-May-2023 10:22

Technofreak: I don't like digital that is numeric watch displays. I've had watches with them but I've always gone back to an analogue display, even on my Pebbles though at times I did use their natty sliding display which spelled the time I used an analogue display as I do now on my GTR2.

When I look at my watch very often I don't really look at the time but how far the hands have to move to get to a certain time. Mentally I translate that distance into the time I have available before I need to do something. Wirh a digital display that takes a lot more computation, at least for me anyway.

Yep, I'm with you on this about there being something about the physical placement and movement of analogue watch hands that makes it a more tangible and immediately readable way of 'reading' time.

It's been funny to see my kids take so much longer to establish ease at reading analogue clocks/watches, given the dominance of digital these days - though interestingly my 15YO started wearing my totally dead (complete with hole in the glass!) analogue watch from many years back; he argued it told the correct time twice a day! I found him an analogue watch in perfect condition on TM which he loves.

Stu: I have a couple of Citizen Eco watches, which I still wear to formal events (although they're few and far between these days), and a Citizen Eco with GPS time sync which was great for overseas travel. I also have a Casio solar which I'll sometimes use in the garden when I need to be keeping an eye on the time.

Talk of the Citizen Eco watches has reminded me I should see how much it may cost to fix the watch my wife bought me as an engagement present - it's a nice titanium one, so probably worth getting fixed. (My nephew's a horologist, so perhaps I should hit him up to look at it!)

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#3075778 13-May-2023 10:56

MikeB4:

My old school Casio digital watch arrived from Mighty Ape. It's cheap, it's simple and I love it. I may (will) buy some more.

Edit;I should add it's a Casio G-Shock DW5600E-1

That's a G-Shock. That's not "old school". You want the Casio F-91W to be "old school":

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#3075829 13-May-2023 16:13

@freitasm you are right but it is an homage to the old school digitals and the early G-Shocks. I am going to look for the old digital and analogue Casios from yesteryear. They are linked to some very good memories for me.

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#3075868 13-May-2023 17:33

freitasm:

That's a G-Shock. That's not "old school". You want the Casio F-91W to be "old school":

These are great watches, but apart from being meme-worthy (used to be popular with various terrorists), their weakest link is the strap which tends to give out pretty quick under normal use. My son has had a couple of straps go, and because they are not regular format, replacements tend to cost almost as much as a new watch.

We managed to get around that by using a cheapy NATO-style strap which arguably looks better than the original. A bit of a PITA to fit them though.

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#3075869 13-May-2023 17:34

I know about the terror link and almost posted it... But waited.

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