First, the details. I bought the 38mm stainless steel watch with the sapphire crystal and ceramic base with the sport band over the entry-level model. Why? Because I’m notoriously hard on watch faces, I stopped wearing quartz crystal faces over a decade ago in favor of sapphire. It seemed pretty silly to attempt to save $100 when a cracked crystal repair is instantly going to cost me that…the first time. I love the Swatch aspect of the design, that is, the ability to swap out for different wristbands for different occasions. The third-party market seems to have accepted that challenge gratefully, there are already lots of options in fashion, sport, and utility bands for both men and women.
But why pay the Apple premium on a fitness tracker? First, I was watchless. I had a Fitbit Force, but it was recalled, so I went back to my old watch. It was a Seiko Citizen sapphire crystal, solar-charging face watch lost its ability to maintain time overnight after more than a decade of use. I started looking to replace it, only to discover that even a very plain model with those attributes now retails for over $300. I don’t think I’ve ever spent that much on a watch (or received one as a gift, as my husband bought said Citizen). So I bought a Fitbit Charge because I didn’t want to spend the money on a Surge and I couldn’t find a Charge HR small in stock anywhere. I’d been without a watch for several weeks and was going crazy not knowing what time it was.
Fitbit products are cute visually, but they’re very sporty and look awkward with a dress or slacks. However, $120 for an actual watch that would also track fitness and hold me accountable to my daily step count seemed reasonable, especially since I bought it February 2015 and Watch wasn’t yet available. And it would be a reasonable price, if you didn’t have niggling issues. First, the clasp. If you don’t buy something like a small o-ring or BitBelt, eventually the clasp will snag on something and get lost. Both my Force and my Charge suffered that fate, although I luckily retrieve the watches themselves. My Charge lost its clasp on a street in Guangzhou, China, so I spent the next three weeks strapping it onto my wrist with a twist-tie until I returned stateside and got Fitbit to send me a new clasp while I ordered a BitBelt. Second, the connection between the watch band and the watch face has separated on both my Force and my Charge in less than 6 months of use. Just like the clasp issue, this is a known defect; Fitbit is more than happy, the Internet tells me, to replace the unit once I send them a photo. But shouldn’t a watch last more than 4 months?!
And that brings me to my next thought. After one of my children stole my Fitbit Charge last week, I figured I could just get a Charge HR for daily fitness tracking and a cute fashion watch for when I need to look serious and still be out less than what one Watch would set me back. Tons of options abound in the $50-150 price range, so I started researching. And guess what? Even amongst reviewers who loved an initial purchase of a brand that lasted them years and years, the new purchases aren’t lasting more than a few months. So maybe, just maybe, Watch isn’t so outrageously priced, after all. Maybe you get what you pay for, and craftsmanship and engineering just aren’t cheap. So I bought it. Watch is heavier than any watch I've ever owned, but I have a 6" wrist, so I've always had tiny watches. Even then, I was used to the heft within 20 minutes. And while it is rather large, I am excited to start experimenting with some of the off-market fashion bands, they really have transformative power in the overall look.
Next, its performance. I hadn’t really figured the hourly movement reminders into my decision to buy the watch. Now that I have that feature, though, I do find it useful, as it is helping me stay on top of ugly things like dishes and laundry, even when I want to just sit and type at my computer. But I'm thinking it will be really useful post-surgery in getting me mobile on my foot, nudging me to get up for at least a minute even through the first narcotic-induced haze and then through the pain and discomfort as I start to work at increasing my range-of-motion.
I’ve used step counts to gauge my activity for so long, the 3-ring Move, Exercise, Stand lingo of Watch seems odd. You can go back into the Health app on your iPhone to see step count if you really want it those first few days, but if I scroll down on my Activity overview, I now get a read of Active Calories, Total Steps, and Total Distance. I’m not sure if it needed to complete the calibration with my phone, or if an update just added it, I know the initial Watch feature reviews were pretty upset it was missing and I could swear it wasn’t there when I first put it on my wrist a few days ago. It does make sense to separate out your life-based movement from intentional exercise, though, as they are unique beasts, but both essential to whole-picture fitness. While it’s nice to know that I typically walk 2-3 miles in the course of my daily activities, that doesn’t really give me any strength, endurance, or cardio training. At the other end of the spectrum, if you sit at a desk 65 hours a week, but run 10k races on the weekends, your average step-count is also lulling you into thinking you are less sedentary than you really are. I do, however, wish I could just click on the Exercise ring inside Fitness to start my workouts instead of moving over to the Workout app to select my activity and start my stats. Separating the two is clunky.
Watch does everything a Fitbit Charge HR will do without the phone, so don't decide against it because it "needs the phone". It only needs the phone for things that need cell/data access, like live tracking on MapMyRun, phone calls, messaging, etc. When you do your first outside activity, the fitness app does ask you to have your phone nearby for the first few outings so that it can calibrate itself--that seems very reasonable. And it seems to handle calls while your phone is in another room (or even a different floor) pretty handily, so "close" is fairly relative and limited by the strength of the bluetooth signal between devices.
How well do those Phone-dependent apps work? Surprisingly well. Siri does a remarkable job of transcribing my voice into text should I want to send a text from my watch. It’s still more laborious than typing if you’re proficient, but since I don’t carry my phone on my person when I’m at home, I have actually used that feature when engaged in time-sensitive texting conversations this week. I did turn off notifications on my email, though, I get way to much spam to have that cluttering my screen every few minutes. If I want to check mail, I can do it from the phone or laptop. My husband was shocked to learn that there is no Safari app on the watch, but I kind of like it. Too much connectivity makes it difficult to focus on the present moment.
I'm purposely trying to avoid as many of the how-to videos as possible to see just how intuitive it is. The answer is, very, once you figure out the basic engineering design. It’s so incredibly slick. The inductive charger is truly geek-worthy, and they give you a super long cord so that it's very easy to charge on your nightstand even if an outlet isn’t immediately below. Don't even get me started on the dinky Fitbit cord and how it disconnects every time the watch rotates around it.
So…if you’re willing and able to spend several hundred dollars on a quality smartwatch, this seems to be the way to go. I’m loving it and I really hope it has the longevity we’ve come to expect from Apple products.
