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I test the best smartwatches – so why am I wearing a $15 Casio?
- ricktdotorg 3y agowhat i would like is a fitness/health-tracking wearable that does not have a screen. i want a faceless waves hands bracelet something on my wrist that will track all of my health & bio stats and sends it to/syncs it with my phone.
- hnburnsy 3y agoWhoop and Oura are two prominent ones. There are a bunch others.
- bartchamdo 3y agoIt’s called a Whoop, check it out.
- schwartzworld 3y ago$30/month subscription for a fitness tracker? Ew
- avtar 3y agoThis is what I’m looking for, but I also need the device to only store the collected metrics on my phone, and not send it to some company’s servers. So far I think it’s just the Apple watches that meet that criteria.
- pydry 3y agoAlso any watches that work with gadgetbridge.
- devoutsalsa 3y agoI was about to say “Like a Fitbit?”, but apparently they all have screens now.
- iamben 3y agoYup. Absolutely long for a smaller/better version of the original jawbone. I have a watch, I love it. I'd wear a fitness tracker on the other wrist if it didn't look like a watch (or a fitness tracker).
- quartesixte 3y agoAdd a small haptic/vibe motor to give me notification buzzes (perhaps a pseudo-morse code to indicate type of notification) and I’d be immediately sold. Perhaps a way to DIY this? I wonder how to get motors that small…
- JBorrow 3y agoWhat you want is a Withings ScanWatch
- fomine3 3y agoI feel uncomfortable with any band on my wrist. What I want is health tracker anklet that lasts over a month.
- wkat4242 3y agoEhh the F91W is not very accurate at all as the article claims. It's not temperature compensated. If you leave it lying on a desk at room temperature yes. Wear it outside in all weather it'll be pretty inaccurate. I prefer the F-105W myself. It's basically the same watch but with a great blue EL backlight.
- anecdotal1 3y agoW-800H is my daily-wear cheap watch here I had a Pebble and then an Apple Watch. I came to the conclusion I prefer my watches to be tools and not devices. Watches that are tools are cool. Aviation watches, dive watches, etc etc. So much cooler than a smartwatch.
- KMnO4 3y agoThe F-91W is a cult classic but lacks a lot of nice features (for example, a backlight that stays on for a couple seconds after you release the button, alarm snooze, and dual time display). I love my W-800H though. Still has a 10 year battery, nearly as compact size, and similar aesthetics. I’ve gone through a couple over the years (the biggest flaw is the band), but my current one is incredibly accurate. Using a high speed camera, I measured 1.43 seconds loss over 6 months. Pretty sure I won the Quartz lottery since that’s much more accurate than spec, but either way I’m happy.
- WastingMyTime89 3y agoTo give a counterpoint, I have worn watches every day for the past 20 years and own both a nice Bauhaus watch, a diver and a cheap field watch. I finally decided to buy an Apple Watch last year to mostly use as a running watch and see what the fuss was about. I’m never coming back. This thing cut my phone use like nothing before. Having access to notifications at a glance without taking your phone out is awesome.
- anecdotal1 3y agoI don't like the Apple watch because of the alerts. I wish it had geofencing and other custom rules so I could say "give me these notifications all the time, and these other ones when I'm away from home, these when I'm in the office", etc. Otherwise every notification I get during the average workday happens on my Mac, my iPhone, and my Watch at the same time. It's like sensory overload making every little thing seem like an emergency. So in conclusion I really don't enjoy the ding ding ding of my watch all the time. It makes it extremely hard to disconnect when even your watch is harassing you. I tried turning off all notifications, but then it's less functional than a normal watch. The new DND custom features are almost there. Maybe in a couple years... I'll admit it was nice when I was biking 40mi routes regularly or running for use with Strava or something, but I can just bring my phone... Also trying to do any input on the watch is so painful. Idea is great, execution is still so far away from where it should be.
- cush 3y agoRIP Pebble. Still the best smart watch
- rudy6912 3y agoImportantly, F91W can run FOSS software with a custom board [1], which also makes it easily programmable in C with no "app store" shit. I have two boards sitting next to me and two Casio watches waiting for a transplant. [1] https://www.sensorwatch.net/ https://www.sensorwatch.net/
- nequo 3y agoThat’s intriguing. What kinds of modifications are you making to them in C?
- canadianfella 3y ago[dead]
- netsharc 3y agoHmm, this is like saying "The '69 Mustang can run on electric power, if you replace the engine."..
- hammyhavoc 3y agoSure, apart from one is a $20 watch and an insignificant investment of time and energy versus a lot of expensive, risky hoops with a high-level of skill to pull off. People always lean on this analogy of cars, but frequently there's no analogy required. The watch mod isn't for you and that's fine.
- netsharc 3y agoThanks for the condensation. It's just a philosophical comment along the lines of the Ship of Theseus, can it still be called the F91W if you replace a major component? Especially saying "Ah yeah the F91W can run custom software, just gut it out add a component to run that software!". Maybe philosophy isn't for you, and that's fine.
- hammyhavoc 3y agoIf you swap out the CPU on your computer, is your computer still the same computer? Something has changed. Perhaps a more accurate way of looking at a model name like an F91W is that it's a configuration of components. Ergo, an "F91W configuration can be modified to do xyz". Is it based off of an F91W? Yup. The information that's being conveyed is that if you own a cheap F91W, for a few bucks in parts and a little time, you can do something interesting with it.
- scraplab 3y agoI have a Sensor Watch, which is an ARM cortex processor and SDK which retrofits into an F91W. It’s really nicely put together and offers a lot of flexibility. https://www.sensorwatch.net/ https://www.sensorwatch.net/
- graypegg 3y agoI have an Apple Watch S5 lying around on my desk but I still pretty much exclusively wear one of a few cheap Casios I have. I found more and more that the features I use on a watch (current time, 3 min timer for tea, 25 min pomodoro timer, wake up alarm) are basically universally covered by every digital watch ever manufactured, and are normally MUCH easier to access on those watches than an Apple Watch, and I assume most smart watches. The health tracking is the only compelling feature I make use of on an Apple Watch IMO, otherwise it annoyingly fiddly to the point where I just use my phone.
- bestnameever 3y ago> normally MUCH easier to access on those watches than an Apple Watch You should try placing them as widgets on a compatible watch face, or set them be sticky in your recents app's list, if you haven't already.
- graypegg 3y agoHard to beat two clicks on the mode button, then one click on start button to start the last timer I used. Just an uncustomizable appliance, which is nice when I don’t want to fiddle with something much.
- wolftickets 3y agoOn the other hand I can’t fathom a better workout partner than my Apple Watch. A few seconds from racking the weights or whatever I can fire up my rest timer with 1 press and mute the vibration with another press when it’s time to get back to lifting. This works great when you want to do some interval of rest paired later with intervals of activity. Having favorited a few timers I can reach them within 1 to 2 presses. I haven’t found a similar watch with a range of timers that are as easy to use.
- rcarr 3y agoI’ve got a Garmin 7x. Sometimes I think about switching to something like this as I’m going through an unhealthy phase and not utilising the smart watch capability very much. However, I can’t give up the torch. I cannot believe how handy it is having a torch two button clicks away on my wrist, wherever I am, as opposed to fumbling in my pocket or searching around for my phone or a torch. Use it every day, absolute game changer.
- some_other_time 3y agoI have the Garmin Epix gen 2. It doesn't have the edge flashlight of the 7x, but I like the light it does have, especially at the bright red setting. It's enough for me to see by without messing up my night vision. The double click access is great. And, with my current settings, I love the 14 day battery life of this compared with the approximately 1 day of my prior Apple Watch 6. I also like that I can switch iOS/Android without having to get a different watch to use with the other phone.
- trees101 3y agoBattery may be long lasting but the straps seem to last about 12 months before breaking. And cost of repairs is about the same as purchase price of the watch.
- jbaber 3y agoI now have a preferred strap that I attach to whatever watch I get, expecting built-in strap to fail long before the watch.
- ghaff 3y agoI go back and forth. The better battery life and face size of the Apple Watch Ultra makes it more useful for me than my old Apple Watch 3. But I still just wear a $30 Timex Expedition a lot of the time.
- decafninja 3y agoI always find it interesting that so many people that work in tech are quite into retro Luddite stuff. I’m not entirely not guilty myself - I love me some old school manual transmission sports cars more than the latest Tesla. But I find genuine utility in having a smartphone and smartwatch. I have a relatively expensive mechanical watch but it rarely sees use other than date nights. The time is usually off, and I don’t care because that’s not the point. I don’t use it to keep time - that’s what my iPhone is for. Instead, the watch is purely jewlery, no different from my wife’s bracelet. On the other hand my Apple Watch stays on my wrist almost perpetually. I too hear about watches like the F91 or various g-shocks and get tempted to pick one up out of curiosity. But I know it’s going to be even less useful to me than my expensive automatic watch since it can’t even function as jewelry.
- DuckFeathers 3y agotldr; the answer to the clickbait: "I’m having a rest before another challenge crops up, and I really don’t want to think about my heart rate variability, whether I slept well, or even have notifications on my wrist at all – I just want to give my brain a break. " I'm guessing that the only reason he wore it to be able to write this article with this headline.
- RandomWorker 3y agoCasio stainless steel version is pretty dope.
- tinus_hn 3y agoAnother question: I wear a $15 Casio - so why am I reviewing smartwatches?
- therealbilly 3y ago[flagged]
- falkensmaz3 3y ago[flagged]