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I’ve owned several Apple Watches, but none currently. I wear an automatic watch on a typical day, and have a Casio as my beater/travel watch (and about a dozen

I’ve owned several Apple Watches, but none currently. I wear an automatic watch on a typical day, and have a Casio as my beater/travel watch (and about a dozen more I can probably pair down now that I think I have my perfect 2 watch collection). I got sick of smartwatches. One more thing to change every night. One more thing to debate upgrading all the time. One more home screen to manage. More apps to update and deal with. More notifications and interruptions. It’s all too much. With a little maintenance, my go-to watch will outlive me. My travel watch just needs a new battery when I renew my passport.

shiroiushi 2y ago
>I got sick of smartwatches. One more thing to change every night. This is exactly why I got a cheap $35 "Amazfit" fitness band (a clone of a Xiaomi Band 5 I think). It does things a normal watch won't do, namely count my steps every day and also monitor my sleep patterns, but it goes 2 weeks on a charge, or more. I've never understood why anyone would put up with a watch that needs to be recharged every day. How do you even use it as a sleep monitor if you have to charge it? Of course, a fitness band like this also doesn't come with so much extra crap like you're referring to ("more apps to update and deal with"); it's comparatively simple.
- jack_pp 2y ago
  I don't know if I'd trust cheap knockoffs to give me accurate information on my health. Hell I don't even trust expensive health tracking gadgets, I remember watching some YouTube videos showing how different watches give you different readings
  - pandaman 2y ago
    This. Mi Band is already junk as far as any data goes. Mine was showing sleep starting hours before going to bed and heart rate was comically wrong from time to time (like in "riding up a 2 mile hill while staying under 80 bpm" wrong).
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      Interesting. My Amazfit band seems reasonably accurate to me so far (and it's been years). Certainly nothing comically wrong. I wouldn't count on it to be super-accurate or use it as a medical device, but it seems useful for monitoring trends. Heck, just for counting steps it seems accurate enough and that's really good enough for me. As for the heart rate monitor, any fitness band will probably give you very different results just depending on how tight it is. I wouldn't consider any of them a substitute for a proper heart rate measurement, simply because of where they are on your body.
      - pandaman 2y ago
        I'd imagine a fitness band that cannot even place heart rate into an adjunct zone (e.g. showing zone n-1 or n+1 when in zone n) does not have much use for fitness. Nobody demands measuring every heart beat but, in case it's not obvious, riding uphill places one into the max heart rate zone, which would be 80 only for somebody who is 140 years old or so.
        shiroiushi 2y ago
        I can't say whether fitness bands as a technology are all this bad, or only that band, or if the user was simply wearing it wrong, or what. We'd need a large study with many different fitness bands and many different users and also other heart-monitoring devices (chest bands) to accurately determine how accurate different fitness bands, and all fitness bands as a class, are. All I can say is that, for myself, for the cheap price, it's kinda handy for what I use it for (daily step counting, sometimes telling the time so I don't need to pull my phone out of my pocket, checking my sleep quality, etc.). I haven't noticed any wildly and obviously inaccurate data yet. Sometimes I'm not so sure about the sleep data, but it's hard to say because I don't normally remember when I really did go to sleep or wake up, and don't have a way of cross-checking. I'm not about to spend tons of money on some kind of professional sleep study to do this, so the cheap-o band is better than the data I'd get otherwise, which is nothing at all.
        2y ago
- al_borland 2y ago
  I keep my phone in my pocket, which tracks my steps. That’s good enough for me and uses something I have anyway.

shiroiushi 2y ago

>I got sick of smartwatches. One more thing to change every night. This is exactly why I got a cheap $35 "Amazfit" fitness band (a clone of a Xiaomi Band 5 I think). It does things a normal watch won't do, namely count my steps every day and also monitor my sleep patterns, but it goes 2 weeks on a charge, or more. I've never understood why anyone would put up with a watch that needs to be recharged every day. How do you even use it as a sleep monitor if you have to charge it? Of course, a fitness band like this also doesn't come with so much extra crap like you're referring to ("more apps to update and deal with"); it's comparatively simple.

jack_pp 2y ago
I don't know if I'd trust cheap knockoffs to give me accurate information on my health. Hell I don't even trust expensive health tracking gadgets, I remember watching some YouTube videos showing how different watches give you different readings
- pandaman 2y ago
  This. Mi Band is already junk as far as any data goes. Mine was showing sleep starting hours before going to bed and heart rate was comically wrong from time to time (like in "riding up a 2 mile hill while staying under 80 bpm" wrong).
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    Interesting. My Amazfit band seems reasonably accurate to me so far (and it's been years). Certainly nothing comically wrong. I wouldn't count on it to be super-accurate or use it as a medical device, but it seems useful for monitoring trends. Heck, just for counting steps it seems accurate enough and that's really good enough for me. As for the heart rate monitor, any fitness band will probably give you very different results just depending on how tight it is. I wouldn't consider any of them a substitute for a proper heart rate measurement, simply because of where they are on your body.
    - pandaman 2y ago
      I'd imagine a fitness band that cannot even place heart rate into an adjunct zone (e.g. showing zone n-1 or n+1 when in zone n) does not have much use for fitness. Nobody demands measuring every heart beat but, in case it's not obvious, riding uphill places one into the max heart rate zone, which would be 80 only for somebody who is 140 years old or so.
      - shiroiushi 2y ago
        I can't say whether fitness bands as a technology are all this bad, or only that band, or if the user was simply wearing it wrong, or what. We'd need a large study with many different fitness bands and many different users and also other heart-monitoring devices (chest bands) to accurately determine how accurate different fitness bands, and all fitness bands as a class, are. All I can say is that, for myself, for the cheap price, it's kinda handy for what I use it for (daily step counting, sometimes telling the time so I don't need to pull my phone out of my pocket, checking my sleep quality, etc.). I haven't noticed any wildly and obviously inaccurate data yet. Sometimes I'm not so sure about the sleep data, but it's hard to say because I don't normally remember when I really did go to sleep or wake up, and don't have a way of cross-checking. I'm not about to spend tons of money on some kind of professional sleep study to do this, so the cheap-o band is better than the data I'd get otherwise, which is nothing at all.
        2y ago
al_borland 2y ago
I keep my phone in my pocket, which tracks my steps. That’s good enough for me and uses something I have anyway.