4 ms·

It sounds like you have a good routine, but it's pretty nice to just have to charge once a week or something

vel0city 2y ago
Yeah but we can always just shift that goalpost of a tradeoff and act like our arbitrary choice is the only right way. You need to charge that every week? Well this one lasts two weeks. Only two weeks, what a drag, this one lasts a month. You need to actually charge it? A Citizen Eco Drive charges itself even with only indoor light. Or an automatic watch that self winds on regular wrist movements, never really needing a "charge" so long as you're actively wearing it. It's all a trade off of what kind of features you want on your "watch". I'm not taking phone calls and doing NFC payments on an Eco Drive. People are going to value different things, to many charging a few minutes every day isn't an issue for what they seem to get from it.
- chikere232 2y ago
  Of course, I just want the activity and sleep tracking, and the occasional alert or notification, so the tradeoff is easy. If I wanted whatever the apple watch can do beyond that I might make a different choice
dhosek 2y ago
The ideal charging cycles are either daily or never. With some non-daily cycle, I need to add “does my watch need recharging?” to my cognitive load.
- cozzyd 2y ago
  you can still charge it daily if you want...
  - organsnyder 2y ago
    The advantage of a watch that only needs to charge every few weeks is that it likely doesn't need a lot of time to top it off if you're charging it daily (unless it has a massive battery or only charges extremely slowly). When I wore Pebble watches, charging them while I was in the shower was plenty of time to last until I showered the next day. With my Apple watches, I've gotten into the habit of not wearing them for a while in the evening as well as my morning shower.
    - cozzyd 2y ago
      indeed, I try to do that when I remember with my Garmin Venu 2 (~11 day battery life). Otherwise, I charge it on weekends while I'm home doing nothing. It's also nice because most trips I take are under 11 days so I don't need to remember to pack the charger.
- jimmydddd 2y ago
  I understand the sentiment. But I have an old Garmin Forerunner 35 watch that charges in about 2 hours and the charge lasts for three weeks. So the cognitive load is less than you would think.
- criddell 2y ago
  It would be cool if digital watches could borrow the idea of harvesting power from movement from the mechanical watch world. I wonder how close to that we are?
  - izacus 2y ago
    Garmins went another way - the "Solar" models use sun to prolong battery life.
- hiq 2y ago
  My Garmin watch asks me if I want to enable the battery saver mode whenever it reaches 20% or so (most likely configurable anyway), which is still more than a day's worth of battery. If you go for several days without a charger, you need to plan that in advance and charge it beforehand, but at least that's a possibility which you don't have with other watches that require daily charging.

Yeah but we can always just shift that goalpost of a tradeoff and act like our arbitrary choice is the only right way. You need to charge that every week? Well this one lasts two weeks. Only two weeks, what a drag, this one lasts a month. You need to actually charge it? A Citizen Eco Drive charges itself even with only indoor light. Or an automatic watch that self winds on regular wrist movements, never really needing a "charge" so long as you're actively wearing it. It's all a trade off of what kind of features you want on your "watch". I'm not taking phone calls and doing NFC payments on an Eco Drive. People are going to value different things, to many charging a few minutes every day isn't an issue for what they seem to get from it.

chikere232 2y ago
Of course, I just want the activity and sleep tracking, and the occasional alert or notification, so the tradeoff is easy. If I wanted whatever the apple watch can do beyond that I might make a different choice

dhosek 2y ago

The ideal charging cycles are either daily or never. With some non-daily cycle, I need to add “does my watch need recharging?” to my cognitive load.

cozzyd 2y ago
you can still charge it daily if you want...
- organsnyder 2y ago
  The advantage of a watch that only needs to charge every few weeks is that it likely doesn't need a lot of time to top it off if you're charging it daily (unless it has a massive battery or only charges extremely slowly). When I wore Pebble watches, charging them while I was in the shower was plenty of time to last until I showered the next day. With my Apple watches, I've gotten into the habit of not wearing them for a while in the evening as well as my morning shower.
  - cozzyd 2y ago
    indeed, I try to do that when I remember with my Garmin Venu 2 (~11 day battery life). Otherwise, I charge it on weekends while I'm home doing nothing. It's also nice because most trips I take are under 11 days so I don't need to remember to pack the charger.
jimmydddd 2y ago
I understand the sentiment. But I have an old Garmin Forerunner 35 watch that charges in about 2 hours and the charge lasts for three weeks. So the cognitive load is less than you would think.
criddell 2y ago
It would be cool if digital watches could borrow the idea of harvesting power from movement from the mechanical watch world. I wonder how close to that we are?
- izacus 2y ago
  Garmins went another way - the "Solar" models use sun to prolong battery life.
hiq 2y ago
My Garmin watch asks me if I want to enable the battery saver mode whenever it reaches 20% or so (most likely configurable anyway), which is still more than a day's worth of battery. If you go for several days without a charger, you need to plan that in advance and charge it beforehand, but at least that's a possibility which you don't have with other watches that require daily charging.