Well, actually it’s not. After spending quite a lot of time looking at the different options out there, I realised that a smart watch is a dumb purchase: it’s another computer with a 3-year lifespan, but a price tag like a luxury watch.
So I ended up buying some automatic watches instead. They’re less expensive and sharper-looking.
After looking at the watches shown off in this article: I made the right call. I’m fairly certain that in a decade we’re going to look back on smart watches the way we do digital watches: as an odd fad that noöne will be able to explain later on.
The thing that I found about it is that watches have such little real-estate, and I have my phone on me anyway, that having a computer with poor connectivity and a tiny screen on my wrist wasn't really doing it for me. I mean the magic in a watch isn't even the functionality. It's the engineering and art and story. Having a halfway-functional computer from the largest company in the world on my wrist just wasn't that interesting to me.
I guess it depends on what you mean by ‘compelling.’ Ævig, Lew & Huey, Nivrel, Hamilton, Christopher Ward, Melbourne and many, many more have some very attractive options for under $1,000.
You do have a point about the word ‘luxury’ though — I should have just stuck with ‘mechanical’ or ‘automatic.’
I think you've achieved that rare state of being both right and wrong.
My experience with smart watches: great for showing reminders, glancing at the weather before going out to work/lunch, seeing/feeling messages that I didn't hear on my phone or while I'm standing at the urinal etc, tracking my fitness, controlling the music playing on my headphones or home stereo.
But...these functions will move from the wrist to a different interface that we'll wear. So yes, it'll be a fad if only because the next phase is a non-existent form of wearable computer. It'll be a fad in the same way that a traditional watch is - a set of limited functions that can be migrated to a more advanced multipurpose device.