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Comment by cbsks | Hacker News Reader

Well, crap. I have been avoiding smart watches like the plague but this plus the ECG may put me over the edge. My family has a history of heart disease, I commute by bike every day, and I have a young child who I want to see grow up.

One of my friends was recently killed in a motorcycle crash. A passerby found them in the morning in some bushes near the side of the road. We don't know what time the crash occurred, or even if they died right away. This feature may have saved them.

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If you're in the market for a smart watch, and you're a cyclist, I'd recommend checking out Garmin. They have a massive array of sensors and record very precise data that is aggregated on Garmin Connect. It's been invaluable to me for assessing training effectiveness over time. They make Apple watches look like toys. If you want the latest and greatest, the Forerunner 945 is probably what you're looking for, but the older models can be found for cheap and are still solid watches. If you want emergency alerts, you'll have to stick with newer models though.

+1 on Garmin watches. The "smartwatch" functionality leaves something to be desired, but the watch itself is great, with helpful training features, a great screen, and good battery life. I have the fr645 Music, and can bluetooth to wireless buds for a run.

The new Fenix 6 series is awesome, but they're a little bulky for my wrist.

>The new Fenix 6 series is awesome

Just checked them out and my jaw dropped when I saw the +600 Euro price-tag.

Since I'm not made of money, I hope some core tech from those quickly trickles down to some cheaper sports trackers from Xiaomi for example.

I got the Vivoactive 3 and it has served me well with all its features, you can also routinely find it on sale too.

The fenix series is a high end tool meant for serious backcountry use. The ratio of price to utility is actually really good when you compare it to other outdoor equipment. You could spend that much on ski bindings[0]. Not skis, literally just the bindings.

If you just want a smart watch for training then a Forerunner 235 would work fine.

[0]: https://www.rei.com/product/140950/salomon-slab-shift-mnc-sk...

Yeah, exactly.

Though even as someone who spends 40+ days/year in the backcountry skiing around the PNW, the 645m is plenty for me. That, combined with an inReach Mini incase shit hits the fan and I feel pretty well covered.

As a side note, those bindings are incredible. Easily one of the biggest innovation in skiing since shaped skis. I put 30 days on mine last season and didn't have a single issue; really impressive for a lightweight, finicky, and brand-new piece of gear.

Check out the Forerunner 945, it's near feature parity with the Fenix 6, but it's in a plastic body. I've got a FR935 (which is basically a Fenix 5 in a plastic body) and it's seriously great for anyone who spends a lot of time outdoors.

Take a look at the amazfit pace. It's not as comprehensive as the garmins but does provide accurate data for cycling and running. You can also load gpx routes into it.

It's £105 delivered from amazon in the UK. I expect a similar price in your country https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07CRPSJJX/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_...

Anecdotally +1 on Garmin as well. My friend was in a relatively severe hit and run when he was on a bike. His bike computer called emergency services. It probably saved his life. (He’s doing okay now)

Wait, the bike's computer called emergency services, not the smartwatch? How?

The bike computer pairs to the phone, phone (I believe) contacts emergency services. There was no smart watch involved, just saying their watches aren’t the only things they make with that capability.

How are they on privacy? The issue that I have is that every wearable device expects you to allow upload of sensitive information to their servers. At this point, especially with medical information such as heart rate, I do not trust it on any computer not covered by HIPAA or under my control.

Or simply encrypt everything before it leaves the watch and decrypt client-side ala ProtonMail.

I believe most people, if given a discrete choice, would sacrifice 2% of battery life and "forgot your password?" features for the privacy of such information.

This is how HealthKit data works on iOS as long as you have two-factor authentication on for your iCloud account.

> The issue that I have is that every wearable device expects you to allow upload of sensitive information to their servers

This is not the case with the Apple Watch - your Health data lives and dies on your phone unless you back it up or choose to share it with other apps.

How do you know that? Have you examined the source code?

How far do you go with that? Have you examined your CPU with an electron microscope? What about the motherboard? Every peripheral? Where does it end? At some point you have to trust someone.

If you don't wear a smartwatch while out and about, how is your desktop CPU at home going to upload your heard rate or location to the cloud?

The only way to win is not to play?

Thank you. I lost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game)

Hopefully farther than nowhere. It seems like you're ignoring the dangers of proprietary software here entirely.

And don't forget to check the compiler code too..

And the compiler code that compiled the compiler.

Apple has a good history in respecting privacy. For example, if Facebook made a watch and claimed no data is sent from your watch to their servers, I would not believe in it. When Apple claims the same, I do believe it.

I've been thinking of switching from an old Pebble to a Garmin because it has a daylight visible screen. Do they also have a system to text in case of emergency like the Apple watch?

They do on newer watches, like the Forerunner 945 (which I have). https://www.garmin.com/en-US/legal/idtermsofuse/

were pebbles not daylight visible?

Really depended on the watch face. High contrast ones were perfectly readable, low contrast really needed the backlight.

I think you are missing the point here completely and utterly. Compared to what the Apple Watch can do (as mention on the post and several comments) the garmin watch may be the real toy here.

Recent Garmin watches and cycling computers also have "incident detection" and can automatically send an alert to your emergency contact(s) after a fall. (I don't think any current Garmin models will directly dial 911, though.)

That's hardly true, the two devices have very different purposes. I couldn't run an ultramarathon (or even a shorter trail race) in an apple watch. That's before we even start talking about features. The battery would die long before I finish.

The FR945 that was released this year has far more features than the apple watch (including the emergency features). Even comparing the Apple Watch 4 to my FR935 (released in 2017), the Apple watch would be a huge step down for my purposes. That's all without mentioning the fact that I'd probably break the apple watch on my first outing.

The Apple watch might be a better smart watch for day-to-day use, but next to a Garmin it's pretty obvious which is the toy.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/product-comparison-calculator?ty...

When I was a kid, my next door neighbor was an ultra-marathoner and the fittest person I'd ever met. He died suddenly one day of a heart attack while out on a run.

When this happens it's typically due to undiagnosed cardiomyopathy (which is very difficult to detect). It's true that when something like that happens to someone they would've lived longer had they not been an endurance athlete, but most endurance athletes live about as long as their less-active peers.

I get a yearly physical just to be safe, but honestly running is my favorite way to decompress and I'd need some kind of diagnosis before giving it up.

> most endurance athletes live about as long as their less-active peers.

I'd venture to say they live far longer.

From the introduction of Vina & al 2016:

In longitudinal studies, physically active men and women have an approximately 30% lower risk of death compared with inactive people (Schnohr et al. 2015). No upper threshold for physical activity has ever been recommended (Pate et al. 1995). In fact, in studies performed on top‐level athletes, participation in endurance competitive sports increases life expectancy (Hartley & Llewellyn, 1939; Prout, 1972). Moreover, Karvonen and co‐workers found that Finnish champion skiers lived 2.8–4.3 years longer than the general male population in Finland (Karvonen et al. 1974). We tested the effect of strenuous exercise, performed by well‐trained humans, on their longevity. We measured average and maximal lifespan in cyclists who had taken part in the Tour de France between the years 1932 and 1964 and compared them with those of the average population in those years. Only cyclists born in Belgium, France and Italy were included in our study. The results were striking: we found an 11% increase in average longevity in Tour de France participants when compared with the general population (Sanchis‐Gomar et al. 2011). These results have been confirmed recently with the observation of a significant 41% lower mortality rate among French elite cyclists from the Tour de France, compared with the general male population (Marijon et al. 2013). Evidence from human studies supports the notion that regular, vigorous aerobic exercise might be a useful tool, with a dose–response effect, to improve the overall health status and longevity of the general population (Ruiz et al. 2010; Teramoto & Bungum, 2010). However, the controversy regarding the potential adverse effects of regular strenuous physical exercise continues (Benito et al. 2011; Schnohr et al. 2013). Schnohr and co‐workers have found that moderate‐intensity joggers have lower mortality rates that sedentary people or high intensity joggers. In other words the relationship between intensity of jogging and mortality follows a U‐shaped curve (Schnohr et al. 2015). Thus, the ideal ‘dose’ of exercise needed to improve longevity is not a simple linear relationship. Genetic aspects as well as lifestyle factors (smoking, diet and alcohol consumption) may be important in interpreting studies aimed at determining the effect of exercise training on longevity.

I suspect that generally only healthy people would become serious endurance athletes. Is that taken into account in these studies?

I also suspect lifting weights (and a bunch of other things) is important for long term health, how does that relate?

HOCMs are usually detectable with echocardiograms.

Sure. One helps you know cool stats, and the other helps you not die.

Not a fan of apple, but this is some cool tech.

Edit: Saw that some garmin's have crash detection too. Neither are "just" toys.

Why couldn’t you?

I had the Apple Watch track me during my hour long bike tours, GPS and heart rate sensor on and all, without any problems and with battery left to spare at the end of the day.

Seven to eight hours is probably the critical mark, but anything below that is no problem at all.

Ultramarathons (full 100 miles) usually takes between 24-30 hours according to one source (WaPo). I'm guessing you're thinking of regular 26.2 mile marathons.

To be wildly pedantic, an ultramarathon is anything over 42.2km (26.2mi). It's perfectly possible to do an ultra with an Apple Watch if you're only going 50km (even I can manage 50km within the 8h battery life.)

Yeah, ok, no you can’t do that with an Apple Watch. Seems an alright trade-off for Apple to make. The amount of people running ultra-marathons is probably miniscule.

I am wearing a Garmin FR945 right now; in fact, I sold my Apple Watch 4 a month back, after it sat on my nightstand for months following my purchase of the 945. I previously had an Apple Watch 2.

The AW might be a huge step down for your purposes, but I was fine recording 5+ hour bike rides and my 4+ hour (yeah, yeah) first marathon. I really disliked using a touch screen on the AW for recording runs, particularly intervals. I love the feature set of the 945 and haven't looked back.

THAT SAID, I would trust the Apple Watch over the Garmin any day of the week for 'lifesaving' type tech. Garmin's software is spotty, to say the least. First off, I can trigger the Garmin crash detection at will by jolting to a sudden stop on my bike and hopping off. Not all that aggressively -- it happens in my normal dismount process with some regularity. I have to tell it to cancel the emergency call.

Right now it's setup to text my wife. Looking at the config, it says "Select up to 3 people to be notified via text message and email if an incident occurs or assistance is needed". I don't know how I could set it up to call 911 if I wanted to.

And that would all assume it even works. Multiple times a week, my watch says it doesn't have connection with my iPhone X, and I have to reboot the watch for it to find my phone again. My wife's FR235+iPhone 7 setup seems more reliable, but at least once a month for the past 3-4 years, it's decided to stop syncing and we need to reboot the watch again.

IME, the Apple Watch <-> iPhone BT connection just works. All the time.

Does the iwatch track cadence?

NOOOOO! Do not do this.

I have a Garmin Fenix 5X and it does not make the Apple Watch look like a toy. The Apple Watch integration is seamless, the Garmin Connect integration is a joke.

Moreover the Fenix has a clunky user interface, and is bulky and ugly.

The Apple Watch absolutely trounces the Garmin in every aspect, functional and aesthetic, except for two:

1) Water resistance: it's hard to argue with the Garmin's 100M water resistance.

2) Battery life, but it only does better here by being massive (ref. previous comment about bulkiness).

Seriously, unless you're spending a lot of time in the water, and if you're able to put the watch on charge every night, buy the Apple.

To be totally fair you purchased the 5X, the biggest one on offer. A comparison with the 5S (6S now?) would be more reasonable.

Doesn’t really change the other arguments, does it?

No, but they are subjective anyway. But I do personally agree the Apple integration and UI is much nicer, they know what they are doing in that department. I would be interested to know how the multisport features compare on the apple watch. In my eyes the fenix series is for triathletes/endurance athletes and if you don't have excellent battery life it's a non-starter. And last I heard it doesn't have ANT+ support which is another blocker for me since none of my bike stuff has BLE.

Quite true. I bought it for the GPS, mapping, and battery life, but this was really a mistake.

I have 8.5 inch wrists, and even though that's relatively chunky, the Garmin looks absolutely ridiculous.

The thing about fitness and sleep tracking is it's only useful if you're wearing the device pretty much all the time, particularly for things like daily calorie burn.

Whereas I found that there are so many contexts where it either wasn't appropriate, or I didn't want to, wear a gigantic activity watch. I slugged it out for a few months, but in the end gave up on it because it wasn't really practical or stylish.

The maps are something of a wash as well, because the screen is so tiny.

My other arguments stand, to the point where I wouldn't even recommend buying one of the smaller ones unless you really need the water resistance. I imagine even the smaller models still have better battery life than the Apple Watch, so that's another consideration.

How does the data sync work on an Apple Watch if you don't have an iphone?

This was a legitimate question. If it turns out it's pretty useless without an iphone (that is not clear to me, hence the question) then that's another consideration. Something from Garmin (or the other competitors) will work fully regardless of what mobile phone / computer you've already invested in.

While not yet there, Apple seems to be moving towards making the Apple Watch more stand-alone; their newest update, for instance, allows completely stand-alone apps to be downloaded from the App Store on-device.

You've left ANT+ and cycling specific performance analysis off the list of things that Apple Watch can't do.

If you're not a cyclist then it doesn't matter but there's definitely lots of stuff the Garmin can do that the Apple Watch can't.

Not riding a motorcycle would have a much larger effect on survival chances than wearing an Apple device.

I've been riding motorcycles on the street since 1986. For many parts of my life, a motorcycle was my only vehicle (including a couple of winters in Hamilton, ON).

During that time I never had any kind of crash or even a particularly close call. Two years ago I decided I didn't want to push my luck any further and sold my bike. Drivers are so distracted now that I feel my luck was going to run out soon.

I think getting a driving license should require everybody to qualify for motorcycle, bicycle, truck and regular car at once. That way they'd have the perspective of all these other users of the traffic infrastructure and it would help a lot to see through the eyes of others. As long as that's not the case there is no way I will ride a motorcycle in traffic.

if the watch could be paired with an iPad I would be more willing to buy into one. currently it still is just an accessory to an iPhone and for me that removes its desirability.

I would be more than happy to buy the cell enabled versions for my parents considering what the watches can do but neither is keen on using a smart phone let alone the associated costs of buying and maintaining one

Check out Alivecor’s devices. I’ve used them for years.

Before the S4 Apple Watch came out, I used AliveCor. Works pretty well, though obviously not as reliably as the watch does. And to enable basic storage functionality in the app they want you to pay $5/month. Pretty quickly it costs more than just getting the watch.

> but this plus the ECG may put me over the edge.

We are still waiting for ECG here in Australia. Sigh.

That's the fault of Australia, not Apple[1]:

> "If Apple claims the ECG function in its Apple Watch has therapeutic benefit for wearers, the watch would need to be included in the [Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods] in order to be legally supplied in Australia," a TGA spokesperson said to Gizmodo Australia in a statement.

This could be fixed if Australia allowed unapproved devices to be sold with a warning instead of outright banning them.

1. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/09/why-apple-watch-series-5-...

If you spend >$400 trying to slightly mitigate every random way of death, you would be spending 10s of millions of dollars. Of course, this is why these features exist in the first place: to hijack your mind and convince you that you can live forever.

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