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Comment by steezy13 | Hacker News Reader

I have been torn between wearing mechanical watches and smart watches. I don't need/want/like notifications on my wrist, but I really enjoy the activity and heart rate tracking of the Apple Watch.

I have been reluctantly wearing a Samsung Withings watch that looks mechanical but is actually smart, but a mediocre compromise (you need to wear it higher up the wrist than I usually do, and I don't believe it gives accurate heart rate and activity measurements). 30 day battery life is pretty cool though.

I may just start going back to my Vostok and Seiko watches full time at this point. (I don't like spending a lot of money on watches, anyone who is curious on getting into them should check out both brands as economical starters - the Vostok Amphibia has a storied history!)

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Personal and subjective opinion ahead.

Any smartwatch will become unusable, polluting garbage a few years (months?) from now: a canonical example of planned obsolescence. Their self-tracking functions are a double-edged sword, a source of stress as much as relief.

Any well-built and well-maintained mechanical watch will last you decades. No dependencies on electricity and network connectivity, it's a self-contained and entirely autonomous piece of human engineering. Mine was built in 1975 and is one year older than me. In a world where everything fades away so fast, wearing it everyday feels like owning a precious relic.

Easy choice if you ask me.

>No dependencies on electricity and network connectivity, it's a self-contained and entirely autonomous piece of human engineering.

This already veers straight back into the marketing territory that everyone in this thread remarks was an eye opener when they actually got a mechanical watch.

I have a mild prepper tendency and I had to eventually kill my romantic views of mechanicals when I realized it just time drift and wouldn't last long without regular maintenance from someone with the tools and knowledge/skill, not to mention someone in this very comment section mentions a mechanical watch suffering a death from drop onto carpeted floor.

Mechanical watches are cool, but I easily spend less time without my PineTime (which I'm surprised nobody else in these comments has even mentioned) working than my friend spends manually syncing his seiko back to time/maintaining it.

I never heard about PineTime until now! Looks like a cool gadget. What has your experience been with it, apart from it being more accurate than a mechanical?

It's an interesting experience, I have github send me an email on the odd occasion the community developed "OS" gets an update. Then I download the zip file on my phone browser and upload the file on Gadgetbridge for the update.

I sometimes call it my "soviet in a good way" watch, it ended up becoming my "function over fashion" watch, which means almost all day every day wear for a few years now.

pros:

decent battery life (1-2 weeks, i turn off bluetooth and gps on my phone overnights which helps both devices)

"good enough" design (durable enough for all but swimming/showering)

easily replaced or modified (even takes standard watch bands)

flashlight, notifications and all traditional digital watch functions

multiple community "OS" options

cons:

community development can be slow, buggy

water droplets particularly from natural rain can trigger the touchscreen, not amazing if you bike in seattle or something

anemic hardware

The charger is cheap and isn't that quick but again, the pinetime kind of excels in knowing the difference between good and good enough, as I once heard an engineer say (about something else), and I rarely find myself bothered by it's lack of luxuries.

Thanks for sharing your pros and cons!

What do you think is the PineTime's biggest strength when compared with a mainstream smartwatch?

Have you found the watch to be hackable? Is there any sort of customization that you've done to it?

>What do you think is the PineTime's biggest strength when compared with a mainstream smartwatch?

Frankly, I think the combination of price/replaceability and privacy are the only things unique (besides niche FOSS modding) to it among smart watches; and I like the open aspect of essentially every detail.

It makes it the only smart watch I've used that feels like it respects my dignity, frankly. A minor philosophical quibble but one I take stoic pleasure in. It is a tool, and technology that serves me, not another.

> Have you found the watch to be hackable? Is there any sort of customization that you've done to it?

I actually got it hoping I'd have the inclination to tinker with it, but my only idea that wasn't already being worked on by the default "OS" is a red flashlight mode, which with the IPS screen is a moot point anyways, since the black pixels when turned on make for a low-light flashlight anyways, heh. A hardware drawback that ironically makes it a more accessible tool in my experience.

The PineTime is still an electronic gadget that you won't use for very long.

My watch takes 15 seconds to rewind each day, and 5 seconds to be time adjusted by one minute twice a week. Service is every 5 years, the last one cost me 88 €. It gets more valuable each year, and I plan to bequeath it to my son in a (hopefully) very distant future.

To each his own, I guess.

Rewind? As in a non-automatic mechanical?

Admittedly, all the mechanical watch issues I've read tend to be pertaining to the automatic variety.

Yes, it's manual. I have no experience with automatic ones.

Admittedly, it is a rather pricey model (Omega Speedmaster). I bought it second hand for 1500 € a few years ago. Unfortunately, prices have since skyrocketed for many emblematic watches like this one.

For me it's the opposite. Notifications and payments are my main benefit. I would never wear a watch that shows only the time (hence I never wore one since the late 90s until mid 2010s). Sleep tracking with SpO2 is a big thing for me too though.

I think mechanical watches are much more about being jewellery than function, even though it's impressive engineering. But I'm not a very flashy guy (I don't even own any shirts that fit anymore, just T-shirts lol) so I don't really care.

But it's good to see everyone can get what they like. I'm personally really happy with how far smartwatches have come.

I'd like a watch that does two things:

- Shows the time (and possibly date)

- Vibrates when I get a call (or maybe other notifications)

Other than that I'd like it to be small and have a long battery life. Is there anything like this?

I currently use a Garmin smartband, but there are so many features I don't use.

Yes I've seen that kind of watch too. I forget which brand it was but it was one of the mechanical brands.

For what it's worth, the amazfit and Xiaomi products also have very great battery life (around 2 weeks) and some are very light. With the gadgetbridge or notify for Android apps they're really privacy conscious too.

Maybe the basic (and old) Fitbit Charge? It has a pedometer, time, and vibrating alarm.

I think Fitbit Inspire would do the job. Loved that multi-day battery life too.

If that's your use case, definitely check out the Withings Scanwatch line. If you're not using a lot of the other features, the battery can prob go well over 30 days between recharging.

If you're cheap/privacy/FOSS focused like myself, I find the "PineTime" is largely the modern day Pebble watch.

It may not literally watch every breath you take while you sleep, but I haven't wanted that personally anyways.

Only real drawbacks are battery life is only OK (about a week or so depending), the IPS screen can be bright in the dark (though it's a nice flashlight) and it only has 1 meter of water resistance, though it seems well sealed enough to trust it if I fall into water momentarily. (And really, swimming/showering with watches is kind of niche anyways)

I miss my Pebble :( I still have it, but I blame Apple and normiesl consumers for the death of the Pebble.

Consumers bought into Apple's shiny power hungry oled Apple Watch and yet they still complain about battery life to this day. Do you really need slick animations on your watch? Consumers will still buy what is shiny and cool looking over what actually works.

And don't even get me started on WearOS, Google's sorry excuse is such a disappointment, I swear I'd have to actually try if I wanted make as many bad UX & performance sucking decisions as they did.

I was wearing a MiBand and getting ready to get an Apple Watch. Then my wife got me a Longines auto. I'll never go back to smartwatches again.

I'm not a collector when it comes to watches, and I can happily wear that Longines until the end of time, and will be happy.

Having a tactile watch with real hardware with no electricity inside brings me more joy than some capable electronic toy which needs constant tending and replacement.

If I was climbing mountains, maybe but mere outdoor activities I have a ProTrek. More than enough.

In a similar story, my wife gave me an Omega calibre 1861 Moonwatch years ago, and I nearly always wear it. But a few years ago, I got an Apple Watch for running, and now I often wear both, because I like the heart monitor, the haptic hints while driving, and don't always have my phone along. I wish the Apple Watch had a face that didn't have a time display.

Consider something like a Whoop or Oura Ring which monitors health metrics but doesn’t rely on a watch? That’s what I’ve settled on so that I have the best of both worlds.

Those are subscription based though.

Wow. I had looked at the Oura Ring before and thought it looked cool, but I missed that it basically requires a subscription, which is wild considering it seems like I get all of the same metrics from my Garmin watch with no subscription required.

I wear a smart watch at the gym to track my heart rate, but when not at the gym I wear a mechanical watch (or some other normal watch... I recently got a Casio World Time I have love way more than I probably should).

I had an Apple Watch, but sold it, as I felt guilty not wearing it more, with all that it can do. I ended up getting the cheapest Polar watch option, that does everything on-device (I don't have an account or anything), and can wear that to the gym if I just want to check out my heart rate.

Try Garmin Instinct? It's a digital watch (not analog) and more of a fitness tracker than a smart watch. You can disable any notifications you don't want.

That's where I ended up. My Instinct has replaced my mechanical watches for every occasion except for the most formal. The app is decent, the metrics are awesome, and the accessories work without fuss (I pair mine with the Heart Rate strap when doing kettlebell stuff). I love my other watches and still have one or two I will eventually convince myself to buy, but the Garmin Instinct 2 has been on my wrist for 90% of the last year.

Is there any reason you don't just disable notifications? That's what I've done on my Apple watch and I've loved it.

I disabled all but the most important notifications (calls, texts primarily) and it's been great. I no longer have to drag my phone out of my pocket when someone calls me, and all unnecessary notifications can wait until I'm bored.

I had both a Pebble v1 and a Pebble v2 and loved them both. Pebble went defunct though, so I switched back to a Seiko 5 automatic dive watch once I found I didn't really care for any of the other available smart watches at the time.

There's something beautiful to me about a mechanical watch being tied to my personal relativity. Compared to an NTP synchronized smart watch, nothing should update the time on my watch but me. The actual usefulness of this feature is merely philosophical but it makes me happy to consider.

The only thing I miss is weather at a glance on my Pebble. I used a watch face with the temperature on it and to this day I still look at my wrist when I'm thinking about the temperature lol

I wish I could buy an Apple Watch without screen, crown and button. Just a smart disc to record all my Health and activity data, worn under my wristwatch

Mechanical watches these days are primarily about aesthetics. Although I must say that I find myself reaching less and less for my mobile these days to find out the time because I wear a mechanical watch.

A smartwatch is about data, primarily.

You can have both. Use the mechanical watch for occasions that require a formal attire and use the smartwatch as your daily driver and sport companion.

For me it was an easy choice. First, I was starting to worry about heart health. Second, my mechanical watches could be sold for more than I paid for them.

I have a Pixel Watch and I must say, I enjoy the sweeping second hand.

wouldn't this be the perfect use case for the hybrid watches? I am looking forward to buy a Kronaby for next year.

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