Funny enough, watches with longer battery life can mess up your charging habits. I had this problem with my old Pebble watch. Yeah, the battery lasted longer, but I'd forget to charge it and end up with a dead watch more often than I do with my Apple Watch.
Now, I just pop it on the charger every morning, and I'm good to go. No more worrying about it dying on me out of nowhere.
I have tried a couple other smart watches but I keep going back to my Pebble as it does all I care about. Until they can get to a solid 4-5 days of life (or Rebble stops working) I don't know that I'll be too tempted to replace it permanently. The Garmin line is interesting though.
Apart from telling time, I like how it tracks my steps and sleep, and can send music to my earphones so I don't have to bring my phone out for a run. I also like being able to use the watch as a camera viewfinder/remote.
One huge plus of the Apple ecosystem is the sheer number of watch straps I get to choose from, which lets me dress up the watch if I have to. And to top it all off, I get a nice screen.
I wouldn't have made the switch if the battery life was incompatible with my lifestyle, but so far, so good.
Also, it’s just enjoyable.
Yet somehow it's reporting 90% battery capacity. I might finally upgrade anyway, since it's the only device holding me back from enabling advanced data protection on iCloud.
Unfortunately Ikea discontinued their larger version, and now sell Sonos/Ikea co-branded speakers instead with less drivers, and more money. They sound good, but not as good as their older, larger predecessors.
[1] https://www.siam2nite.com/en/magazine/lifestyle/item/834-mee...
Do you use your watch to control the Bluetooth playback? If so, When controlling it in the shower, do you find that the touch screen has a hard time sometimes registering your touch, or having it accurately sense?
If you have a 20min commute each direction you can get most of the way charged and make it through the night!
Maybe. If I keep still for about 20mins and there aren't any buildings around.
And it's not a cloudy day.
I thought you had typoed but no, that's really what it's called.
Why?
> Competing watches from Garmin don't seem to have this design flaw.
This oversimplifies the issue. The Apple Watch has a much broader range of functionality than Garmin's products, doesn't it?
My experience with Kindles!
I've got an SE at current (had a 4 before it finally keeled over, and this one has essentially identical features and was readily available) and I just don't get the battery griping. Mine only uses a scant 70% ish of it's available capacity. I wear it every day while sleeping and to/from work, then come home and toss it on the charger till bed time.
...but I can miss a day... or 12 days. 13d = full charge
This could also help in keeping the battery size in check. The engineering of all aspects should be balanced.
Battery doesn't last long? Well, let's forget that the entire market has trended towards catering to a customer desire for long-life batteries -- it's a feature to help coordinate 'charging habits'!... whatever that is.
Less keyboard space and battery life? No worries because that touch-bar is going to increase productivity so many more times than without it!
"No user replaceable battery? Of course not -- those are dangerous!"
which eventually devolves into :
"Well, my reception is terrible, but I was holding it wrong "
It's not really a grievance of mine, it's more like an utter amazement that somehow Apple and Tesla are the only companies that seem to be able to foster that kind of behavior in their fans.
The price points of both groups make me think it's sort of an advanced 'buyer's remorse' , but I don't know.
And don’t _dare_ compare the charging situation to the touch bar. Let’s just all agree that was an abomination.
Their mission with watch clearly isn't a multiday battery thing, it's a compromise for high quality displays and performance. The market exists for alternatives. The lack of good ones would be on them not just Apple.
In my decade plus experience those bad examples like touchbar are few and far in between.
Battery technology just isn’t there. Bigger battery means heavier device. Duracell made a smartphone with a huge-ass multiday battery… that the market did not ask for. It has to be a compromise unfortunately.
As for the Touch Bar I don’t really understand the hate for it. The execution was subpar but I miss its ability to autofill forms just like on the iPhone and generally using the autocomplete UI the same way. There’s no replacement now.
As for the batteries, I hope they’re eventually forced to fold on that issue, but it will come at the expense of design, size and weight. Again a compromise.
The reception one you’re right.
I have a xaiomi mi band 9. The body to screen ratio is roughly the same as the Apple Watch. It does HR tracking, workouts, has excellent 1000 night brightness, weather, notifications etc. I get about 15 days from a charge. They say I can get 21. But either way. I understand the Apple Watch is running better hardware and more things in the background, but there’s also significantly more space in the watch for battery. It might be doing more but a factor of 15x is a crazy differential.
What is it doing? Monitoring some sensors, communicating with a phone via bluetooth, running a screen.
Apple Watches are designed for much more interaction and variety of capability.
It can be hard to understand this if you haven’t used an Apple Watch.
You’re misinformed about the space for substantial additional battery. Look at any teardown to see the compact component fitting.
Your mi band is a great device; just be realistic about the tradeoffs. Other devices don’t have to suck for yours to be good.
(I’ve owned multiple Xiaomi and Apple devices.)
You don't understand why people wouldn't like something that takes away what they used regularly (function keys) and gave them something that necessitated looking away from their screen in order to even use and provided extremely limited use cases?
Seems pretty easy to understand
apple sells 34% of smartwatches: https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/02/22/apple-watch-domin...
and most of the rest are deeply crap Android things that don't have week-long battery life.
I have a "dumbphone" with a battery that lasts 1 to 2 weeks depending on use, it's such a surprise when the battery goes that I'm often stuck without it being charged.
I already have daily habits around charging, so that doesn't bother me, and if I'm traveling I can either bring a charger or put the watch in low power mode where it lasts a surprisingly long time.
My Apple watch purchase was basically for one feature. Fall detection, and automatic 911 calling. I bought the watch when I had a close call with a car while riding my bike to work, and wanted to make sure in case of an accident, I'd at least probably die in the ambulance and not on the side of the road :)
There also don’t appear to be any Mastodon or Instagram apps, or at least none that I've noticed. My recipe manager has a watch app that guides me through the steps, provides ingredient lists, and sets timers at each stage — nothing like that exists for Garmin. My strength training app includes demonstration videos on the watch, which I don't see on Garmin. My diet tracking app isn't supported, and I haven’t found anything comparable. Adding things like an Amtrak ticket to a Garmin seems complicated, and I've read mixed reports about how well it scans QR codes.
Overall, while Garmin excels at fitness tracking, it lacks many of the features and apps I've come to depend on.
https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=IPD6X8JSLBAUQOXvz7zBO6
You have a valid point on the other missing apps.
The Quantified Scientist on Youtube has ever-updated charts in pretty much any of his videos that investigate the accuracy of a given health tracker wearable.
You can find updated data in newer videos, but here's his video on the Apple Watch Series 9: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4igZ3DEhrk4
Check out the chapter titles with "Comparison w/ other watches" to see charts for heart rate accuracy and sleep accuracy across different product lines. Apple Watch is best in class (e.g. 99% convergence with Polar chest strap).
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2024/08/garmin-fenix-8-in-depth-...
And the whole point is that you don't need to wear a Polar chest strap and a bunch of sleep lab electrodes to get good results. We're talking about something you get to wear on your wrist that takes calls and does all sorts of things.
But the person above asked for a differentiator.
But the "cheaper models" are still more expensive than what is Apple's Top Model. Which excels at my main usage scenario (being a smartwatch) and also superbly supports various secondary activities (like diving).
And, by the way, having to decide from all those models is not exactly a selling point. I am not primarily a diver, a skier, a runner, a hiker or a biker - but I occasionally do all of those.
With superb integration in the Apple ecosystem, apps for everything and cheaper prices for top hardware, Apple watch is the perfect default choice. It's Garmin's burden to convince me to switch and they are not succeeding.
Edit: note on charge, it’s probably more, but it’s just while I sip my coffee. I never pay attention to it despite the claims of battery life woes.
I don't wear an Apple watch at night (and I don't plan to upgrade to this one) but for the first time I think I could see how this might work for someone.
Now if it could charge from the face while still on my wrist ...
But yeah I don’t see it happening because they’d never acknowledge that taking your watch off twice a day is a chore.
I also don’t see the logistics of how on arm charging would work. Would I just hold my arm in a fixed position for 30 minutes? Seems like a nightmare.
Even if it was just 24 hours that's not good enough. Let's say you religiuosly charge it immediately after arriving home from work, at 6PM. Then one day you go out to dinner and grab some drinks and stay out until 11. It'll have been 28 hours since you grabbed it off the charger the previous day so you won't have use of your watch that evening.
However, it does look like they improved the charging story—something like 80% in 30 minutes? Not bad.
When I charge my watch at the end of the day, I usually have plenty to spare, but not always enough to make it through to the morning (especially if I tracked an exercise). Even if a new watch got 24hrs of battery life, I would still have to charge it at night so I wouldn't really matter. I'd guess that 18hrs it a balance that keeps people content and gives Apple's engineers enough room to fit in all the features they want.
Of course, I would love to be able to track a long exercise or a 10-hour hike...but there's a different price tier for that.
Even then you’re still charging every other day, so is that so much better than every day?
18->120 hours would be a real change, but that’s almost a 7x increase.
I want to put that thing on in the morning on a Friday, get a text message from a friend about some crazy party of weekend event and be able to attend that to make it home Sunday night to get ready for work on Monday.
Enjoy it!
Size? I have small wrist but it feels fine and is reasonably comfortable with the standard wrist band. Impressive screen and tactile UI.
Normal use: up to 36 hours
Low Power Mode: up to 72 hours
Without any activity tracking it lasts ~40 days on a charge, and charges in about an hour. If you live somewhere sunny like I do, even with tracking it lasts practically forever cause of the solar panel.
The flashlight also seemed like a gimmick at first but it's surprised me in how often I reach for it
I don't care about the usual smartwatch crap. I already have a phone, not gonna be sending messages on my watch, but I guess that can be a bummer if you care about it.
This is precisely why I stopped using my Garmin. I did really like it and used it when I was running daily. But when I went on long hikes (8+ miles), I often ran out of battery. The watch charged very fast, but I got sick of having to remember to charge it daily if I wanted to track an activity.
I now wear my Fossil ('dumb'?) watch daily. After maybe five years, I've replaced the battery once. It's so much nicer than a daily recharge.
I’ll randomly once a month remember to charge it and that’s enough. I’ve never had the battery dip below 27 days remaining.
My old garmin was a forerunner 945 and I could about two days of hiking in on a charge, maybe more with battery-saving stuff on, but this is a whole different ballpark now.
Though there's some options that will drastically improve battery life (I think measuring Blood oxygen is a good battery life killer IIRC)
I think most models can easily do 5+ hours of GPS on a single charge.
Also, it boggles my mind but the alarms/haptics in my S8 seem weirdly unreliable. Like 10% of the time my alarms just decide not to vibrate and I don't wake up. Tons of people have this problem and it seems to have something to do with the cover to mute gesture, but disabling it in settings doesn't fix the issue.
For those two reasons I'm strongly considering ditching my apple watch and grabbing a garmin instead. Just trying to decide if the move outside of the ecosystem is worth it and which model to buy.
If you're willing to live with not enabling raise to wake, AoD and Sleep Tracking, you might be able to pull off like 20+ days of battery life, not that I would want to, I like it not dropping that far so I haven't tested it fully
I'm not aware of how well do Xiaomi's Bands play with iOS, but might be worth a shot, it's a cheap enough option
For example, on my Vivoactive 4, recording a "Hike" activity is impossible. Instead, I have to record all my hikes as "Walks".
They should trim their offerings down to fewer than 10 models instead of the 28 currently listed.
0: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/wearables-smartwatches/?curre...
Wouldn’t want to run that all the time though with all it likely disables.
That also means it takes 15 years to have the same number of charging cycles as Apple gets in a year.
They’ve used efficiency gains to get more features over the years.
You're full of shit. I've owned a Pebble and now own an apple watch and the Pebble doesn't even come close to the features.