Hacker News Reader

Comment by infecto | Hacker News Reader

People value things differently but the battery life is always interesting to me. Certainly if I was backwoods hiking I get it but for my day to day I only take it off post workout in the morning as I shower and get ready for the day. It’s charged so quickly that I throw it back on as soon as I am done.

View on HN

Ultimately I charge my phone (almost) every day, so I'm sure I could charge my watch every day as well. But it's still another habit I have to build, another way I have to adjust my routine to accommodate the things that are supposed to make my life easier.

The other thing is, battery life degrades over time, which is relevant if you don't want to be buying new devices every couple of years. When I got my Garmin it probably held a charge for 6-7 days. After four years, that is probably closer to 4 days, which is still pretty good. If less than a day is the starting point, I can imagine that after 3+ years the battery life will be poor enough that you regularly end up wearing a paperweight on your wrist for some portion of the day.

There's a difference: I wear my watch, and I expect it to always work, and be accessible even at night

With the newer Apple Watches you can just use fast charging. I basically just charge it when I shower and do my night time hygiene routine and it’s ready to go back on my wrist to track my sleep and act as a silent vibration alarm in the morning so that I don’t wake my wife up early. The only time I run into battery life issues is when I go on a weekend camping trip.

Likewise–I pop it on the charger in the shower and occasionally at work if I'm at my desk. The alarms, timers, and reminders access (via Siri) more than makes up for the inconvenience of frequent charging. Notifications for messages and e-mails is just a bonus that sometimes ends up being a double-edged sword. The only downsides for me come on long bike rides, and that it is ugly (and getting too big, coming from a Casio F91-W).

I’ve owned both and the truth is Garmin makes the best fitness tracker that can be a smartwatch and Apple makes the best smartwatch that can be a fitness tracker.

My preferred alarm clock is the vibration from my fitness band. I wanted something extremely light with a long battery. Unfortunately, no modern fitness bands target this functionality. The vibration is weak, band is heavier, and the use large display. The best ones I used are probably 6-10 years old now.

The cheap Mi Band does it. The greatest annoyance is that if you forget it charging for too long the battery goes South.

Who makes the best (or at least very good) vibrating watch alarm today?

I am trying to figure that out.

All the manufacturers today are trying to sell connected services, so devices are accumulating lots of features and heft. In addition, none of the manufacturers quantify the strength of vibration (what units would that be expressed in?). The lightest bands are the lowest end/value models and have the worst vibration mechanisms.

What I want is: (1) see the current time (2) get a buzz for a notification (3) alarm clock (4) ability to wear for multiple days without charging.

That means you're always showering at home, which might work for you but it's a big constraint. If you work out / shower in different places and at different times, it might be harder to find a suitable charging routine.

I'm also wondering how it evolves. Batteries don't get better over time, I'd be worried of having to end up charging it twice a day in one year, which for a device this expensive is not great.

Certainly but my point was more that the watch charges quite quickly when done so on a daily basis. Not to mention it’s surprising that someone can get by without giving their skin a breather for a small portion of the day. Given that it’s healthy to let the skin breath it’s always interesting to hear the daily charge constraint as an issue. Are people keeping a garmin on their wrist 24/7 for 7 days? Simply a strange constraint that is always mentioned.

Similar to your battery life concern. It’s valid but we are on what…evolution 11 now? My current two year old watch has more than enough battery. Prior to that I had one for 4 years I think. Same deal no issues in batteries.

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

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.

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

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.

you can still charge it daily if you want...

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.

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.

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.

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?

Garmins went another way - the "Solar" models use sun to prolong battery life.

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, i've had a garmin and i've had an apple watch. both have their strong points, but the battery life of the apple watch was really just never an issue for me. it seems like it should be an obvious downsite, but it's pretty easy to get in the habit of charging it, and once it is habit its just really not an issue.

if anything, the garmin's battery life was a downside, because i wouldn't charge it daily, and then i'd go to start a bike ride and find it was at 10% battery.

Unless you're riding for 4-5 hours, 10% should still be more than enough to get through a workout though? And in my experience a 10 minute charge would have you north of 30%.

not in my experience. i had an edge 120 bike computer and a vivoactive watch, and the last 10% wasn't enough to get through anything. the 10% from 100 to 90% would be plenty, but the last 10% always drained really quick and charged slow.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com