I am thinking of getting Fitbit for my sleep tracking and fitness. Still haven't decided. What is your experience with smartwatches? Which one would you recommend? Is it worth it in your opinion?
Ask HN: What is your experience with smartwatches? Is it worth it?
1–10 of 21 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is your experience with smartwatches? Is it worth it?
#2What I want is a way to collect heart rate and activity, ideally without a display, as I'd like to continue wearing my nice Swiss automatic watch. This device should stream all the information into the iOS health app, I explicitly do not want to store it off-device on some vendors cloud I have no idea if they are long-term trustworthy.
The closest I came to it was something from Garmin, rather small but with a display. I stopped using it as it became apparent that their data privacy policy was awful, I either could consent to everything or their app would basically be useless. This is over 1 ago, they might have changed the policies, don't know.
I have surrendered to the market now and got an Apple watch. It at least ensures that the data is not spread to additional companies, as apple has the data anyway. It's a nice product, but honestly mostly a gimmick for me.
Re: Ask HN: What is your experience with smartwatches? Is it worth it?
#3I have owned a Fitbit Alta for over 2 years. When I got it I wore it all the time, except when it was charging. The strap broke after 3 months, bought a replacement strap and that is now held together with twine. Now I only wear it when going for a long walk, i.e. over 100 minutes.
The sleep tracking function was OK, but I think it is not robust enough to be worn 24x7 (less the 5-6 hours it takes to recharge). From various tests, the step counter seems to be in error more than the claimed 5%. I still use the phone app to track my weight using a conventional (non-Fitbit) digital scale and entering the values manually most days.
It's one of those techy things. When you don't have one you think of all the benefits. After months of ownership the novelty wears off and it is all rather mheh. Fitbit keep sending me emails to upgrade to their latest and greatest. Seriously, you can buy a Seiko Kinetic watch for the price of a low end Fitbit and the Seiko will work for decades without even needing a new battery. Why keep buying ever more expensive smartwatches?
Re: Ask HN: What is your experience with smartwatches? Is it worth it?
#4i've had a middle of the road garmin for a few years now. What watch you want depends what you want out of it. I cycle daily and like to have the information available for how long my commute is, what the weather was like (though the wind speeds are often very off).
It works nicely as a watch too, though unless you pay top whack they aren't very fashionable looking.
I don't care much about apps, but I do care if it can connect to other equipment (like a rowing machine or a turbo) so being ANT+ compatible is important to me.
Re: Ask HN: What is your experience with smartwatches? Is it worth it?
#5I bought one to try for only sleep tracking, the FitBit Versa. It tracks sleep very well and shows you when you were awake or in deep sleep. However, my only complaint with it is that some of the data is hidden behind a premium subscription. I already paid for the FitBit and now they're taking my data and trying to sell it back to me? No thanks. For this reason, I'll be returning it after I've made some adjustments to my sleep.
Re: Ask HN: What is your experience with smartwatches? Is it worth it?
#6I tried the first smartwatch from Samsung, but in the end, I switched to Xiaomi MiBand for daily monitoring of sleep, steps and receiving notifications as it's small and lightweight and Polar Sport Watch for sports
Re: Ask HN: What is your experience with smartwatches? Is it worth it?
#7I bought an Apple Watch 4 back in February and by May had stopped using it entirely. I wanted to use it as a complete replacement for my cell phone, and I think the main thing that kept me from doing that was 2fa codes.
You have to charge most smartwatches fairly often, and most people charge them at night, so sleep tracking is difficult. Plus I've read that some of them don't do sleep tracking very well, and I can confirm that with my experience with the Apple Watch 4. It would indicate I was asleep when I knew I was awake (like to use the restroom in the middle of the night), and would indicate I was awake when I'm pretty sure I was asleep.
I bought a cheap-o Mi Band or whatever it's called, and was using that for sleep tracking. It was like $25. I would suggest you start with that. Their Mi Smart Band 4 advertises that it tracks sleep, so maybe it does a good-enough job?
Re: Ask HN: What is your experience with smartwatches? Is it worth it?
#8I bought an Apple Watch 4 back in February and by May had stopped using it entirely. I wanted to use it as a complete replacement for my cell phone, and I think the main thing that kept me from doing that was 2fa codes. You have to charge most smartwatches fairly often, and most people charge them at night, so sleep tracking is difficult. Plus I've read that some of them don't do sleep tracking very well, and I can c…
I did this the other way around. Started with a Mi Band that did HR/sleep tracking and found it to be great value for its price. I used it religiously for 6 months and figured that was justification to get an Apple Watch. Despite its larger form factor and greater functionality, I find it to be pretty gimmicky in spite of using it for 2+ years. I pretty much use it for notifications (SMS/phone) and activity tracking. Everything else has been pretty meh. I'm ready to go back to Mi Band and don't feel like I'll miss much.
Re: Ask HN: What is your experience with smartwatches? Is it worth it?
#9If you only want to use it for sleep tracking and fitness and don't care about the other smart watch features, look into Whoop. You pay a monthly fee instead of up front but it is a much better fitness and sleep tracker than any smart watch I know of.
Bonus: You can charge the whoop while you wear it so you don't miss out on sleep tracking as is mentioned in other comments.
Re: Ask HN: What is your experience with smartwatches? Is it worth it?
#10I bought a FitBit Inspire HR earlier this year. Overall I've been underwhelmed. Here's my breakdown of the features:
- Sleep tracking. Very useful, if a bit shallow. Revealed issues to me that I'm working on now.
- Exercise tracking. The manual stuff is fine, but the automatic tracking is bad. Sometimes it thinks a car ride is a bike ride. Doesn't pick up long walks half the time. My friend uses the built in stuff on his Android phone and it seems to work better.
- Heart rate monitor. All it gives you is a crappy line graph. Doesn't seem very accurate. This feature is too shallow to be useful.
- Moving reminders. All you can do it set hours and days for a 10 minute reminder before the end of an hour. I don't even notice the reminder most of the time. Its inflexibility makes it pretty useless for me. More robust reminders and a calendar integration would probably help.
- Weight tracking. Not really helpful to me, as I weigh myself each morning on a regular scale.
- Water intake. Never used it.
- Calorie tracking. The UI isn't very helpful if you cook your own food. The calorie tracking display is often wrong and contradictory. I filed a detailed bug report and linked a bunch of online forum posts with the same problem, to get a canned response about reinstalling the app.
- Step tracker. I drum on my desk alot and it mistakes it for steps. This makes it really inaccurate for me.
I'll probably keep using it till it dies and look at other options like Oura.