I am fine without a smartwatch

I swear Casio has a tighter tech geek brand than Apple. I discovered their pocket dictionary line a couple years ago and it practically made me drool.

https://www.casio.com/jp/exword/

Were they always this expensive? I just looked at the prices and a simple digital watch is $180 and up

I guess it depends on your environment, and social circle(s).

Here in Finland Apple watches are the most obvious "standard", as seen on over half the people taking the tram or bus. But in other circles the Rolex Daytona, or Submariners are ubiquitous.

I collect mechanical watches, with about forty that I rotate through depending on my planned activities, or mood. But it has to be said I own one quartz watch and it is the Casio terrorist watch!

I don't think this article is for regular people who don't think about watches. It's for people who are into watches, own several, and rotate them depending on their mood. I have an old college friends who is like this, and he has about a dozen expensive wind up watches. They're nice, but I have never felt jealous.

I bought a Garmin Fenix 5s when they came out. It's not like a Samsung or Apple smart watch: no touchscreen, no bright colourful OLED. Just a pretty simple waterproof watch with 5 physical buttons, GPS, WIFI, heart rate sensor, altimeter and notification mirroring from my phone. I look at it when I want to know the time or when I get a notification. That's is.

This morning I was in the kitchen making coffee and I logged into a website on my laptop. It sent me an SMS verification code, but my phone was still upstairs... Wait .. hold... "bzzzzz!" My wrist has the code. This was the main reason I bought it. It helps with phone addiction. I no longer have to pull my phone out of my pocket for 90%+ notifications. After being on a very busy on-call for years, this was a huge deal for me. I had unwittingly turned into Quick Draw McGraw because of the constant practice of pulling my phone out to ack an alert. Once your phone is in your hand, it's amazing how quickly you flip from the notification to social media or the web. The watch changed all of that, and I got some of my sanity back.

... What?

Almost any hardware you buy today, the very desktop/laptop/tablet/smartphone you write your own comment on, has been made by "exploited poor people" in some factory in a distant country, guaranteed. Not sure why you'd think a non-smartwatch is any different.