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I love my dumb watches

gary.onl

21–30 of 98 posts

Re: I love my dumb watches

#21

"a few seconds a day" why is that accuracy even needed? Sure, if you work with computers (that can tell time too), or are a mariner without GPS. But otherwise, just live with it.

It's a watch. It's an item that literally has one single job: tell the time accurately. It goes without saying that it should do a pretty good job at this and be accurate.

Define "accuracy".

What, if anything, in your life needs to be done with-in ±5 minutes? If the analog minute hand "should" be on 2, but it's closer to 1 or 3, how many things will fall apart in your life?

Re: I love my dumb watches

#22
post #15

Not sure he researched his options well enough. The Garmin watches that use a MIP display only require a charge about once a month, probably even less if you turn off the Bluetooth, which gives him the other thing he wants, no distracting messages relayed from the phone. Battery life is potentially even longer for the models with solar charging. I also find the reasoning in " Why track your sleep at all? If you’ve ha…

My cheap dumb watch requires battery change once in 4 years and counting. > also find the reasoning in "Why track your sleep at all? If you’ve had a crap night, you’ll wake up tired." weird. That's the equivalent of saying "Why track your blood pressure at all? If you've had a problem with high blood pressure, you'll wake up with a stroke These are not nearly comparable. If you have issue, regular blood pressure meas…

Casio has just released W-221H watches that talk about 10 year battery life:

* https://www.casio.com/intl/watches/casio/product.W-221H-1AV/

If you're willing to spend a bit more, there are solar powered watches (digital and analog faces).

Re: I love my dumb watches

#23
My parents bought an automatic Orient watch for each of them in the 70s - those that don't require batteries nor anything. My mother's watch was stolen somewhere in the 2010s and my father broke the crystal and kept stored for like 15 years or so. Just some weeks ago I remembered about it and sent it to service - now it looks and works like new and the service itself wasn't expensive. I'm pretty amazed.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#24

Not sure he researched his options well enough. The Garmin watches that use a MIP display only require a charge about once a month, probably even less if you turn off the Bluetooth, which gives him the other thing he wants, no distracting messages relayed from the phone. Battery life is potentially even longer for the models with solar charging. I also find the reasoning in " Why track your sleep at all? If you’ve ha…

> I also find the reasoning in "Why track your sleep at all? If you’ve had a crap night, you’ll wake up tired." weird. That's the equivalent of saying "Why track your blood pressure at all? If you've had a problem with high blood pressure, you'll wake up with a stroke." Not that the sleep tracking on smartwatches seems to be worth much but I just don't agree with the logic.

Equating tracking sleep to tracking a diagnosed and dangerous medical condition seems ridiculous. Not even remotely equivalent. There are lots of things in life that aren't worth the effort of tracking. There was a recent post here about a guy who spent years meticulously tracking every aspect of his life so he could crunch all the data and learn something interesting about himself. He learned in the end that he learned nothing new worth knowing.

"Why track your tumor at all? If the tumor becomes malignant, you'll wake up dead". That must be equivalent too right?

Re: I love my dumb watches

#25

I also love them and wear an analog watch every day. Something funny I've noticed (anecdote warning) is that a lot of tech-savvy people I know wear an analog watch, and a lot of people who are not really tech savvy love to wear every digital gadget they can get their hands on, including smart watches.

A lot of people view tech as magic and are wow'd by it. But many people that work in tech, based on their experience working with it, view it more as an eldritch horror. There's something comforting about a mechanical watch that people have been making by hand for hundreds of years.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#27
post #13

Not sure he researched his options well enough. The Garmin watches that use a MIP display only require a charge about once a month, probably even less if you turn off the Bluetooth, which gives him the other thing he wants, no distracting messages relayed from the phone. Battery life is potentially even longer for the models with solar charging. I also find the reasoning in " Why track your sleep at all? If you’ve ha…

So whats the point of wearing a garmin if you disable bluetooth? It doesn't seem like he needs GPS tracking or maps.

Every time I read one of these articles it sounds like the author was forced to adopt a smartwatch at gunpoint.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#28

Not sure he researched his options well enough. The Garmin watches that use a MIP display only require a charge about once a month, probably even less if you turn off the Bluetooth, which gives him the other thing he wants, no distracting messages relayed from the phone. Battery life is potentially even longer for the models with solar charging. I also find the reasoning in " Why track your sleep at all? If you’ve ha…

Because there isn't much that is actionable with sleep tracking. You can lose weight if you have sleep apnea, and anecdotally people claim that not drinking helps, but you don't need a watch to tell you that. With blood pressure, you get on losartan and see the results immediately.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#29
post #15

Not sure he researched his options well enough. The Garmin watches that use a MIP display only require a charge about once a month, probably even less if you turn off the Bluetooth, which gives him the other thing he wants, no distracting messages relayed from the phone. Battery life is potentially even longer for the models with solar charging. I also find the reasoning in " Why track your sleep at all? If you’ve ha…

My cheap dumb watch requires battery change once in 4 years and counting. > also find the reasoning in "Why track your sleep at all? If you’ve had a crap night, you’ll wake up tired." weird. That's the equivalent of saying "Why track your blood pressure at all? If you've had a problem with high blood pressure, you'll wake up with a stroke These are not nearly comparable. If you have issue, regular blood pressure meas…

True but these examples illustrates how fitness watches' underlying value prop, their pitch, is to convince users to make it a daily lifestyle. There's a spectrum of practicality though: there's less reason to monitor blood pressure on a minute-by-minute basis, with graphs and trends and metrics, but an initial novelty wears off after a few weeks of monitoring sleep that way. It's cool and interesting at first, but hard to justify it as a constant lifestyle. Maybe insulin / glucose is interesting from a data-heavy perspective, but diabetics eventually gain an instinct for what meals spoke what and when, and start to lay off the data and metrics. The novelty wears off.
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