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I love my dumb watches

gary.onl

91–98 of 98 posts

Re: I love my dumb watches

#91

I like my Apple Watch loads. Yes, it tells me the time and the date. And the weather. It has a timer. (It can't make a call by itself.) It will tell me if I have AFIB. I'm getting older -- it will detect a fall, or a car wreck. And I only have to charge it up once every day and a half or so...or for about 15 minutes to get me through a night of sleep monitoring. Watches of all sorts are cool. I often have watch envy.

> Watches of all sorts are cool. I often have watch envy.

Hard not too. You can only really wear one, after all.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t see how there is nothing actionable from sleep tracking. If I have a week of bad sleep scores I don’t go for a long run on the weekend. I don’t indulge in things I would otherwise do, and I make an effort to get off a screen and to bed earlier until I get a solid 8 hours of sleep

But the sleep score tells you nothing. I wake up and I always know roughly what it will be because I already feel it. If my feelings and the watch disagree, the feelings are correct. I get both pieces of information at the same time. The only reason I track it at all is as a kind of memory of how I've been doing, but I could equally well make a note of my feelings.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#93
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Catching a train.

Frankly it's a total non-issue because you now have your train ticket on a mobile app on a mobile device with synchronized internet time anyway. Most people are wearing mechanical watches today as jewellery and a physical piece of craftsmanship that's nice to keep time that's directionally correct, but if it's out by 30seconds it's no big deal and you just reset it against the time on your phone and get on with your day.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#94

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 diagn…

The reason to track things is simply to make cool graphs, and that is certainly a very valid reason!

Re: I love my dumb watches

#96
My Fitbit died two weeks ago. I had purchased it because I can set multiple silent alarms. I could replace the battery but then it’s likely that the watertight seal would be compromised. I’ve put on my analogue watch, learned to live with my phone for alarms and so far so good. No worrying about the charge state every few days. No syncing with apps etc.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#97

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 turned off all tracking on my Garmin besides real time heart rate. It only drained battery overnight and the tracking wasn't even that good as it even counted time I was reading or playing on Switch as sleeping.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#98
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Catching a train.

Frankly it's a total non-issue because you now have your train ticket on a mobile app on a mobile device with synchronized internet time anyway. Most people are wearing mechanical watches today as jewellery and a physical piece of craftsmanship that's nice to keep time that's directionally correct, but if it's out by 30seconds it's no big deal and you just reset it against the time on your phone and get on with your…

I still use paper tickets and many others do too! At any rate though, I agree. It doesn't matter to me that my mechanical watch is often out by 30 seconds. I don't mind checking and adjusting it every now and then so it's never off by ±5 minutes where it would cause problems for me.
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