Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wyze $20 Smart Watch

wyze.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 290 posts

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#111

Post by breck »

robocat wrote: post #84
breck wrote: post #25

Apple was smart not to compete on the low-end for watches. Median income in the USA is $68,703. Why would someone spend 1/25 of 1 percent of their income on something that they wear 100% of the time? That makes no sense. I shell out $200-$300 each year for the latest FitBit (Apple Watch is promising, but that battery life :(. The sleep tracking is gold).

Here’s the income distribution per household from the last census: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizat... There are a lot of people that can’t spend $200 on a watch, but can spend $20.

That's a good point.

U.S. per capita healthcare spending is $11,172. If the U.S. gave everyone a $200 a year tax credit to spend on a smart health watch, we'd probably save $2,000 a year per capita and get a 10x ROI.

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#112

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

jerlam wrote: post #85

Smartwatches have fallen so far from their peak. In 2015, Pebble had a watch that had: - an app store, third party apps, third party watch faces, and a developer ecosystem - always on screen that didn't require a button press or specific arm gesture, and worked in bright, normally lit conditions - physical buttons instead of tiny buttons on a tiny screen barely larger than the finger pressing it - week long battery l…

You can get most of the Pebble features you listed on the Amazfit Bip and Gadgetbridge.

It's not perfect, but it's the closest thing to what the Pebble used to be.

See this thread from below here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25269500

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#113

Post by vanous »

modeless wrote: post #96
ce4 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look for devices supported by the gadgetbridge 3rd party app (found in android's f-droid store). I have an Amazfit Bip S lite. 45days battery, always on lcd. Custom notification filters by gadgetbridge. Great https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge

I assure you, I have evaluated everything on the market. Amazfit devices are >1cm thick (even the ones that claim 9.2mm, it's a lie). They are also larger diameter than the Pebble Time Round, so overall more than twice as big and much less comfortable. The phone software is nowhere near as good, the watch UI is poorly designed, and the watch face/app selection is poor in comparison to Pebble. I haven't tried gadgetbr…

It is fragile. But, the key can be fetched from their server. No root, no funky hacked app, judt one time effort. Bip is not perfect, but the translucent display and GPS, plus many weeks of life are great. You can even push it for BipOs and write your own apps.

Disclosure: I help with Gadgetbridge :)

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#115

Post by breck »

schwartzworld wrote: post #82
breck wrote: post #25

Apple was smart not to compete on the low-end for watches. Median income in the USA is $68,703. Why would someone spend 1/25 of 1 percent of their income on something that they wear 100% of the time? That makes no sense. I shell out $200-$300 each year for the latest FitBit (Apple Watch is promising, but that battery life :(. The sleep tracking is gold).

> I shell out $200-$300 each year for the latest FitBit Why would you update your Fitbit that often? Is it really that much of a difference from year to year?

Sometimes I'll go 2 years without upgrading. Certainly the difference every 2 years is enough to warrant it. It seems there's a new sensor for measuring a new dimension at least every 2 years. But I also put these things through the wringer (lots of physical activity, including salt water ocean adventures).

I wear them 24/7, so it's literally the thing I use most in the world.

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#116

Post by breck »

ghaff wrote: post #83
breck wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$200 spent on a FitBit will save thousands on annual healthcare bills.

Someone using a FitBit as part of shifting to a healthier lifestyle may result in better health outcomes (and presumably lower costs) but there's no " will save thousands on annual healthcare bills" about it. Certainly just wearing a FitBit has zero effect on health if you don't do anything based on the collected data.

> Certainly just wearing a FitBit has zero effect on health if you don't do anything based on the collected data.

Surprisingly, even this I disagree with. Simply buying one nudges the healthcare world to a more data driven place, and simply wearing one provides data and feedback to the ecosystem that will have a positive value.

That being said, yeah you should look at the data if you personally want to benefit.

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#117

Post by ce4 »

modeless wrote: post #96
ce4 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look for devices supported by the gadgetbridge 3rd party app (found in android's f-droid store). I have an Amazfit Bip S lite. 45days battery, always on lcd. Custom notification filters by gadgetbridge. Great https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge

I assure you, I have evaluated everything on the market. Amazfit devices are >1cm thick (even the ones that claim 9.2mm, it's a lie). They are also larger diameter than the Pebble Time Round, so overall more than twice as big and much less comfortable. The phone software is nowhere near as good, the watch UI is poorly designed, and the watch face/app selection is poor in comparison to Pebble. I haven't tried gadgetbr…

Yep, the newer amazfit's server based key-pairing is nuts, but there's a solution and you only need to do it once until you hard reset your watch (hopefully never). The watch dials are rather ugly but functional. The built in dials are also much better battery-wise than custom faces

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#118

Post by throwaway201103 »

breck wrote: post #75
jcrawfordor wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one perspective: about five years ago I stopped buying expensive phones. Now I buy economy Motorolas, and I've never looked back. The performance is somewhat worse than a flagship phone, but I damage my phones pretty frequently and I'm so much less worried about it when the replacement cost is $200 rather than $900. Price has been a main barrier to my wearing a smart watch as my expectation is that something o…

It's a reasonable perspective, and one a lot of my friends share. I guess I look at value/cost. I drive a $2,000 car and use a $1,000 phone because I get a lot of value for the extra $500 in the phone, but wouldn't get more value out of having a nicer car. Like you, I also find it nice to worry less about the car because the replacement cost is low. But I view the value of smart watches in the $100,000+s if not $1M+s…

> How much is it worth to passively keep an eye on your heart rate, and stress levels, and oxygen levels, and sleep levels

For me, zero? Or close to it. I can't imagine obsessing about this stuff. I think it would cause me more stress than it would help. That's to say nothing about the privacy issues.

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#119

Post by antidaily »

jerlam wrote: post #85

Smartwatches have fallen so far from their peak. In 2015, Pebble had a watch that had: - an app store, third party apps, third party watch faces, and a developer ecosystem - always on screen that didn't require a button press or specific arm gesture, and worked in bright, normally lit conditions - physical buttons instead of tiny buttons on a tiny screen barely larger than the finger pressing it - week long battery l…

I backed the first Pebble. I think you're overselling how great things were as compared to now, where I can make calls from my wrist or use it as golf GPS. And it's not like smart watches are the only app ecosystem to become closed and shittier.

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#120

Post by interestica »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #70
fullstop wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look into the Amazfit Bip. A bit more than $20, but cheap and the battery lasts ~40 days. If you're using GPS a lot it will be less than 40. Even so, battery life is measured in weeks, not days.

I'm still rocking my Bip even though I don't use most of the smart features(heart-rate sensor doesn't seem very accurate). I just wear it as a regular watch because it looks good, it's slim and discrete, visible in the sun, has customizable watchfaces and shows me notifications from my phone(via Gadgetbridge, no cloud account BS). That's all I need, I don't want fancy interactive smartphone features on my watch to pr…

My BIP fell apart (the screen popped off). Was relatively easy to re-glue. It's a common issue.

But I was most fascinated to see the hardware inside. It's crazy how miniature it is when the actual body/face of the watch is detached.

I actually stopped wearing it simply because I found even the basic notifications I had set were affecting my brain -- an issue with any smartwatch, not just the BIP.

One cool hack I worked out was combining MacroDroid + BIP to trigger any phone action (Intent). So, you can use the BIP as a remote trigger for your camera, to start/stop music, send an SMS, etc. I added a tutorial to Reddit a while back but can find it if you're interested.

Post reply on HN