Wyze $20 Smart Watch • Hacker News Board

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#201

Post by Chris2048 » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 1:53 AM UTC

LolWolf wrote: post #169

MikeKusold wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Garmin has been crushing it with their smartwatches. * App store with 3rd party apps and faces. * Always on screen * Physical buttons (Vivoactive is mostly touchscreen oriented, but all their "athlete" watches use buttons) * Week long battery life - Even running GPS tracking for 12 hours straight leaves enough battery for the next day. The biggest downside to the Garmin is trying to figure out which watch to buy. The…

My main problem with Garmin, and the one that gets me really hard when camping, is the fact that Connect requires internet in order to be able to see even basic statistics. I absolutely love my Garmin Vivomove Style, but because of the small screen I can't really see any activity other than very basic things, which requires that I fall back to my phone app... which doesn't work when camping or hiking because I don't…

Maybe rephrase "and the one that gets me really hard when camping"..

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#202

Post by samatman » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

kissgyorgy wrote: post #95

If you want a "smart enough" watch and you are mainly care for your health, I highly recommend any of the watches from Withings: https://www.withings.com/hu/en/ They are a really awesome company, not trying to sell you some shit and making money, but honestly wanting to develop good products to improve your life! Very useful features for health monitoring and they don't cost as much. Plus the watches looks super cool…

I wore a Steel HR for a couple years, and if the heart rate monitoring had been reliable, I most likely still would.

Liked having a real watch, loved only charging it every two weeks, but finishing a squat set and having it tell me my heart rate was 60BPM when it was closer to 180 just bugged me.

This was before they put in sapphire glass, during the time when it was sold as a Nokia, so it wouldn't surprise me if they improved this in newer models.

The Apple Watch does so much more that it isn't even funny, but it's also not a watch, it's a rounded rectangle that sits on my wrist where a watch goes. I wish the perfect fusion between these products actually existed...

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#203

Post by slenk » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 2:04 AM UTC

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #133

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 miss my Pebble big time. Still nothing compares.

I would encourage you to look at Garmin watches. They definitely compare

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#204

Post by phs318u » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 2:06 AM UTC

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…

I'm not sure how you evaluated it. I took my Amazfit Bip off my wrist in order to measure it right now. From top glass to bump at bottom surrounding the optical sensor it's 8mm.The diagonal from case edge to case edge,is 47mm. I agree that the phone software could be better. However, I think the watch UI is reasonable given the constraints. As for watch-face selection - there are a couple of dozen - how many do you want for <$100?

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#205

Post by samatman » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 2:07 AM UTC

bagacrap wrote: post #160

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #149

personally, i find the 9 day battery life to be pretty darn impressive in this day and age. i also like the heart rate monitor, great for runners.

I've found wrist based hr to be extremely unreliable to the point of uselessness when exercising.

Some are, some aren't.

Like the sibling, I've found Apple Watch to be totally reliable, but my Nokia Steel HR was not.

The visible difference is, when you flip the Steel over you see rapidly flashing green lights, when you flip the Watch over it looks like solid green, presumably flashing too fast to notice.

One gets two weeks between charges, the other one day. Guess which is which...

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#206

Post by reiichiroh » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 2:15 AM UTC

AmazFit (Xaomi basically) makes great long-battery devices that are cheap too. Not this cheap though.

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#207

Post by devsatish » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 2:20 AM UTC

Wyze will be a great acquisition, Guessing it would be Amazon that will acquire them eventually.

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#208

Post by hydroxideOH- » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

reiichiroh wrote: post #206

AmazFit (Xaomi basically) makes great long-battery devices that are cheap too. Not this cheap though.

I wouldn't recommend an Amazfit watch. My Pace's battery was completely fried after 6 months. A few times it even started audibly sizzling. Maybe if you are okay with buying a new one every six months, but with wearables it's probably better to pay a bit more for a better designed Garmin.

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#209

Post by miguelrochefort » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

neolog wrote: post #90

Are there any developer-friendly hackable smartwatches?

Lots of nRF52832 watches syncing with Dafit are hackable.

They pretty much have the same hardware as the PineTime. The most popular one is the Colmi P8, which you can buy for $20-25.

Re: Wyze $20 Smart Watch

#210

Post by Wowfunhappy » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 2:27 AM UTC

outworlder wrote: post #170

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 had a Pebble Time Steel. Loved the thing to death. The battery was a bit degraded and I got tired of not being able to acknowledge Pagerduty notifications (even though I could receive them), as well as not having any fitness features whatsoever (other than the steps counter). So I bit the bullet and bough an Apple watch. Within two days, I stop using the Pebble. Yes it's nice, but against what's essentially a super…

Just as a counter, I'm a (current) Pebble user, and I bought an Apple Watch and returned it. I don't need fitness tracking, the Apple Watch's screen was a little too hard to see outside, and the UI was too cluttered for the type of super-quick tasks I want to do on a watch. (I also really really disliked the lack of an always-on screen, which didn't exist until a few months later.)

I like my Pebble because it's a watch first and foremost—I've worn a watch since I was around ten years old—but it just so happens to also show me notifications, and glance at things like the weather and my calendar. And I can do all of that super quickly.