Introduction
Smart watches has finally got into the mainstream market but what's the benefit with these smart watches and are they really any clever?I been wearing watches for as long as I remember and enjoy the basic functionality plus the various bonuses that various watches have provided on the wrist, I most however admit that historically you had often to be quite happy with a stopwatch, an alarm and some simple timers.
There is clearly many benefit with having a smart device directly on your wrist and the requirements and need is probably different for everyone.
Comparison
So before I get into my personal opinions and experiences I made a simple table with the basic specifications for some well known premium watches.| Watch | Pepple Steal Time | Apple Sport Watch | Garmin Fenix 3 | Garmin Fenix 3 Sapphire | Apple Watch |
| Price | From 300 € | From 449 € | 449 € | 549 € | From 699 € |
| Screen size | 1.25" | 1.7" | 1.2" (round) | 1.2" (round) | 1.7" |
| Size (WxHxD) | 37.5x47x10.5mm | 42x35.9x10.5mm | 51x51x16mm | 51x51x16mm | 42x35.9x10.5mm |
| Touch screen | No | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Screen material | 2.5D glass | Ion-X | Mineral glass | Sapphire | Sapphire |
| Body material | Stainless | Aluminium | Stainless | Stainless | Stainless |
| Water rating | 30m | Water resistant | 100m | 100m | Water resistant |
| Weight | 62.3g | 81g | 82g | 85g | 101g |
| Screen always on | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Sun readably | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Battery time | 10 days | 18 hours | Upto 6 weeks | Upto 6 weeks | 18 hours |
| Apps | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| iOS support | Yes | Only iPhone | Yes | Yes | Only iPhone |
| Android support | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Heart rate | No | Yes | Accessory | Accessory | Yes |
| GPS/GLONASS | No | No | Yes/Yes | Yes/Yes | No |
My experience
My first real smart watch was the Samsung Gear Fit which I got when I changed over from my third iPhone to the Note 4. Since I bike almost daily I really liked the fact that I could start and stop Runkeeper from the watch instead of having to fiddle with the phone before setting off on the bike. I also enjoyed to get the notifications on the wrist and it became my daily wearer for a while with an okey battery life at about two days with some shorter bike rides. Everything was quite well and I was pleased with the watch until I got tired of waiting for Samsung to release Lollipop to the Note here in Sweden, and after trying to use their German version I finally settled for Cyanogenmod which was both a later version and didn't drain my battery in half the time. This change of OS on the phone did however come with an unexpected drawback, the Gear Fit wouldn't connect to the phone any longer, or wouldn't do it in any meaningful way.
As I mentioned I go biking quite often and started to wear my Suunto training watch more and more, it did however still require me to manually start run keeper on my phone and fiddle with everything but atleast I now could get some heart rate readings. With my hairy arms I have never been able to get a reliable (if any) reading from the optical heart rate sensors, like on the Gear Fit and Apple Watch.
In my office we got the Apple Watch a while back and my colleges each tried it for a few weeks and their consensus was that "it's not quite a nice to have" basically meaning that when they forgot to charge it in the evening the benefit of wearing the watch didn't make up for the hassle to charge it and one of my colleges stopped using it altogether and my other college changed back to his old analog watch instead as a daily watch, bear in mind that these where both technology enthusiasts just like myself.
So now to my big question, What if the best smart watch would be just an "ordinary" watch with some smart features? This was one of the reason that I took the leap and got the Garmin Fenix 3 with Sapphire glass. Given that the watch is still brand new I might miss some details but the initial experience has been great.
1) First when unpacking the watch I could start use it directly and with the assistance of GPS it got the exact time without me doing much at all. Just as a comparison when I thought I should try out the Apple Watch I first realized that it couldn't even start without being activated from the phone, and secondly that it had to be paired with an iPhone and that my iPad wouldn't work.
2) Since I like to use the watch while I'm training I have been reluctant to have a watch with touch screen since I haven't tried one which always works as expected without registering false touches, have this problem with my phone as well when it's raining but I can accept that I shouldn't use the phone in the rain but for the watch it's a requirement to handle the wet. Tactile buttons also means that I can interact with the watch without actually looking at it, great for races and other times when you're literally on the run.
3) Runkeeper, or to keep running while running... while I like runkeeper and been using it or similar apps for the past two years it has a severe impact on the battery life of the phone, so much that when I go paddling for extended periods of time I now bring a spare battery to charge my phone while I'm out. With the Fenix 3 they state 20 hours of concurrent GPS usage and if I would feel like an even longer run I would use the UltraTrak feature to get the GPS to last for upto 50 hours, all of this without requiring me to bring my phone with me whenever I like to train, or just keep the phone for emergencies and ensure it has some juice left in it.
4) Show me the time, the key feature of a watch has always been to show the current time, and regardless of how reactive a smart watch is to your wrist movement nothing can ever beat a screen which is always on, do I even need to say that I like to check the time even if the sun is shining or if I'm in a dark room without turning on a "flash light".
5) Notifications and apps, a smart watch which can't display notifications are probably not even allowed to be called a smart watch by today's standard. The question is if you need the watch to do much more or if it's not just as good to bring out the phone for more advanced interactions and communication? The Garmin watch has it's own app store just as the Pebble and the Apple watches but of cause no one will be able to compete with the share amount of apps that will become available to the Apple watch, the question we need to ask is if we really need all these apps? Got the find my car app to the Fenix watch which will save my both hassle and battery of my phone if I ever like to find back to my car easily, many other apps I'm happy to use on my phone as before.
I know that the price for the Fenix is quite hefty, but compared with the Apple Watch it's actually hard not to see it as a bargain considering what you get, this is actually a smart watch and not just an extra small screen to your phone. And with the Sapphire version you get a respectable looking watch with an included extra steel link armband, which however more than double the weight of the watch with an extra 104g. To get the Apple watch just in the same premium materials (Stainless steel and Sapphire Crystal) you have to pay an additional 150 €, and if you like to get a steel link armband that will be an additional 500 €, so for the same materials you would end up paying more than double the price for the Apple Watch.
Drawbacks
There are however of cause some drawbacks with the Fenix also, first and most noticeably, it's a big watch, but for some like myself it could be considered a good thing since I like to see my stats at a glance (even in sunlight...)
The watch run it's own software and will not benefit from the development efforts for the Apple Watch or the Android Wear platforms. If you like a training watch this might not be a big deal since the development community for Garmin is quite active to enable most types of customization from a sports perspective, but if you like to call an Uber taxi from your watch you might have to wait for quite a while. The watch has been on the market for about 6 month and I seen some complaints regarding the software from the beginning of the summer but from what I can see they been quite active in producing firmware updates and the latest update was only a few weeks ago.
Conclusion
To get the best "smart" watch for you the best thing to do might be to find the best watch for you and then see if it is "smart" enough to fulfill your smart requirements also. I still need to put this watch though it's paces but I'm confident that it will fulfill my expectations and if something isn't working as expected it seems like new firmware versions are pushed quite regularly so the watch will hopefully continue to improve over time.
