Extremely pleased after 2 days. Has exceeded my expectations for a v1.0 new Apple product. Here's some specific comments and observations.
Highs:
1) Beautifully made. Both my wife and I normally wear watches; love the craftsmanship and attention to detail. Lovely hardware from a watch-enthusiast standpoint (38mm SS w/classic buckle).
2) Surprised how often just glancing at the watch is all we need. Was shopping at Costco today. Great amount of info exchange via the watch; we setup our own custom replies for the message app.
3) Applepay. Another game changer for my wife. Doesn't have to get cards out of her purse. Double-click the friend button, wave your watch over the terminal. Couldn't be easier. My wife loves the fact she can keep her wallet in her purse, feels much safer this way, not to mention the lack of digital skimming and ID theft.
4) Phone calls around the house. My wife is always in the garden or around the house; she doesn't carry her phone with her. Can leave her phone in her purse, and gets messages and calls on the watch. 2/3 of the time I call her, she didn't answer before (didn't have her phone; didn't hear it). Hasn't missed a call or text yet with the watch. Brilliant, and is apparently using our home wifi for all this, with great range between watch and phone.
5) Weather on the watch face. Great custom options on the watch face. Lovely getting outside temperature at a glance when you check time, and a mini-forecast. Speaking of which, the watch faces are beautiful.
6) Siri. "Hey Siri". Works great, activates automatically when you raise your wrist. Very fast, and seems more accurate than with the iphone.
7) Charger. Genius design. It's not a flat surface, it has a slight curve. The watch fits this perfect with the magnet, and can only rotate, not slide around. The wire can rotate to any position, so easy to attach and unattach. Much, much simpler than the lighting connector.
8) Battery life. Full use today, on at 6am. Now 8pm, and watch shows 45% remaining. Very impressive.
9) Gestures/interface. The digital crown works extremely well. How nice to have a classic watch feature (crown) that integrates so well with the watch OS. So easy to just roll the top of the crown with your finger. The buttons feel great, too. The force-press and touchscreen feel of great quality, too.
Areas for improvement:
1) Screen timeout. This seems to be 4 seconds, and isn't adjustable. Clearly, Apple needs to make this an adjustable option, and let users decide between screen time and battery life. 4sec is just a bit too short. 6 or 8s would be better.
2) Haptic feedback. It's just ok. Even the "prominent feedback" setting is just powerful enough. This could be increased.
3) Lag in some apps initial loading. There can be a bit of lag for some apps on initial load (like Maps). Nothing excessive, but the watch really is a "glance at" device, and it holds your attention for longer than a glance in these cases. May take hardware v2 to speed this up, or perhaps some refined apps/programming. Not a killer, but something to be improved upon.
4) Adding cards to Apple Pay with the 5s. Non-intuitive. Took quite a bit of trying to get our cards into the watch. One-time issue, but you'll see complaints from folks having problems here as Passbook on the 5s doesn't natively support adding cards.
5) Unlock code keypad. The unlock code screen has some pretty small buttons on the 38mm watch. I have big fingers, and I'm not always accurate in entering the code. We ended up changing codes to something more compatible with my big fingers. Ideally, we'd have a version of Touch ID on the watch screen for this, that would be awesome. Another future upgrade, no doubt.
There you go! Hope this was a fair and balanced review. Very, very happy with this watch, and can't wait for our 2nd one to arrive, 42mm SS Black.
