Haven't worn mine in weeks...

[r0k]

I was an early adopter of Apple Watch. I loved replying to texts from my wrist. I loved the clock layout of upcoming precipitation percentages. I like to run and last summer Apple Watch served me well because I always have my phone along on runs anyway. Then something bad happened in the fall. As the weather got cool enough for me to wear long sleeves, I found out how bad an idea it is to have a touchscreen on a sports watch. My sleeves were putting my Apple Watch into unknown modes, stopping, resetting my run stats and otherwise distracting me from enjoying my running. Then my sweaty fingers were inept at getting the thing into the correct mode without stopping and focusing on the freaking watch.

I bought a Garmin FR220 before running my first marathon. I wore both the Garmin and my AW sport for that marathon. At the end of the race my Garmin showed 26.7 miles because I forgot to stop it at the finish line, but it had all my data. The AW? Its battery died and I lost everything. I had nothing to show for my marathon but 64 thousand freaking steps. No pace. No time. Nothing.

I decided to stop wearing my AW for running. Fast forward a year. I've now run three marathons and I've worn a Garmin for all of them. After my third marathon, I decided to reward myself with an upgraded Garmin that features a wrist based heart rate sensor. I had been wearing an awful uncomfortable "bra-like" strap for heart rate and I hated being bothered with it. Not only was it uncomfortable, I had to put electrode gel on the thing for it to work in cold weather and low humidity. My Garmin FR 235 has worked great for running but I was still wearing it only for running and wearing my AW for everything else.

I found out about an improved way to set training heart rate that involves resting heart rate. My resting heart rate was the sole province of my AW. Then I noticed how badly health kit is at reporting data. Wow. Just. Plain. Awful. All I want is resting heart rate. I don't want to have to download a third party app to comb through data and post process it to figure out resting heart rate. So I stopped wearing my AW and I wear my Garmin full time. I found out my resting HR gets down to 35 some mornings. Using this information, which was not readily available from the AW I had worn for over a year, I was able to adjust my training regimen.

Garmin software can really be awful at times. Their iOS app is clunky and their web site is marginally stable at best. Yesterday I went for a run and my Garmin was putting up displays for incoming calls from my iPhone. I've since disabled all its smartwatch features! When I'm running, I don't need no stinking phone calls or texts. When I'm running, it's my time. When I glance at my wrist I want to see distance, total elapsed time and current split pace. Nothing. Else. What.So.Ever. This is where an "auto DoNotDisturb while running" setting could have come in handy. I really like Apple software (in general) better than Garmin but as a person who wants to focus when I run, I'd rather have mediocre software targeted at runners than excellent software targeted at smartwatch wearers.

I'm probably going to un-pair my AW from my iPhone 6 and I'll be putting it up for sale before the new one gets announced in the coming month(s). I don't think I'll be going back to AW even if a future version gets GPS. Unless Apple goes out and simply buys Garmin or Polar, I don't trust them to figure out running watches for a long, long time.

 

[BlueMoon63]

Good write up. The Apple Watch is not for the serious athlete - in my opinion. Had a long way to go to be taken serious too. Right now, it would be tough to make it through a marathon as well. You can lock the screen in workout mode with OS3. Not sure about 2.2 though. Still, it's just not for serious athletes yet. The watch or bands will need GPS, sensors and more to be serious and if in the bands, battery life might benefit greatly.

I'm not a serious athlete and will not be running a marathon. I love the Apple Watch over dedicated devices because I can wear one device for workouts and casual and suit and tie - plus of all the apps for road warriors like myself. Big Garmin and similar can't fit under dress shirts or don't look good, but so what would be what I would say if a serious fitness guy.

Good post!

 

[r0k]

Good write up. The Apple Watch is not for the serious athlete - in my opinion. Had a long way to go to be taken serious too. Right now, it would be tough to make it through a marathon as well. You can lock the screen in workout mode with OS3. Not sure about 2.2 though. Still, it's just not for serious athletes yet. The watch or bands will need GPS, sensors and more to be serious and if in the bands, battery life might benefit greatly.

I'm not a serious athlete and will not be running a marathon. I love the Apple Watch over dedicated devices because I can wear one device for workouts and casual and suit and tie - plus of all the apps for road warriors like myself. Big Garmin and similar can't fit under dress shirts or don't look good, but so what would be what I would say if a serious fitness guy.

Good post!

Thanks!

You can lock the screen in WOS 2.x but only in the workout app. Apple's workout app is pretty useless for running, at least for my purposes...

While the Activity app attempts to replace your Fitbit (with some degree of success), the Workout app takes aim at your Garmin sports watch – with no degree of success.

More here...

 

[JayLenochiniMac]

Sounds like you don't derive much, if at all, from having easily accessible notifications on the wrist. Many of us consider that the most useful aspect of the AW and would still purchase it even if it's all it's capable of.

 

[r0k]

Sounds like you don't derive much, if at all, from having easily accessible notifications on the wrist. Many of us consider that the most useful aspect of the AW and would still purchase it even if it's all it's capable of.

I agree. If all I cared about were notifications, AW would be a winner for me. As the owner of a sports watch that has notification capability, I find I no longer need AW even though there is better integration between my iPhone 6 and my AW than between my iPhone 6 and my Garmin. For instance, when I get a call, the caller ID would come up on my AW. Even if I enable "smart notifications" on my Garmin, caller ID never comes up. So if notifications were a priority for me, I would never consider selling my AW. I would want to go back to it after "running season" was over. Well this year, running season will never end because I must run right through the winter to be prepared to run Boston in April 2017. I'm not selling it because it's completely useless to me. I'm selling it because it's still worth something to someone else (until Watch 2.0 gets announced) and it doesn't make sense holding on to it if I know I won't wear the thing until May 2017.

It's a question of priorities. When I'm running hard, I need to focus to make sure I don't overdo it or get injured. It's no time for me to be distracted by nonsense like push notifications about updates available in the app store or text messages I can't reply to while I'm running anyway. I'm hoping Garmin introduces a "DND only while running" feature but for now, I'll simply live without all "smart notifications" rather than take a chance on getting distracted during a hard workout.

 

[Newtons Apple]

Most the time I would get a notification, I would have to pull out my phone to take care of business anyway. I am back to my FitBit Charge HR. I actually like their iPhone app, they just reworked it and it is even better. The AW was never a serious fitness device the way Apple led me to believe.

Oh well, to each his own and how nice it is to have all these choices. Not so sure I will get the AW2 from what I am hearing but time will tell.

 

[yanki01]

I don't have one but i kinda want one. only because i currently wear a 2, 4yr old $40 timex watches. one with a brown band and another with a black for when i dress accordingly. the 42mm SS has really grown on me in the past month of so.

i was gun-ho on NOT getting one because i have my iPhone on my all the time and really saw no point at the time of announcement (maybe i need to watch the keynote about it again?). It didn't wow me at the time of release and i'm huge on the iPhone (though i ma skip iP7). i work out occasionally (need to more often) so those features are not the seller for me. it's mainly to have a nice watch with interchangeable bands. my mom got one not long ago and she enjoys it. i sometimes play with one on display at my local best buy while my wife shops at the store next door. even had the guy take one out that they had an open box (42mm SB-SS) and felt and looked really really nice. though i didn't know what else to do with it once i went through the settings and saw some photos.

some sales recently make it more appealing with a 42mm SS @ $399 (maybe better when/if the 2.0 is announced). I'm still on the fence of buying one.

 

[jbachandouris]

I have a Garmin FR225 for running and the AW for everyday use. The furthest I run is a 10k, so the AW is still OK for that.

 

[exxxviii]

Sounds like you don't derive much, if at all, from having easily accessible notifications on the wrist.

For instance, when I get a call, the caller ID would come up on my AW. Even if I enable "smart notifications" on my Garmin, caller ID never comes up. So if notifications were a priority for me, I would never consider selling my AW.

I have a similar assessment, but I am back to wearing my AW full-time as a watch and my Garmin for fitness.

In my case, I found that the Garmin does notifications very well... in some cases better than the AW. It gets texts, VIP emails, and all of of the notifications from the iPhone Notifications app. The one little area where the Garmin is superior is that it gets the traffic notification, where the AW is silent. I am looking forward to this in OS3, because it is pretty sweet. Garmin also gets caller ID info just like the AW. The areas where AW wins are that the AW gets all email, not just VIP. And, you can respond to a text on the AW.

Like you, I got a new Garmin with wrist HR, and I started wearing it 24/7 to capture HR and activity. I found that every aspect of the Garmin's activity tracking is freaking awesome. I had no idea what I was missing with the AW until I had been wearing the AW for a few days. For example, I loved having resting HR and a HR chart on my wrist while in training for a major race. This capability should be mice nuts for the AW, but the UI is total crap here.

I also loved capturing sleep data on the Garmin. I train 10 to 12 hours/week of intense aerobic activity, so seeing sleep data and resting HR data is a very good measure of my body's reaction to training. If those numbers start going south, I know that I am over-training and need to back off. Every basic activity tracker with HR does this well except AW. In my humble opinion, it is inexcusable that Apple left these features out of the watch. If I continue to wear my AW, I will probably buy a Garmin vivosmart HR to wear on my other wrist. That is how good the data are.

The other thing that I surprisingly loved about the Garmin is that its battery lasts forever. Even with rigorous fitness use and GPS activity, I only had to charge it a couple times a week. And, when the battery says 10%, I knew I had one more workout and a day's use remaining. When the AW reads 10%, it is time to find the charger ASAP.

I missed Apple Pay and music control from the AW. And the touch screen on the AW is quicker and easier to use than the up/down buttons on the Garmin.

I am not selling my AW, but I am a little more pissed at Apple for putting out such a poor excuse for an activity tracker. I had no pretense that the AW could do fitness. But I just learned how bad it is at activity. I am hoping that OS4 gives the activity tracker capabilities a shot in the arm. I do not think there is anything meaningful in OS3, from what I have seen in the beta posts.

I also hope Apple figures out a way to have the screen always on with Watch 2. The Garmin's screen was always on, and that was great. It was easier to read and quicker to read with just a side glance. It is frustrating to wait for the watch to light up when I want a quick time, any time, on my time. The Garmin did not do auto back-light, so it was hard to read at night. I think it has a wrist raise detection, but I did not try to figure that out.

And, I hope Apple unscrews the pooch with its limitations on watch faces. The Garmin has dozens of available watch faces with all kinds of wicked complications that I can download. That was another eye-opener. Apple will continue to dominate the market with the AW. But, they are falling vastly short of the watch's potential, and indicting that shortcoming that on us consumers.

 

[iPhysicist]

I was an early adopter of Apple Watch. I loved replying to texts from my wrist. I loved the clock layout of upcoming precipitation percentages. I like to run and last summer Apple Watch served me well because I always have my phone along on runs anyway. Then something bad happened in the fall. As the weather got cool enough for me to wear long sleeves, I found out how bad an idea it is to have a touchscreen on a sports watch. My sleeves were putting my Apple Watch into unknown modes, stopping, resetting my run stats and otherwise distracting me from enjoying my running. Then my sweaty fingers were inept at getting the thing into the correct mode without stopping and focusing on the freaking watch.

I bought a Garmin FR220 before running my first marathon. I wore both the Garmin and my AW sport for that marathon. At the end of the race my Garmin showed 26.7 miles because I forgot to stop it at the finish line, but it had all my data. The AW? Its battery died and I lost everything. I had nothing to show for my marathon but 64 thousand freaking steps. No pace. No time. Nothing.

I decided to stop wearing my AW for running. Fast forward a year. I've now run three marathons and I've worn a Garmin for all of them. After my third marathon, I decided to reward myself with an upgraded Garmin that features a wrist based heart rate sensor. I had been wearing an awful uncomfortable "bra-like" strap for heart rate and I hated being bothered with it. Not only was it uncomfortable, I had to put electrode gel on the thing for it to work in cold weather and low humidity. My Garmin FR 235 has worked great for running but I was still wearing it only for running and wearing my AW for everything else.

I found out about an improved way to set training heart rate that involves resting heart rate. My resting heart rate was the sole province of my AW. Then I noticed how badly health kit is at reporting data. Wow. Just. Plain. Awful. All I want is resting heart rate. I don't want to have to download a third party app to comb through data and post process it to figure out resting heart rate. So I stopped wearing my AW and I wear my Garmin full time. I found out my resting HR gets down to 35 some mornings. Using this information, which was not readily available from the AW I had worn for over a year, I was able to adjust my training regimen.

Garmin software can really be awful at times. Their iOS app is clunky and their web site is marginally stable at best. Yesterday I went for a run and my Garmin was putting up displays for incoming calls from my iPhone. I've since disabled all its smartwatch features! When I'm running, I don't need no stinking phone calls or texts. When I'm running, it's my time. When I glance at my wrist I want to see distance, total elapsed time and current split pace. Nothing. Else. What.So.Ever. This is where an "auto DoNotDisturb while running" setting could have come in handy. I really like Apple software (in general) better than Garmin but as a person who wants to focus when I run, I'd rather have mediocre software targeted at runners than excellent software targeted at smartwatch wearers.

I'm probably going to un-pair my AW from my iPhone 6 and I'll be putting it up for sale before the new one gets announced in the coming month(s). I don't think I'll be going back to AW even if a future version gets GPS. Unless Apple goes out and simply buys Garmin or Polar, I don't trust them to figure out running watches for a long, long time.

Its quite simple. In my eyes you fell in love with running and that is why you are in need of a deficated runners watch. Apple Watch ist far more than just a runners watch but lacks some features you want to have for running . Whats your point again?

BTW your restring Heart rate is the average of your Heart Rate you have while at rest. A Single Peak to the bottom doesn't make this count your resting heart rate. 35 would be a medical condition, not a heart rate

 

[exxxviii]

Its quite simple. In my eyes you fell in love with running and that is why you are in need of a deficated runners watch. Apple Watch ist far more than just a runners watch but lacks some features you want to have for running. Whats your point again?

BTW your restring Heart rate is the average of your Heart Rate you have while at rest. A Single Peak to the bottom doesn't make this count your resting heart rate. 35 would be a medical condition, not a heart rate

Haha... Is a "deficated" watch a nearly crappy watch?

Re resting HR, the Garmin is not perfect, but it is a crapton better than the AW. It is doing more than just reading a low point. And a 35 is not out of line for a BQ runner.

 

[iPhysicist]

Haha... Is a "deficated" watch a nearly crappy watch?

Re resting HR, the Garmin is not perfect, but it is a crapton better than the AW. It is doing more than just reading a low point. And a 35 is not out of line for a BQ runner.

You are right with deficated ☺️

 

[lordofthereef]

I said this a while back and I got eaten alive for it in this forum. I wouldn't have an issue with the base model being called "sport" if it actually meant something other than "entry model and who didn't want to call it the cheap one".

The rumored feature and hardware set on the gen 2 device has me intrigued. I run daily, though not a marathoner, but would still like better tracking than what AW gives. For $300 I want more than notifications.

I bought a Fitbit blaze used for $100. Software alone blows the AW away. And that really matters. Here's to hoping Apple takes fitness more seriously in this next revision. I will say I do like what they've done in OS3 with just basic quality of life improvements.

 

[wx4olf]

I agree - it's hard to even compare the Apple Watch to a dedicated fitness watch like the Garmin (I would really like to have a Forerunner 235 but can't really justify the purchase to myself). My experience running with the Apple Watch however has been pretty good but I'm mainly concerned with basic info that you could pretty much get from just an app on your phone so in that regard the watch is really just a convenient way to start/stop a workout for me. I mainly use the strava and irunsmooth apps which both have watch apps instead of the apple workout app and they seem to work ok for what I need. Anyway, I consider myself a pretty serious runner - put in a lot of miles so far this year and already have my training plan laid out through next March when I'm running two marathons so my point is that even for serious runners the Apple Watch can work depending on your personal use case.

 

[BlueMoon63]

I agree - it's hard to even compare the Apple Watch to a dedicated fitness watch like the Garmin (I would really like to have a Forerunner 235 but can't really justify the purchase to myself). My experience running with the Apple Watch however has been pretty good but I'm mainly concerned with basic info that you could pretty much get from just an app on your phone so in that regard the watch is really just a convenient way to start/stop a workout for me. I mainly use the strava and irunsmooth apps which both have watch apps instead of the apple workout app and they seem to work ok for what I need. Anyway, I consider myself a pretty serious runner - put in a lot of miles so far this year and already have my training plan laid out through next March when I'm running two marathons so my point is that even for serious runners the Apple Watch can work depending on your personal use case.

My only complaint is when people say the AW battery should last as long as these dedicated fitness devices. Those devices are typically close to double the size. If Apple added all battery to equal the size of the other devices, the AW probably would last a week or close to it. OLED is a nice quality display that is lower power with good quality graphics, but it does not compare to low power LED and that will help. What I do for a living involves LPLED and I am pretty certain if the AW1 had LPLED it would last two days pretty easily.

But please don't compare the AW to Garmin or Fenix or other devices that are double the size and say the Apple Watch battery life should be the same. My guess is it would be close if it was double th size.

 

[wx4olf]

My only complaint is when people say the AW battery should last as long as these dedicated fitness devices. Those devices are typically close to double the size. If Apple added all battery to equal the size of the other devices, the AW probably would last a week or close to it. OLED is a nice quality display that is lower power with good quality graphics, but it does not compare to low power LED and that will help. What I do for a living involves LPLED and I am pretty certain if the AW1 had LPLED it would last two days pretty easily.

But please don't compare the AW to Garmin or Fenix or other devices that are double the size and say the Apple Watch battery life should be the same. My guess is it would be close if it was double th size.

Totally agree. The only way to get the AW to last through a four hour effort is to turn off the heart rate sensor or use an external Bluetooth heart rate sensor (I've done a few runs of that duration that way). Contrast that with a Garmin or Suunto where you can literally go all day (or longer if you back the sample rate down).

 

[exxxviii]

My only complaint is when people say the AW battery should last as long as these dedicated fitness devices. Those devices are typically close to double the size. If Apple added all battery to equal the size of the other devices, the AW probably would last a week or close to it

But please don't compare the AW to Garmin or Fenix or other devices that are double the size and say the Apple Watch battery life should be the same. My guess is it would be close if it was double th size.

I do not think it is as simple as battery capacity. The 735XT is larger than the 42mm sport AW, but it weighs half as much. I could not find anywhere that the size of the 735XT battery is published. But comparable devices only have batteries maybe 30% larger than the AW 42mm battery.

I think the difference is a lower energy screen on the sport watches coupled with a more efficient SoC and OS. My hunch is that the AW OS is a CPU hog, which burns battery like nuts. If Apple can streamline the OS code, it could add days to the life of the watch. The Garmin watch does not have any of the laggyness between apps and functions like the AW. Yet, you can still install all kinds of apps, widgets, and gadgets. It is probably just cleaner code. But Garmin and the others have been at this for years more than Apple.

 

[sean000]

I don't think the Apple Watch was intended to be a training tool for serious athletes. I think it was intended to be a basic health tracker in addition to all of the other smartwatch features. The question is why can't it be both? Perhaps Apple knew it couldn't provide the GPS and battery capacity necessary while maintaining a relatively low profile for the Apple Watch. And even if they satisfied runners, then what about other types of activities that are already catered to by more specialized devices?

Maybe Apple will become more competitive with those specialized devices as time goes on, but the development of the Apple Watch has been more focused on being a versatile extension of the iPhone (as it should be IMHO). The basic health tracking is a value add to compete with popular devices like the more basic Fitbit trackers. I used to use a Fitbit One, and my Apple Watch matches it or betters it in pretty much every way except sleep tracking (until you add a third party app like Pillow, and then the AW beats the Fitbit in sleep tracking). Garmins and more advanced Fitbit devices are in another class in terms of fitness tracking.

I think I'm a pretty average case, and the fitness tracking capabilities of the AW work fine for me. I have been a cyclist since the mid-1980's. I used to train for racing with a cyclometer. When I stopped racing in the mid-90's I adopted a more Zen-like "just go out and ride" attitude and cut all the sensors off my bikes. With the Apple Watch I am once again tracking my rides, but now it's mostly in a general way. The AW and iPhone can track distance, time, average speed, and elevation gained (with the right app), but you won't get cadence unless you have a sensor on the bike for that. Of course the AW tracks my heart rate, which I never did when I was training. Loss and gain. Besides... I've been doing this long enough to know my cadence without a device. Not that it matters to me like it used to. I'm sure the fitness aspects of the AW will improve, but for me it's the other smartwatch features that are more important.

I don't want to sound like I'm discounting the needs of serious athletes. I just think that serious athletes are currently served better by a specialized device like the Garmins. If you are an iOS user and want that data to sync to HealthKit, then I guess you have to avoid the Fitbits. You can still wear an Apple Watch outside of workouts, but you may not need it if the other device provides enough Smartwatch features for you.

Sean

 

[srshaw]

I'm wearing mine now, but I usually wear my Fenix 3 these days. I'm tempted to get a smaller Garmin with continuous HR monitoring.

The new Apple Watch can have GPS etc but unless Apple does something to Health, the data is useless. As a minimum you need to be able to export activity data to strava and also ideally training peaks, unless it does this it will never be a device for the more serious Athlete.

 

[sean000]

I'm wearing mine now, but I usually wear my Fenix 3 these days. I'm tempted to get a smaller Garmin with continuous HR monitoring.

The new Apple Watch can have GPS etc but unless Apple does something to Health, the data is useless. As a minimum you need to be able to export activity data to strava and also ideally training peaks, unless it does this it will never be a device for the more serious Athlete.

Strava can't read data from Health? Isn't that the app developer's problem? Lots of third party fitness apps can read and write Health data (if you give the app permission to of course).

 

[exxxviii]

Strava can't read data from Health? Isn't that the app developer's problem? Lots of third party fitness apps can read and write Health data (if you give the app permission to of course).

The burden is on Apple to enhance Activity push a workout to the apps like Stava, TP, MMF, etc. Some of the data these need do not live in Health. The model is that the app that captures the workout pushes a standard file out to the other tool (Strava).

 

[sean000]

The burden is on Apple to enhance Activity push a workout to the apps like Stava, TP, MMF, etc. Some of the data these need do not live in Health. The model is that the app that captures the workout pushes a standard file out to the other tool (Strava).

The way Apple has it set up makes more sense to me. Health is the central database that all apps read and write to (including the Activity app). I think having apps share data directly would be more problematic and limiting. What if you want Strava (or whatever app) to have access to data that isn't captured by Activity? Sleep or blood pressure stats captured by other apps, but those apps don't talk to Strava? Or diet info you entered into Lose-It?

Maybe I am misunderstanding what the issue is since I don't use Strava. I thought the main issue with third party fitness apps was that they can't control the sensors, so if you want complete heart rate monitoring in Strava you have to enable and Apple Workout as well so more heart rate data gets written to the Health database (where other apps can consume that data). That seems a bit cumbersome, and it would be easier for Strava to utilize the sensor and write the data to health.

Sean

 

[exxxviii]

The way Apple has it set up makes more sense to me. Health is the central database that all apps read and write to (including the Activity app). I think having apps share data directly would be more problematic and limiting. What if you want Strava (or whatever app) to have access to data that isn't captured by Activity? Sleep or blood pressure stats captured by other apps, but those apps don't talk to Strava? Or diet info you entered into Lose-It?

Maybe I am misunderstanding what the issue is since I don't use Strava. I thought the main issue with third party fitness apps was that they can't control the sensors, so if you want complete heart rate monitoring in Strava you have to enable and Apple Workout as well so more heart rate data gets written to the Health database (where other apps can consume that data). That seems a bit cumbersome, and it would be easier for Strava to utilize the sensor and write the data to health.

Maybe, but the ship has sailed. Polling architectures are way more inefficient than pushing architectures. Health does not have geo-coded data. And, the external apps cannot know when you completed a workout, so they would have to constantly poll Health to ask. And, the Stavas/MMF/TP apps would all have to write code to poll every proprietary repository versus relying on an existing standard and a push from the app that was directly involved with the activity. It works beautifully in its current state, so it is kind of an Apple versus the world situation.

The main feature of Strava that people mostly use (as far as I know) is that it can receive and analyze fitness data from whatever app or device captured it. For example, its "Suffer Score" and Segments are so popular that Garmin licensed it and has it built into their devices now. Wahoo recently followed Garmin and has native Strava features built into their devices. And, it has a killer social feature built in to follow other athletes and friends and motivate one another. Strava also has a watch and phone app that can capture fitness activity, but that is rarely used.

Strava is emerging as the universal fitness platform. Training Peaks is emerging as the universal training and coaching platform. Both of these receive pushes from whatever app or device captured the activity.

 

[dave2010]

Apple watch takes a HR reading but hides it away in a tiny and frankly, not useful little graph on the iPhone. To see live HR I have to lift my wrist from the handlebar and look down, its actually not very safe because half the time it doesn't work and I have to try again.
Rather than buying another watch, I'm buying a Rhythm + for cycling this summer. I'll probably stop using it because it annoys me how notifications don't come through half the time, so the only way I can sure I won't miss a message is to check my iPhone anyway.

 

[Newtons Apple]

I wore both my AW and Charge HR today on my run and multiple times my AW lost my pulse. I adjusted it tighter looser, up and down my arm and all it says is measuring. I would say it was defective but I have had three Apple watches and NONE come close the the HR sensor or the Fitbit.

I hope Apple's AW2 uses different sensors as there is no excuse for this.

I know there will now be multiple people who will now post about how their AW HR sensor works perfectly but that does not change how it works for me.