I was wondering if anyone knows how tightly do we have to wear the watch against our wrist. I understand that we need to have the sensors pinging against our skin otherwise the watch won't send alerts or updates. I normally wear my watch a tiny bit loose due to the sweat and the watch getting sticky if placed on the same spot of my wrist.
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How to wear the watch.
- Thread starter andylee97
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I would say you are going to want it tight against your skin. I know a lot of people wear watches loose, but a smartwatch (especially one with sensors) is designed to be flush against the skin.
I would say you could get away with wearing the watch loose enough that you can move it around your wrist with your other hand, but tight enough that it can't move on its own.
Thats how I wear my current analog watch.
Thats how I wear my current analog watch.
I use a wrist HR monitor to track my heartrate when cycling. There are two big differences in how the watch will need to be worn vs. what we keep seeing people doing in pictures.
First, you are not going to wear this thing pushed up against your hand. That is not the right place to wear a watch. That is something fashion photographers do to get the watch in view without scrunching up sleeves and such and as a side effect, it has become a trend. It's stupid. It makes the hand press on the watch when you use full range of motion. The correct place to wear a watch is about an inch up your arm past the bend of your wrist. The best gauge is to lift/bend your hand back as far as you can. It should not press up against the watch in any significant way. This will be necessary to get a good HR read. It actually works better as you go up the arm. To get an idea of where a wrist watch is actually supposed to be worn, see http://cl.ly/aHAh and don't be put off by how tight that looks. I literally have a notch worn into my arm from wearing watches since I was a kid, like a tree grown with a rope tied around it or something. It's actually on there fairly loose at the moment.
And then as mentioned, the tightness will need to be enough that the watch doesn't move on its own. The HR monitor is working by photographing your blood flow and calculating heart rate by monitoring the differences in these photographs. It shines a green light into your skin and uses simple photo sensors to measure density. Of course, if the watch is moving around, it's going to mess up that comparison and thus give you bad readings.
Another reason to keep it against your skin is to get the taptic engine feedback. This shouldn't be undervalued. It's going to end up being one of the best and most innovative watch features vs. other brands. The feel and notable lack of noise from this method of notification is a huge bonus in this watch design. It won't work very well if your watch is really loose.
Finally, if you use Apple Pay on the watch, if you wear it loose, it will think you've removed it repeatedly throughout the day and force you to enter a PIN. Probably. This is based on what Apple has said about the security mechanisms of Apple Pay on the watch. But, it stands to reason it will detect removal based on losing HR monitoring capabilities.
So if you don't care about that functionality, then, I guess you can wear the watch however you want.
First, you are not going to wear this thing pushed up against your hand. That is not the right place to wear a watch. That is something fashion photographers do to get the watch in view without scrunching up sleeves and such and as a side effect, it has become a trend. It's stupid. It makes the hand press on the watch when you use full range of motion. The correct place to wear a watch is about an inch up your arm past the bend of your wrist. The best gauge is to lift/bend your hand back as far as you can. It should not press up against the watch in any significant way. This will be necessary to get a good HR read. It actually works better as you go up the arm. To get an idea of where a wrist watch is actually supposed to be worn, see http://cl.ly/aHAh and don't be put off by how tight that looks. I literally have a notch worn into my arm from wearing watches since I was a kid, like a tree grown with a rope tied around it or something. It's actually on there fairly loose at the moment.
And then as mentioned, the tightness will need to be enough that the watch doesn't move on its own. The HR monitor is working by photographing your blood flow and calculating heart rate by monitoring the differences in these photographs. It shines a green light into your skin and uses simple photo sensors to measure density. Of course, if the watch is moving around, it's going to mess up that comparison and thus give you bad readings.
Another reason to keep it against your skin is to get the taptic engine feedback. This shouldn't be undervalued. It's going to end up being one of the best and most innovative watch features vs. other brands. The feel and notable lack of noise from this method of notification is a huge bonus in this watch design. It won't work very well if your watch is really loose.
Finally, if you use Apple Pay on the watch, if you wear it loose, it will think you've removed it repeatedly throughout the day and force you to enter a PIN. Probably. This is based on what Apple has said about the security mechanisms of Apple Pay on the watch. But, it stands to reason it will detect removal based on losing HR monitoring capabilities.
So if you don't care about that functionality, then, I guess you can wear the watch however you want.
That is the exact position I wear my watch in. There seems to be two groups on people. Those who wear it above the wrist bone, and those that wear it below.
Hard to say, but, the wrist HR monitor I use (Mio Link) literally just shut itself off due to "inactivity" when I tried wearing it on the inside of my wrist. It couldn't detect any heart rate activity there. Maybe Apple has some magic sauce that works there, but... I would be less surprised if it just doesn't work there.
Interesting. I reckon we shall see.
I can wear watches in either direction, but I prefer them inside the wrist.
I would say it should be pretty tight, but just loose enough so that you can fit your finger between your wrist and the band.
Never heard of someone wearing a watch backwards. What is the reasoning behind doing that?
It is rare but 2 reasons come to mind.
1) Less likely to bang face on objects.
2) To look under wrist is just lifting to look (natural supination) but to look on top of your wrist requires pronation.
The instructions for other watches with HRM says to wear it 1 or 2 fingers "below" (towards the elbow) the bone in your wrist.
They say the watch needs to be snug enough to not move around, but --- and here's the critical part --- not so tight as to constrict the blood flow at all or it will throw off the accuracy.
If you look at reviews on Amazon about any product you'll learn that there are huge swaths of the populace who refuse to read the manual or follow even the simplest of directions and then go ape that the product sucks.
It could very well be that wrist worn HRM are accurate but that too many people, including reviewers, are not using it right.
There is going to be lots of noise about how inaccurate the AW HRM is, and, "You're not wearing it right" jokes and there will be no convincing the idiots that they simply are not wearing it right.
Just like they refused to admit they sat on their phone.
They say the watch needs to be snug enough to not move around, but --- and here's the critical part --- not so tight as to constrict the blood flow at all or it will throw off the accuracy.
If you look at reviews on Amazon about any product you'll learn that there are huge swaths of the populace who refuse to read the manual or follow even the simplest of directions and then go ape that the product sucks.
It could very well be that wrist worn HRM are accurate but that too many people, including reviewers, are not using it right.
There is going to be lots of noise about how inaccurate the AW HRM is, and, "You're not wearing it right" jokes and there will be no convincing the idiots that they simply are not wearing it right.
Just like they refused to admit they sat on their phone.