Your 30 second Apple Watch review. (must have owned 14 days or more)

[r0k]

I'm an Apple watch owner since late May. I'm very impressed though there are a few disappointments.

I'll start with the disappointments so I can end on a positive note...
I can't believe the heart rate sensor doesn't work while I'm exercising. Duh. Does anybody at Apple work out? Anybody? I bet they are wearing Polar watches on their other wrist when they do. App launch is dangerously slow. When I'm running and want to check my pace, I don't need to see the watchos version of a beachball hourglass spinning until the display times out. Twice. Sometimes three display timeouts worth of hourglass stands between me and my stats.

Then there's the whole raise the wrist while running gesture that sometimes requires a tap with my other hand to wake up the watch.
Then there's a software wart that surfaces every now and then. Maximum 20 glances? Are you serious? I'm not going to micromanage glance allocation so I can see my stock reports or check the weather. I'm sure this dragon will be slain in an upcoming software patch.

Putting the sport band on was not very intuitive (at first).

Ok now for the good...
The weather app is awesome. On any watch face showing outside temp, tap the outside temp and another "watch face" comes up (sometimes after a beachball) that shows little suns (around here little clouds) around a watch face for the next 12 hours. Genius!
Notifications on the watch are a wonderful thing. I can read and sometimes reply to text from my wrist.
Credit card on my wrist. Awesome. I can pay for stuff without digging for... anything.
Boarding pass on my wrist. We'll see tomorrow if it works at TSA for an international flight but I expect it will do just fine as the boarding pass on my iPhone worked fine to and from Cancun a few months back.
This is the most comfortable watch I've ever worn. I have the space grey sport with black sport band. I usually wear a citizen eco drive 5mm thick watch with a metal link bracelet that loves pinching the hairs on my arm.
The photos app is awesome as is flipboard.

For texting, the special animated emoji that only originate from the watch are real attention getters.
I suppose I should rank the watch faces in order of my preference:Utility, Mickey, Motion, Color, Simple, Astronomy and Modular. Modular is all text and is just plain ugly. There are a few others I didn't mention so I guess I like them even less. I should mention that Astronomy and Motion don't have enough customizations. I should be able to put battery status, date, activity or other data on the screen for those faces as well.

Runkeeper with "raise wrist activates last app" allows me to glance at my pace while running distances though every now and then I have to shake my wrist to get the watch to realize I want to look at it. Before I was digging for my phone or I had some computer voice reading splits to me over my bluetooth headset giving me a headache.

Putting the sport band on grows on you and it's very comfortable and secure.

 

[youradhere4222]

I like the watch. It feels really solid and looks good. But I'm trying to figure out whether or not it's worth the steep price.

Here are the benefits of the watch:

Notifications
Health Tracking
Apple Pay

Notifications and Apple Pay are definitely big advantages for the watch, but you need to consider the price of the watch and realize that you're paying that amount in order to save yourself a few seconds to avoid pulling your phone out of your pocket. I paid $430 to save 3-4 seconds every time I pay for Apple Pay. I paid $430 to glance at my wrist every time I feel a vibration or ring, instead of taking 3-4 seconds to pull out my phone and check it.

Health is the big feature that I think is great, but I'm cognizant of the fact that there are dedicated health trackers on the market that offer more functionality at a much lower price point. The health features of the watch may change with time but right now, they're not groundbreaking on any level, aside from being a little more accurate perhaps.

There is a lot more functionality but I struggle to think of other categories where I would use my watch instead of my phone. Are there apps? Yeah, but I don't see myself browsing Instagram or Twitter on a small screen with limited controls when I can just pull my phone with little hassle. The friend interactions lose their novelty pretty quickly.

I want to reiterate one thing. I like the watch. If this thing was half the price I would keep it without question, but I'm looking at it in context and I'm evaluating whether or not this thing is worth the $400 entry price. An iPhone cost $650 comparably, and has 10 times more functionality at minimum. I think the Sport entry price should be around $200, and I'm hoping that as Apple begins to recoup a lot of their R&D costs, they'll reduce the price much like they did with the iPod and iPhone.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I'm really impressed by the battery life. I think Apple has plenty of room to make the watch more functional while still allowing it to last a full day on a charge.

 

[Mac2me]

Well the thing is I was making a video and talking a fair bit and when doing that your heart rate will rise a bit. Also I filmed this video pretty quickly after I got back from a run so I would expect my heart rate to be elevated.

"According to the National Institute of Health, the average resting heart rate:

• for children 10 years and older, and adults (including seniors) is 60 - 100 beats per minute
• for well-trained athletes is 40 - 60 beats per minute."

I thought your rate was reflected in the first category, so seems normal.

I've only had mine Watch since 6/2, so will comment next week.

 

[JPIndustrie]

It's a great device but it only goes to show how ****** the human race is. I've never seen the amount of hate shown for a stupid device like this in all my years buying apple products. I guess that happens when you are probably one of the most successful companies in history.

Either way it's a great watch. That's what people are forgetting, it is first and foremost a watch, albeit an expensive electronic one but really a watch. Everything else (which does work pretty well) is a surprise

 

[mattopotamus]

better than my pebble in both looks and functionality.

 

[usarioclave]

The future has come to my wrist.