Pixel Watch 5 (blog.google)

pfft, only 2 weeks + wearing garmin brick on hand? I would rather go with Pebble Time 2 than Garmin if I had to buy something new (used Bip for 15-20USD is still the best deal), it had decent thickness and better battery life

Amazfit Bip user (10mm thickness, still 4 weeks battery life)

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Noninvasive blood glucose measurement has been a holy grail for wearables for over 10 years. People have thought they were going to crack it but the research just hasn’t panned out. You’re much better off getting a cheap CGM subscription, especially now that they’re available OTC most places.

I'm using a cheap samsung watch, maybe 4? It's ages old at this point, but I need it to get contactless pay, I'm a sucker for it. I have multiple company and personal and virtual cards on it, and I don't like carrying a wallet everywhere with me.

What's specially shitty with using a wearos watch with an android phone is that clock's alarms etc do not sync, at least not between grapheneos <-> samsung galaxy watch 4. I have to use use turboclock which has a wearos app to get wakeup alarms to my watch.

Lots of tokens...

My Garmin instinct is kind of the perfect dumb smart watch, it has a very simple calculator style rendering and the simplest speaker possible. Alarms are vibrations and water proof to a reasonable depth, battery lasts 2 weeks. Really have no reason to upgrade

Power users are buying the pebble time 2 because they can modify it to do whatever they want with high sp#cificity

I had about 3 apple watches before i was smart enough to stop wearing them. i recognize the health needs for some people so no disrespect, but for myself and I am sure many others the S curve peaked on them pretty quick and it's not worth having another device you need to keep charged on you.

Almost nobody needs these psuedo fitness devices.

Just walk outside, enjoy the sun, fresh air, talking to family and friends, walking the dog.

It doesnt matter how many steps you take, Do what is right for you.

Enjoy your life, life is not spreadsheet or powerpoint.

Location (room number) of next event/meeting/lecture can be useful.

The killer feature of modern watches is the vibration alarm - you can wake up even if you use earplugs/headphones/noise machine and you won't wake up anyone else along with you. Health stuff like sleep tracking is likely useful for the vast majority of population, at least to everyone who needs time and thus lives on a schedule of some sort, without the possibility to fall asleep and wake up whenever one feels like it.

I too don't see how the ability to run apps is of any value so I use "sports" watch instead of a "smart" watch, which gives me better screen and better battery life in exchange of a smaller number of apps I won't ever run. Though the battery life is not an issue and smartwatch users I know charge their watch while in the shower.

> He was quizzing her at a party about what features she used - which were pretty much step counter and payment. He somewhat dismissively sneered, "Well, you're not exactly a power user, are you?"

If everyone on the Pixel Watch team was like that, that could explain why they haven't found any success breaking out from the crowd. Smart watches should discreetly enhance one's life, not be a list of features to be built and used all the time.

I've been an Apple Watch user since Series 5, and I mostly use the watch as a normal-ish smart watch, with silent alarms, iPhone music control, and two-finger-tap to feel the time discreetly as the "power user" features I'd use most often. I barely use any of the apps, and still have trouble navigating the grid.

Ahh to be an arrogant Google employee. Must be nice to have such confidence from getting hired for a company which made a good product 25 years ago.

This is the core of why I've enjoyed my Garmin watch. It tells time, displays texts, has a quick and easy flashlight, tracks workouts, even acts as a dive computer. I get minimum two weeks of usage between charges. It's not something I have to think about on the daily. Now, on the rare occasion I'm not wearing it, I notice its absence.

I agree with personal experience. I also noticed that many nurses were Apple watches. I guess they are more convenient for people who need to work with their hands.

Garmin Fenix 8. Love it. It’s for trail running, payments in a pinch. Love the industrial design, far more than Apple Watch Ultra or certainly any Android watch.

I’m a power user given its narrow focus, but no, I don’t expect it to have my airline pass or auto download ABetterRoutePlanner. I’m happy it doesn’t or can’t.

I bought a Slow Watch precisely because a real watch power user only needs a one handed watch for the 24 hour day.

</s> but not really, I do own one and it's _amazing_.

Maybe it’s niche, but if you do endurance sports like triathlon, you can easily become a power user. I think I did. You constantly look at your watch during workouts. It does navigation on trails, it measures your heart rate, tracks workouts, keeps pace during races. The metrics it gathers about hrv, sleep, rest hr etc are vital to adjusting the routine. It acts as a data recorder for multiple sensors: hr strap does a million running metrics, a separate strap does hydration, on a bike there’s a power meter. It supports my routine alerting me about the fast, timing my morning porrige (14 min). It’s my payment method on long rides when I need water and could play audio if I wanted to. I care about advanced features like multi-band gps and handover with my bike computer. It’s a vital tool, I need it for so many things. But vast majority of smartwatches do not cater for this crowd at all. Even the Apple Ultra feels like a toy. Garmin upper end stuff is where it is.

Surprised no one has mentioned Gemini. That's the highest value add feature for me. I have pixel watch 3, which I got cheap second hand. Gemini is a little laggy but still useful. If the experience was similar to the latest open AI voice model when used on a phone, it'd be incredibly useful

The ii plural is for Latin words. Alexas is perfectly fine in English. And so is octopuses, where you probably first heard about it. No need to over complicate things.

^ Great observation.

I have a Garmin Fenix 8, but if it would not have a flashlight, vibration alarm and sleep tracking, I'd happily swap it for a mechanical watch as a daily driver.

(obviously still using the Garmin for workouts)

Yes exactly, what i regularly use are: track workouts, steps, sleep, card payments (sometimes a backup), flashlight, hiking navigation (convenient than checking phone), alarm and camera remote. I cant stand anything with less a week battery life. so far Garmin works fine for me

I love my analog watches too dearly to give them up for a smart watch.

However, I just realized that analog watches also have "power users", and I am definitely not one of them.

My favorite watch (excuse me, "chronograph") has a stopwatch with lap memory, a tachymeter, support for multiple time zones, and a bunch of other features I have not thought about since the week I purchased it.

I don't really know how to use it all. I just like the watch.

Spot on, my smart watch is an Amazfit, the built-in apps for sport, driving the music player, and reading msgs are enough.

I agree reply is useless, it isn't even possible on this one, however it is good only as a reminder as sometimes I miss relevant calls or msgs.

I have used smart watches since the Timex and Casio had agendas, or games, never cared for an app ecosystem beyond what was already on the phone.

Also never changed the Amazfit skin since the day I bought it, and settled on a classical analogue view.

Often I rather use a plain mechanical watch, or no watch at all, don't get the app ecosystem on a miniature screen.

I don't feel like power users are catered to either. Like if you have a Google workspace account (if you're not a company, that's a power user) then you can't do "remind me to X". That's reserved for non-power users.

... At least last I checked.

> I'm trying to imagine what being a "power user" of a watch is like. Can anyone enlighten me?

When you're deep in a conversation with someone and suddenly their wrist vibrate, they lift their hand up slightly, tilt their head down, seem to stare in the void and keep saying "uhu, uhu hmm, uhu" while pretending to still listening to you.

That's my experience with smart watches power users

"Power user?" Having a Pixel Watch 2 (or 3), I keep thinking no one working on this device really uses it. It's supposed to be a sports and health device but the stopwatch app doesn't even support laps.

Got my PebbleTime 2 about two months ago. I like it for tracking my exercise, heart rate, calendar, and time. My favorite is the alarm which is capable of vibrating when the watch suspects you are not at the deepest point in your sleep.

I feel people like that are unpleasant to be around. Sorry for you friend.

I used to consider myself a watch power user. I've started with LG G Watch in 2014 and had almost every generation in between, and from a lot of different manufcaturers Huawei, Skagen, Samsung, etc. I've even wrote and published a couple of Android Wear apps back in the day. I love the idea of having a computer on the wrist that I can program.

But in the end, what I'm using it for is notifications, time, timer or stopwatch, and glanceable weather forecast. (And I don't like the weather forecast on android/google wear)

Everything else, like sleep tracking, exercise, heart rate tracking, is a nice to have that I would look at from time to time and then do nothing with that information.

Anyways, a month or so ago I bought an amoled esp32c6 watch devkit for ~30 EUR, wrote firmware in rust, wrote a small android app to sync notifications, time and weather forecast, and I'm good. It's buggy and I need to polish it up, but it's exactly what I need. And if I ever need something else, I can just add it. Of course this is an extreme approach. It would be much easier to buy a cheap fitness tracker that does all this and has much longer battery life. I just like to be able to tinker with things.

She's using it for payments, that's probably more than a lot of people! I set them up on mine but rarely bother, the phone is my payment device.

I wear my Apple Watch because it's a fancy health-monitor and I am anticipating atrial fibrillation in my medium-term future (thanks, dad's side of the family!). So it's nice to have a thing that is checking for signs of that and recording a few metrics. I might even upgrade to one with a newer sensor for BP etc before long.

Beyond that and checking the time though, I have almost no use for it. Plus I've had to turn off nearly every other feature and integration I could find because they were annoying.

Gestures which fire when I'm doing the garden, stopping the music I'm listening to. Button long-press actions which get activated by clothing. I eventually had to turn the watch over so the buttons don't get hit by glove-cuffs and cause random stuff to happen when I move around.

I consider myself a power user, and I still can't find a use for my watch beyond fitness tracking when I have my phone in my pocket anyway

Im still giving myself the illusion that tracking my sleep is doing anything relevant.

I sleep bad -> buy watch -> watch tells me I sleep bad -> win/win?

In the gym, i use the timer. But is it worth it to carry a watch all the time, keep it charged etc. for a timer? I'm considering buying a timer for the gym.

We just do'nt need a lot of tech in reality.

Having a Garmin, ruined me with awesome battery life, but after I melted it, I was using Amazfit ActiveEdge (can't find straps, the watch is still ok), which made me realize, I'm fine with it, both serves what I need, with over week of battery life. And, that matters the most at the end. Having ADHD, a smart watch is a life saver. But charging it everyday? Nope, who have time for that!?

Alarms are crucial, I have 8 alarms set, just to remind me of passing time.

Calendar is also very useful, for quick glance, externalizing of information is really important when you have a bad memory

Sleep tracking, at least I know how long I might have slept. Surprisingly, Amazfit detects going to sleep very consistently and reliably then Garmin (not counting, sleep level detection accuracy) which did surprise me a lot

Activity reminder, it reminds me I'm sitting for too long, and have a goal set. Which is really useful for me.

Steps, weather, notifications all are pretty important, to keep me off mobile. If I open the mobile, it's given I'll lose focus and lose a large chunk of time.

> What the user wants to do with it is almost totally at odds with what the company is selling. Alexii are mostly kitchen timers, song players, and light switches. No one is a "power user" constantly installing skills and using it for anything which increases the product team's engagement metrics.

There is IMO a design flaw that tanked adoption of not just Alexa, but also on-phone voice assistants.

People would want to use reliable equivalent of "computer, play music" or any kind of "computer, do X". But what is on offer by all major companies is, "${brand name}, do X on ${brand name} with ${brand name}". No thanks.

More broadly, I think this is rarely noted explicitly - user interfaces are ultimate marketing platforms, because you get to inject your marketing literally between the user and the task they're doing. Whether purposefully or intuitively, companies understand that, and the UX goes to shit as they design the product to also be a marketing platform.

I got a pixel 4 after some surgery basically for the fall detection. Otherwise it's mainly doing what the Fitbit I had 8(?) years ago did for me, with added GPS. Pulse, steps.

As an ADHD-haver it's good to get notifications to the watch so that I can avoid unlocking the phone and risk falling down a rabbit-hole. I think that's under-sold.

What I want is a decent (by which I mean SIMPLE) pomodoro app for it, and I'll probably have to write that myself. Does that make me a power user? I was surprised that finding such a thing would be difficult.

I tend not to use it for payment because the ergonomics are terrible. Someone needs to tell that team that having the face on the inside of your wrist is entirely valid (especially if you don't want to be whacking your shiny watch face into every passing door handle), but that makes you do contortions if you want to get it close to a card reader. Not only that but the way screen locking works is ungainly enough that the fact you need to use it more with the face towards your body makes it a constant annoyance. I've unknowingly reorganised my widget order far too often because of this.

I'm fully locked into Apple Watches as I'm using these features regularly. Not sure whether that counts as a power user.

- Time

- Notifications (also: dismissing a notification on the watch also removes it from the phone)

- Smart Stack (relevant info pops up automatically)

- Wakeup alarm

- Timers

- Payments

- Express Travel mode (yes, I'm aware of the vulnerability)

- Siri (especially great with the upcoming Siri AI)

- Medication tracking

- Heart rate monitoring, Sleep tracking, Sleep apnoea detection, ECG

- Phone calls while the phone is in a different room

- controlling Home devices

- automatic tracking of hikes or walks

Charging has never been an issue for me. I put it on the charger while I sit at the computer or game console in the evening and when I go to bed later, it's fully charged and ready for the night and the next day.

For me, showing the time, calendar notifications and turn-by-turn navigation with Google Maps is all the smartwatch has to offer. Sleep tracking is a good extra. That's it.

Pebble was great at providing that, with crazy good battery life.

This is why I bought a Casio G-shock smartwatch. I use my watch primarily as a watch: I like to track my workouts, and it is nice to get important notifications to my watch when I'm busy / trying to focus

I primarily use it for steps, stopwatch/timers (the best part imo), quick weather check

that's about it

As an owner of a Pixel Watch 4 with LTE, the killer feature is the ability to handle calls/texts without an actual phone. With a smart watch, I can maintain important communications without looking at a device with a screen large enough to show me an advertisement, large enough to be useful for doom-scrolling, large enough for consuming slop, etc.

I have a Galaxy Watch 7 that I keep on silent ("Mute all sounds"). I think I'd be considered a heavy user. I don't use it to do a lot, but I've come to rely on the things I do use it for and I use it frequently.

I use it:

  - To tell the time
  - Set one-off timers/alarms
  - Recurring silent/vibration alarms throughout the day
    Wake up, start work, mid-morning break/checkpoint, lunch, end lunch, mid-day break/checkpoint, 30 minutes before "clock out", end of work day, and medication reminders
  - For silent/vibration notifications (HEAVILY filtered. Mostly messages from VIPs, security camera notifications, reminders, "rain in 15 minutes")
  - Set reminders "Remind me tomorrow morning to schedule a vet appointment"
  - Add things to different shopping lists (grocery list, shopping list, etc)
  - Quick, short-term notes ("10 M4x20mm screws")
  - Casual health tracking: sleep, step count, activity minutes, etc

Almost every one of my interactions with it is via voice/Gemini.

They might just get a stroke if they'll hear what I use my smartwatch for. Hop on my bike, press start, and at the end of the ride press stop, then look at the result on my phone (sometimes). And if I don't forget to put it on I read the time. I have navigated with it once in the first week. But luckily it's not a Pixel Watch.

For you and me, using a thing regularly for longer (than people around you) and possibly for more than one purpose makes for a power user.

If you're on the Pixel Watch team however... "power user" takes on a different meaning

The most important thing I bought it for was Health Tracking. Although I still don't understand why it ask me to do tacking sessions when I am simply walking faster.

2nd most useful feature is vibrate alarm.

Telling time not even that important on my list.

I don't do payment with watch. Since I think the motion of making my wrist to the counter is awkward. Since we are always on our phone it doesn't make it much simpler.

Ikr, I've been holding out with my 2020 Garmin venu thinking this would be a big refresh

Can you sell Pebble Time 2 to me as Amazfit Bip user? All I need are notifications from smartphone, sleep tracking and pedometer.

I am on my third Bip, the last two I bought used for like 20USD, why would I spend in 2026 225USD on Pebble Time 2 with worse specs (thicker and it doesn't even have GPS) rather than just buy another used Amazfit Bip for 15-20USD (it can still last 4 weeks even with old battery)? Their pricing is completely insane. I don't care about their special OS and custom apps.

i own PT2 due to buttons but charging thing is not such a problem considering i take it off before the shower