MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Anyone fancy offering suggestions for a semi smart watch?
Are they any good?
I dont want to a full fat smart watch. a screen to protect and a battery to charge every few days.
I like my dumb Casio because its bullet proof, smart, simple with a 10 yr battery life and cost £15 quid
Is there a middle ground?
I think it looks like you can get a G shock with a permenant blue tooth connection, with an advertised battery life of over a year. The watch does simple notifications, step counting, find my phone bleeps etc, but cant take calls or videos or cook a bacon sandwich
Looks smart too
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any thoughts on this debateably niche market?
Sound like you're describing my Garmin Instinct to me. Big fan of g-shocks but now pretty much solely use my Instinct.
if I'm not using it for gps recording it'll go for over a week without charging...never tested it fully on that but the charging didn't bother me as it's reasonably infrequently (went away for a week holiday just and it was still fine on my return)
I am very impressed with the Garmin Instinct Solar, it has about 25 days battery,can do activity recording, basic maps. Seems very rugged, the screen is well protected by a good bezel. I got a refurb from Garmin with 12 months waranty for around £115 about 3 months ago.
+1 for the Instinct Solar. I wear mine all the time, battery lasts for ages, I plug mine in to charge maybe once a week or fortnight depending how many rides I've recorded.
Had a week in Turkey in May and despite doing 4 biggish rides it stayed fully charged all week.
Mine was a refurbished too. Got mine from Amazon for about £100
Withings has few models which look like proper watches, they do basic notifications via small screen. Their main idea is to record lots of health markers via watch and other devices and use app to display them. Lovely battery life too.
I have a g shock, it’s bigger than the one listed above but has the same bluetooth functionality.
and, honestly, I don’t wear it.
i much prefer the Apple Watch.
so, i’d say, go dumb watch or smart.
halfway house just doesn’t work for me.
I had a full smart watch (galaxy) and didn't use it for anything other than notifications, so moved to an instinct solar and its great. super battery life, GPS tracking, the newest solar one has nearly infinite life if you're outside a bit
Another Instinct Solar Fanboi here with a couple of G-Shocks now sat un-loved in a watch box. It's very much the closest thing to a G-shock with decent GPS and HR, it lives on my wrist as an always on standby cycling/Running computer so I don't need to worry about having a chest strap and a bar mounted computer...
I did try one of the earlier BT enabled G-shocks, it was pretty dumb TBH more of a standard G-shock with a couple of novelty features added on. The reviews of more recent ones aren't encouraging and the Fanciest GBD H1000 is expensive for what it is and Garmin sell better performing sports watches with more battery life for less...
Another one I'm intrigued by but haven't bought or played with is the Amazfit 'Neo' which is much more of a basic "Dumb smar****ch" with HR and phone connectivity but is very Casio-esq (and pretty cheap)...
Garmin instinct non solar here. Battery life is three weeks or more if you are not using the GPS to track activities. Probably a week if you are recording a run/ride every day. I love it.
I've got that Casio. It's great as a watch to tell the time, do other basic digital watch stuff and be rugged, but to be frank the smart functions are extremely difficult to navigate on the watch and the companion app is about as much use as tits on a fish. I wouldn't buy this one again, I wish I'd have gone for a more basic square G, but that definitely wouldn't meet your smart requirements.
You're welcome.