My brother had a watch with IR as a young teen, he went into Curry’s changing all the TV chanels when my mum was with him.

PS Strava is best on a Garmin bike nit, not your phone. Even a Garmin 25 is more accurate and robust. My phone stays burried in my camelbak !

Do you wear a watch? What’s the point when you’ve got a phone in your pocket with a clock on the lock screen? Oh, that’s right, it’s to save you the faff of fishing your phone out when you just want to know the time. The same is true of a smart watch only for other phone functions. Eg, someone sends me a text, I can read it with a quick glance at my wrist. The phone rings, I get a subtle vibration on my wrist rather than an obnoxious loud ringtone and I can check to see if it’s something I want to bother answering. Etc, etc.

It seems like an very expensive way of finding out that your phone is ringing or you have a text. I get that it does all that and it’s seemingly important to some people, but personally I’m not that fussed.

… OK boomer?

OK consumer?

It seems like an very expensive way of finding out that your phone is ringing or you have a text.

Or a regular wristwatch for telling the time when you’ve got a perfectly functional clock in your pocket? There’s a several-hundred post thread elsewhere on STW about this very subject. Personally I don’t understand why someone would want to spend thousands on a watch no matter how nice it was, but I guess here we are.

Anyway, that was a couple of random examples rather than intending to be an exhaustive list. I find mine to be useful and convenient on a daily basis, well worth the less-than-half-price I paid for it maybe three or four years ago. You said you didn’t “get it,” I was trying to explain.

I’ve used smartwatches, admittedly mostly outdoorsy ones, but also one of the apple things and I get what they do, for me though, none of those things seem particularly important. I’m equally baffled by people spending thousands on a boutique wrist watch, though essentially I get that it’s jewellery rather than a strictly functional object to tell the time with.

So from my point of view, smart watches seem an awful lot like tec jewellery / consumer objects of desire, but that’s subjective.

And from a biking point of view – this is a cycling forum, sort of, right? – one of the reasons I like riding bikes is being able to escape from the nagging demands of quasi-urgent notifications that in reality aren’t particularly important at all. I don’t really want something on my wrist to remind me. YMMV 🙂

one of the reasons I like riding bikes is being able to escape from the nagging demands of quasi-urgent notifications that in reality aren’t particularly important at all. I don’t really want something on my wrist to remind me.

You don’t get them surgically grafted onto your wrist when you buy them, you know. I have a cheap G-Shock for when I’m on the bike. I’m pretty convinced that many gripes about “modern technology” are in fact a wetware issue – these things all have a perfectly functional “off” button, you just need the self-control to use it.

I think part of the problem is the notion that any notification could be important. People complain about kids being glued to tech but I remember when my grandparents got their first landline back in like the early 80s I think, every time it rang they’d lose their goddamn minds. “Phone! Phone! PHONE!! THE PHONE’S RINGING!1!!” and a mad scramble across the house to get to it before the caller rang off. Who could it have been? The Queen asking them to tea? A huge Premium Bonds windfall? The doctors with some live-saving information? Or my mum saying she was nipping into town and are they OK for bread? We will never know what mystery just passed us here.

For me, my smart watch has actually reduced my phone reliance because it removes that uncertainty at a stroke. If the phone rings it could be my mate Kev wanting to go for a pint, someone with a heavy Indian Subcontinent accent who says his name if Brian and believes I’ve been in an accident recently that wasn’t my fault is that correct, or my mum lying on the kitchen floor with a broken hip and quietly bleeding out. Now if it rings I can just glance at my watch and think “yeah, I’m ignoring that.” (Sorry mum, Doctor Who is on.)

Thats kinda my thinking Cougar. Partly I want to see what the fuss is about, partly I fancy something I’ve not had before, partly I think it might reduce my “that was mine, where’s my phone”
But I am also conscious that while biking is “me” time, and I’m not strictly on call, if my work phone rings out of hours its financially beneficial to me to answer it (very, some days!). So if I dont have to stop, bag off, find phone, call back and hope they aren’t engaged as they phone somebody else or someone else answered and is on their way, it’s good for me. If that call is a weekend, I can potentially earn enough in 2 calls to pay for the watch.

Just wondering whether any of the “cheaper” smartwatches include a camera as well as music/notifications/phone/GPS/HR capability?
Then I could dump my phone more often…

I’ve not seen any with an inbuilt camera, though I’ve not looked in some time.

I tried a remote camera app which talked to the phone’s camera, it was … not good.

This Garmin is quite nice

£1799 😳