Besides just notifications, what tips or advice can you give to using the watch to the full potential?
I have a Garmin Vivoactive 6, and I use it for the following:
- sleep quality tracking. It judges me in the morning.
- steps and calories burned so that I can justify eating or drinking something shitty.
- whether or not to pull out my phone and respond to a text message
- how far from the green I am
That’s… about it. Would love other ideas.
How you judge your sleep massively influences how you feel, so I always judge how I slept, then check the watch if it agrees. If I think I slept well and the watch says no, I say technical malfunction. If I felt I slept bad and the watch says I slept well, I feel better about my sleep. Win win
Apple Watch 11
I mostly use it for convenience, so I don’t need to pull my phone out
- Apple Pay
- Weather
- Music controls
- timers. Lots of timers
- Reminders/notifications/texts
- random search questions
- occasionally phone calls
In theory I track
- exercise
- sleep
Feature I’m most interested in
- any health sensor
I upgraded from an Apple Watch 3 because I could no longer update in place, only reset and reinstall.
I’ll upgrade again when a compelling health sensor is added. Probably blood pressure
Garmin Fenix 6 sapphire, this has been the best watch I’ve ever har. At this point I’ve had it for like 6 years and the battery still lasts a week at max power and a month on battery saver. It can record GPS for like 2 straight days on one charge
No touch screen which is excellent because the button input is extremely intuitive to the point where I can often use it without looking if I’m running or working on something.
The spO2 and HR monitors are nice to haves for me for working out but I use them more for differential readings more than absolute.
I keep wanting to upgrade to the newer ones especially to have mobile Internet connectivity but I can’t justify it cause this thing has been bulletproof.
Also been using a Garmin Fenix 6 Pro since 2020 and agreed with everything you’ve said. 10 day battery life still holding strong and the screen is essentially bullet proof (non-saphire version here). It’s smart enough to where I’ll get notifications from my phone but not smart enough that I’ll be composing a fully fledged out response through it, that’s what the phone is for. Thought about the newer ones, but I think at this point I just want to run this one until it’s dead.
Samsung watch 6.
Got it to monitor my heart which does not work on me for medical reasons though. It’s one of the cheapest but is still full featured (imo) but only with Samsung mobiles.
Really nice for managing notifications and using for media controls. A little fitness tracking.
Home assistant usage was great like until a year ago and now it simply doesn’t really work anymore.
I have a Garmin Fenix 5 Plus. I track my activities whether it’s a long walk, a hike, or paddle. It helps when hiking because if I get a bit lost, I can look at the map to see the trails I’ve walked, or how fast I’ve paddled/hiked/etc. It also has an emergency function so if my heart rate suddenly spikes or if I quickly drop in height (like a cliff, though it has been triggered once when I climbed down a water fall), it’ll send an emergency message to my emergency contacts with coordinates.
I have it set to remind me to move every hour if I haven’t moved from my desk. This in addition to step counts.
Sleep tracking, though Garmin is/was notorious for poor sleep tracking, so I don’t really count on it too much.
Date and time. I also have a little clock on the bottom to tell me what time it is back home so I know when to not call.
I like seeing my fitness go up on the dial. Not so much the other way around.
I also use it for my morning wake up alarm. It vibrates on my wrist instead of an audible alarm to wake up the +1. He doesn’t have a smart watch, so I wake up every morning at stupid o’clock.
Badges. I love collecting the badges.
Pebble Time 2.
Mostly sleep and step counting. Media controls on occasion. Just got it so not had a chance to customize it much yet.
Coming from, in order: Garmin Vivoactive 5, 4, 3, 2, Pebble Time, Pebble OG.
Preferred the healthstats on the Garmin out of the box. Great indicator if I’m getting sick based on its measurements or if I’m not being as active as I should be.
I’ve had a few. I mostly use it to tell time, overview the weather and get notified about calls. I have a toddler that sleeps with me. I am also on-call for work half the time, so if I get called in the middle of the night it wakes me up so that I can sneak off to work a bit without waking the kid.
My pebble time had a great Google maps app for navigating. It was great. Nothing screams tourist like walking around with your phone to navigate.
Apple Watch.
Primarily fitness and sleep tracking.
Garmins are a bit better for fitness tracking, but the Apple Watch is one of the best for sleep tracking.
I don’t really use any apps on it besides that, but ringing, and the fine location tracking for my phone is amazing.
Galaxy Watch 5
Daily.
I use the timer, alarm, weather, hiking (fitness), and…
One more thing… what is it(snaps fingers in thought)?.. OH! Tell time.
Cheap Chinese Amazfit Neo. Basically a fitness tracker with a Casio-like look.
The one advice is, use gadgetbridge (https://gadgetbridge.org/). Replaces the shitty bloated spyware vendor app with something that does not sell your sleep pattern to the highest bidder. Downside, of course, is that you lose features and not every watch is compatible (or in different states of compatibility)
Xiaomi mi band 8.
Specifically with gadgetbridge. It’s the main reason why I got this one. At the time it was the cheapest watch that gadgetbridge supported.
Other than notifications it’s mainly used as an alarm clock. Anything on the nightstand would wake up the rest of the house before it manages to wake me up. While since I sleep with my arm under my head. I basically have the watch up against my ear…
Also. While it’s still notifications in the end. I have a small script running on my homeserver/pi that checks when there are issues with the train I use to commute to work (delays. Reroutes cancellations. Etc…) If there are any issues. It just uses ntfy.sh to send notification on my phone. Which I rarely pull out at work since I work up on scaffoldings most of the time. (Unfortunately the national train service’s app lacks this kind of notifications built-in. But at least they make train data easily accessible)
I still have my Instinct 1. I’m terrible for accidentally destroying watches by mistake in my daily life, so much so that I had given up on watches all together for many years.
I’ve had this thing for like 5 years now and other than replacing the strap every now and then, it’s pretty much been bulletproof.
Edit: terrible for, not terrible at. I am an expert at destroying them.
I dont know if a MiBand9 really count as a smartwatch but i use it to trigger home assistant events either manually or automatically
On my old MiBand5 I could have an automatic alarm after falling asleep during the day, so I wouldn’t have too long naps, I miss this feature
I also use it to get the current time.
Ohh, how do you do that? That sounds cool!
Not with the official app “Mi Fitness” but with “Notify for Xiaomi”, there is a feature to connect to HomeAssistant and other services
Cool, thanks! I never really gave it a chance, since Gadgetbridge exists, but it seems to have some cool features
everything that runs well with gadget bridge
