I Hated Smartwatches

so the last 10 years I have persistently put off the idea of using a smartwatch no matter how many people have recommended one I've always said I'm not a smartwatch kind of guy I don't want to be pinged a 100 times a day with notifications I don't want yet another thing that I have to remember to charge I don't want to reply to messages using a keyboard the size of my thumb but late last year D and I were trying to find the perfect Christmas gift for our team and we kept coming back to this idea of Smartwatch getting each person the same watch and then creating this fitness challenge between us that will help us all out with our health goals eventually we caved each of us got an Apple Watch series 9 I've been wearing mine every day for the last 2 months you'll have seen it in all the videos so as someone who's basically despised the idea of a smartwatch from a distance has actually using one in my life completely flipped my perspective and I want to start with the fitness thing because I did not expect how much it would affect me so if you don't know the way that Apple by default measures your health is with three rings one that tracks the calories you've burnt from movement one that tracks the number of minutes spent doing a proper workout out and then one that tracks the number of hours in a day for which you've been stood up for at least a minute you set what you want your goals for each of those three rings to be and then every day you're basically playing this game to complete them and I use the word game very purposefully cuz I'm a massive gamer at heart and the crazy thing about this watch for me is that it feels like it has turned my entire life into a video game like you know how in a game you have your health bars and your stamina meters and all your stats all of a sudden I have sensors on my wrist that are measuring my own key STS a screen that's communicating them to me and then software that's adding that game likee layer of making you want to complete your objectives and level up and for me this has been no exaggeration life altering it's partly that now anytime within a second you can see exactly what you've been lacking today it's partly that it rewards each completed ring with a really cool animation pretty equivalent to the in-game thrill of beating a high score or unlocking a new upgrade and then partly also the ability to compete with others so in the Apple fitness app you can add in anyone who also has a watch and when you do that you can see their Rings they can see your rings Yeah Boy most SmartWatches have a f to like this and if you ever do end up getting one I would strongly recommend you find at least one person to set this up with cuz knowing that anyone can check your stats at any time during the day it just adds an extra layer of accountability and also this incentive to do more to go even beyond your goals and blow them away but what's even better than that and something that the official Apple app doesn't actually let you do is a challenge this a separate app you can get called challenges and that lets you add all of your friends together into one big competition you have a running leaderboard that's constantly updating you have drama you have surprise takeovers when one person suddenly goes on an outdoor holiday and walks everywhere and surprise downfalls when someone picks up a sudden injury and this for me has led to all sorts of situations where I'm actively changing my behavior for the better like choosing to walk home after a big meal out or discuss video ideas with brisha by walking in the garden as opposed to sitting on the sofa and that is priceless one thing I did find quite annoying at the start was that the watch has a specific workout mode and that's fine it's where it turns on all sensors and tracks all your stats super accurately and it's being in this workout mode that's going to fill your specific workout ring but the annoying thing is it doesn't activate automatically the watch is kind of designed around you having to remember to specifically enter workout modes and pick what kind of workout before you start working out as opposed to the watch just knowing and I do feel like there has to be a smoother way although after a period of time using it what I have realized is that a in most cases when you've been exercising for 10 minutes or so your watch will ask you if you'd like to turn on workout modes and then also if you say yes to that it will look back at when that workout most likely started and then add back in that time you spent exercising and the likely calories burned to your watch rings so even though you don't get the best quality tracking at the start of your workout you don't feel like you've lost progress or wasted time exercising so the fitness side of things is exceptional but not everything is I've personally had a pretty major hit recently which I will get to but even just generally what really does feel like a weak point of the Apple watch is how it actually looks as a watch both in terms of the inbuilt watch face customization and also the hardware like when you go in the watch app you can pick from a whole number of different watch face templates you can customize the exact color you want everything to be and then individually decide which complications that you want to swap into those templates it's definitely enough so that my Apple watch does look very different to the rest of our team's Apple watches but you're also definitely not given free roam like I was hoping for you know given how much of the appeal of watches in general is tied to them being a fashion statement I'm just surprised that Apple hasn't made some sort of third- party watch face Marketplace or like uh the ability to granularly customize the way every part animates for example but to be fair other people have I've been using an app called faer and while it does cost money if you want all the watch faces it does give you you a mindblowing amount of watch faces like this one which really emphasizes that whole video game like feel I was telling you about and this one which is well it's Pokémon on your wrist doesn't get better than that but then the other side to this coin is the hardware and it's not by any means ugly it's just it's just fine the body looks fine the bands look fine nothing is particularly special no one's going to stop you mid conversation to ask what that sexy thing on your wrist is and I think other companies like Samsung and Huawei have actually made something that's just more aesthetically pleasing also I do have one massive scratch on my screen which is highly upsetting and yes you can install watch screen protectors but they kind of ruin the seamlessness of the feel and watch cases aren't really much of a thing because it then becomes a much bulkier proposition so I feel like it's one of those gadgets where you just kind of have to accept it's not going to stay pristine now that said one thing I really rate about the Apple watch is it's very clearly been designed to be a daily watch one that you're not saving for special occasions or for dress up but that you take out and you live with every single day and it achieves that goal very well the shape and the curves of the watch for example means that no matter what position my wrist is in it doesn't dig in the bands while generally not the prettiest are almost always so comfortable that you basically forget they're there and at least for this fabric one that I've settled on is very easy to slip on and slip off and a lot softer than it looks and that seamlessness also carries through to using the watch I don't think I've seen a single bug or even broken animation in the last 2 months pretty much every app opens instantly and feels really consistent most apps have this kind of low power stage and they gently wake up when you lift your wrist to look at them which makes it all feel like a really cohesive optimized system and while the squarer shape does lose some points in the looking like a watch Department it gains points in the being as functional as possible Department there's more usable space for your apps and the apps really use that space you have the distinct feeling with this Apple watch that every bit of software you use on it has been specifically made for that exact set of Hardware you're using cuz it basically has been and then the cherry on top is that because the display itself has such deep blacks and that the whole user interface is designed around being black it genuinely feels like the screen is melting over the sides very cool indeed but none of that stuff really addresses my fundamental concerns with a smartwatch you know stuff like why bother having yet another Gadget that you need to charge what's the point having a mini second phone that basically doubles you up on your notifications and I want to be able to escape from my screen sometimes Honestly though if you spend a little bit of time at the start setting it up right most of those concerns melt away like for the charging situation we found this it's a single block that charges your phone your earphones and your watch which in one Fell Swoop means I put all of my stuff onto charge together at night and I take all that stuff off the next morning so in my experience it cuts both the hassle of having to charge multiple things and also the risk of forgetting to pick your watch up in the morning the concern about notifications all the time by default your watch will mirror the notification settings that you have set for your phone so if you've already set your phone up to disable notifications from say Amazon then your watch Will by default do the same but then you can also further configure it so that you're only getting the specific notifications on your watch that you want to get on your watch and so for me notifications have gone something that initially felt like it was going to be a massive burden to a perk cuz I've disabled notifications like Amazon delivery notifications on my watch cuz I'll just see them when I see them on my phone but for the important things this makes sure that I see them the moment they come in and while naturally you would assume that having a smartwatch is going to double the amount of time you spend looking at your screens because of this I've actually found the opposite because you know that your most important notifications are going to come to your wrist it reduces that growing anxiety you would normally get from not having checked your phone in a while so you do that less and when you get notifications here and you look at your watch and you action them which you can fairly easily with a full-size keyboard and more importantly some really high quality voice to text that even punctuates for you almost always correctly there's nothing else to to do because there's no Tik Tok to go on or feeds to scroll you basically just do what you need to do on it and then you put your arm down and carry on with the rest of your day so as well as all the benefits to the number of times I stand the number of steps I take the workouts I do this watch has also incredibly reduce the amount of time I spend on my tech now it isn't perfect cuz well two things one that something I have noticed myself doing when a notification comes directly onto your wrist this immediate instinctive need to glance over at it even mid conversation when someone is talking to you I hate that I do it I know how rude it must look I'm trying to get myself out of the habit but I feel like this is just one of those consequences of your Tech very much being on your body sorry what did you say the wedding music oh and secondly while in one way I'm very impressed at what the watch can do there's also a lot of ways in which I'm quite surprised at what it can't do see modern day SmartWatches they are their own computer they've got their own chip they've got their own apps and so from a distance you might look at this Apple watch and think oh it's kind of like an iPhone but on your wrist it's not your Apple watch has a permanent Bluetooth connection to your phone and it kind of requires the phone for a lot of its functionality so for example if you want to send a text you have to make sure that you're either within Bluetooth range of your phone which is not very far or you're within range of a Wi-Fi network that your phone has previously connected to oh and if you're enjoying the worst lit Mr Who's The Boss video ever it's because we're in India we've got a really cool collab coming up and if you want to see it then a sub to the channel would be [Music] strapping or for another limitation of the watch while it is a great remote for your songs and your YouTube videos you can't actually watch those videos on it when people send you WhatsApp messages with images attached you just see the images as blurs like why what am I meant to do with this and yeah there are tons of native apps here like headspace but let's be very clear watch headspace is a very neutered proposition compared to phone headspace and I also noticed that photos are quite limited by default your watch will only store whatever shots you favorited on your phone and while you can add more there's a Max limit of 500 which you know my phone has like 28,000 my point being this is not a phone replacement it's not capable enough such that even if I had a data connection with a cellular watch I still would not feel comfortable leaving home without my phone but importantly none of the things that I thought would annoy me have actually been issues and the watch has made my life so much more convenient in many different unexpected ways like for example you want to pay for something at a store now instead of this it's just this you need a sudden flashlight it's here and you want to make it brighter tap you want to keep track of your navigation now you don't need to take your phone out to your pocket five times you need to quickly enter a two-factor authentication code now you just check your wrist because you can see all of your messages there you want to skip the song that's playing or adjust the volume while you're running this is your remote you want to set a quick timer or check the weather this is now by far the fastest way to do those little things you know how when you have both a phone and a laptop you try try and do everything that you can do on your phone just because the fact that it fits in your pocket and the fact that it has touchscreen apps makes it a Slicker experience than arduous websites well in the exact same way when you have a smartwatch you will try and do everything that you can do on this instead of your phone there is also this new double tap gesture in the latest Apple watches which acts like a universal button to do whatever the primary action in the app that you're in is but I haven't found it particularly comfortable or reliable now there's one more looming question before we bring this all together you have got thousands upon thousands of watch apps so what other stuff does this do that's actually useful well honestly so much stuff when you put it all together that it's quite daunting so much stuff that no one person will ever use it all and you will still be discovering new things even years into using it everything from mental health tracking to detailed sleep tracking to keeping tabs of how many sunlight hours you're getting each day but there's three things that I found particularly useful if you lose your phone behind a sofa or should I say when you lose your phone behind a sofa having the find my app at your fingertips and just being able to make it ring is a lifesaver there's walkie-talkie which is an absolutely amazing concept it's basically anytime you want you hold down the walkie-talkie button you speak and the other person will hear what you're saying in real time so long as they have internet and it's one of the most effortless forms of long-distance communication I've ever experienced it's kind of like the convenience of a voice note but without the pressure of a phone call so it feels pretty perfect for all of those super quick are you up to right now kind of catch-ups and also those could you bring some milk when you come back home updates only thing is you do feel the volume limitations of the watch the speaker is like 30% quieter than it needs to be for this to be a full-on game changer and then the compass which while not something I use often has saved me a couple of times and it's just done really well it shows you your altitude it shows your incline your latitude your longitude the app is super responsive and it even has this really cool feature called backtrack where let's say you're staying in a new location that you're not not familiar with and do you want to head out somewhere if you turn on backtrack your watch will automatically keep track of every step you take so that when you're ready to come back it guides the way so for the most part I was wrong I've gone from completely detesting the idea of a smartwatch to now being completely sold on them and I can also specifically recommend the Apple Watch series 9 it's been very good to me the only catch and in my case this is a massive catch is that the Apple watch is first and foremost an iPhone accessory yes you can track your rings with that one but you can't message you can't take calls you can't look up directions on the go it's not really a functional product which given that I've just recently switched over from my iPhone to a Samsung phone puts me in this slightly unfortunate situation where I have to either decide to use the phone that I want to use or to use the watch that I want to use and this isn't even just an apple problem most watches made for Androids are practically dysfunctional with I so buying a smartwatch in general is just one of the strongest ecosystem locks that you can possibly commit yourself to for now I've basically resorted to having to carry around my old iPhone in my backpack wherever I go just so I can still use the watch features that I love but it's not a great solution and also I can't really switch to a Galaxy watch because then this whole fitness challenge that I've started with my team I would have to leave it now while I figure out that pickle how do you best record all of this activity that your watch makes you do this guy this is the insta 360 Ace Pro and it's this insane Fusion of high-end action camera and AR icial intelligence V's 8K video recording this is the first action camera to do it and it not just means that you can take videos that you could watch back on a 120 in screen but also that if you want to zoom while taking 4K video you just double tap on screen and you will still be shooting native 4K video the sensor size too is Miles bigger than the latest GoPro but Hardware is one thing where this absolutely minces the competition is when you bring in the AI like pure video mode which when you're shooting anything low light can analyze that footage and in the background improve noise raise brightness increased dynamic range it looks a lot better than you'd expect it to and better than any action camera output I've ever seen and then AI warp is completely Next Level it turns your scene into almost whatever you want it to be there's tons more but I won't spoil it I've got us a custom link in the description that gets you 10% off plus a free screen protector so if you're interested that's where to go

Channel: Mrwhosetheboss

Views: 2,314,101

Keywords: tech, gadgets, smart watch, smartwatch, apple

Id: GHYg8cmUiKM

Length: 16min 18sec (978 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 17 2024