Ask Lemmy

You forgot the third option: None.

I got a smartphone, I don't need a watch to tell the time.

Regular watch. I don't need more things sending me notifications, and a nice watch makes me feel more confident.

Smartwatch. It’s very useful for triaging notifications (messages, email, phone calls, etc) and turning HomeKit devices on/off quickly or when my hands are full (Siri, open the garage door). Also extremely useful for fitness.

Garmin "Smart" watch. It doesn't do apps but it does notificatios and is great for fitness... and only needs charging once a month. A watch that needs recharging daily is useless to me.

I don't wear any watch at all. Time isn't real, it was invented by capitalists to sell more watches.

You also forgot the fourth option: Both.

I always wear a real watch because I collect them and they are the only jewellery I have and they complete your clothing style. They can gain value and I can give them to my kids one day (when I'll learn how to make them). Also because as a Swiss I don't really have a choice.

But I also wear an apple watch on the opposite arm, for sport reasons at first, then I got used to all the bullshit it have...

No ⌚.

No watch

Regular watch. Other than my phone, I tend to want less technology on me.

My go to is an old Casio, the same one Dennis Nedry wears in Jurassic Park. It's super weird seeing how expensive this watch has become on eBay.

No.

No watch. I have a smart phone

Regular mechanical watch. I don't care about my notifications, I just want what is effectively a piece of jewelry. I prefer the watch to a bracelet because I also appreciate the worksmanship and design of the analog machine.

Casio G-Shock owner here. I prefer a watch to always know the time without checking my phone but I would never use IOT devices, including a smart watch for privacy & security reasons.

Where my Casio G-Shock fam at? Solar, set by atomic clock, stylish, pretty backlight, old Nokia cell phone levels of indestructible. What's not to love?

Regular watch.

My good old Timex Ironman has survived tons of physical abuse over the decade or more ive had it, and it's battery only needs my attention every few years. I doubt a smart watch would improve either of those scenarios.

Plus, I don't see any value added to my life by having phone features on a smaller, harder to read screen. If I want to use phone features, my actual phone is less than a foot from my wrist.

I've a solar normal watch. Having to plug it in every week seems annoying to me.

I enjoyed having a smartwatch back in the pebble days. I was kind of addicted to notifications (especially from datadog) at the time. My Pebble time made me feel less stressed because glancing at my watch was less effort than pulling out my phone.

Then Pebble was killed off, web-scale infrastructure became more reliable, and I learned to recover from my notification addiction. Now I'm happily watchless again.

A regular watch.

I've never seen the point of a smart watch, unless you're using it for fitness.

I go old school and rock a pocket watch (my cellphone).

I have a Garmin viomove hybrid, I use it to count steps, count my swimming and see how much I sleep. I wouldn't want a smarter watch out of trust issues. Battery life still sucks 3-4 days but the analog watch works if the smart watch part is dead.

No.

Regular watches - been wearing watches of some kind since middle school, and at this point I feel undressed or like something is missing without anything on my wrist. Like many others here, while I love the tech of smartphones (and admittedly the smart watches are really cool) but don't want an even more in-my-face screen to further pull me into more phone time. Trying to really cut back on screen time. Also, if I went for a smart watch, I'd feel the want to wear it all the time both because of how much they are and to keep activity tracking data consistent, which would mean my collection of watches would likely get much less wear time.

Watch I have on now is the Citizen Eco-drive I got when I graduated college, years of service and frequent wear in situations I had no business wearing it and it's held up great. Because of the eco-drive it's one of my few watches I don't have to worry about, it just always has the right time.

Regular watch. I already often find it stressfull to be constantly connected and available with just a phone, I don't want to be even more available.

I like both, but I mostly wear a smartwatch. I don't always hear notifications on my phone. Having my watch vibrate at the same time has been a huge improvement. It is also nice to be able to view and dismiss notifications without pulling out my phone.

I started experimenting with smartwatches soon after they first appeared. There were a lot of limitations, but having better access to notifications made them worth the tradeoff for me. Over time, the hardware and software have both gotten steadily better. I have owned and used four previous smartwatches. My latest, a Samsung Galaxy Watch6 Classic, is the first I've had with the battery life, display quality, and speed to make me feel like I'm no longer compromising. It works well as a basic watch, in addition to all the other features.

My other reason for sticking with smartwatches was not something I expected. I was able to build my idea of the perfect watch face for myself, using the Watchmaker app. Getting it to do everything I wanted required some serious programming, among other things, but I can't tell you how satisfying it is to have exactly what I want on my wrist.

I do still wear regular watches, sometimes for particular occasions and sometimes just for fun. I have a Citizen Promaster Skyhawk A-T Titanium that serves as a dress watch and a Casio Pro Trek 3500T for when I'm camping or just need a watch I can't accidentally break. Both watches are solar powered and both set themselves to the Bureau of Standards radio signals.

I would hate to have to choose one type over the other, but my smartwatch get most a lot more wear time than my others.

Regular watch, my $60 watch has traveled to 5 continents with me over the past decade. Lightweight, has a dim illumination when needed, and ticks right even after some rugged adventures.

I honestly wouldn't ask a smartwatch to handle what I've put my regular watch through.

I have a couple of traditional watches that I occasionally wear and don't own a smart watch because I don't need another thing to worry about keeping charged.

Like many, I stopped wearing watches when smartphones became a thing. Then I adopted the Apple Watch when that came out and wore one or another of them until this month. Something switched in my brain and I just decided that I hated that thing. Hated having to charge it. Hated the notifications. Hated feeling a need to close the rings. Hated the look of the thing. Hated that everyone seems to wear the same thing.

I started to learn about mechanical watches and bought an inexpensive but reportedly good quality one that looks nice to me. So far, I love it. There’s something viscerally satisfying about watching the movement through the display back, hearing the subtle sound, occasionally winding it, and contemplating that people can make such complex things that actually work.

I don't like either. I don't use things for fashion, and the phone alone gives me all the function of either watches without it giving me sensory issues by being a bracelet on my wrist.

Smart watches and privacy don't go hand in hand. Also dont want to own another product that i need to worry about charging. But if i am going to buy one ever, it would be garmin. I heard pretty good things about it here in europe.

No watch at all - I check the time on my phone and I don't see the point in saving a half second here and there checking notifications on a smart watch.

I had a pinewatch for a good while, neat little thing for 40 bucks, until the belt thingie broke and I couldnt use it anynore

I'd love to get new one, or a band that is

I wear an automatic Seiko. I like that I don't have to worry about a battery staying charged/wearing out over time. I just have to take a second every couple weeks to set it forward to account for it losing a few minutes. Another factor is when I looked at the smart watches that were available last time I got a new phone and they were all very large and I have small wrists which I don't want to emphasize. My current watch fits well.

I would like to get a bracelet or something that tracks biometric data but from what I saw when I was investigating those is that they all have watch functionally as well and I don't want to wear two watches.

No. I prefer to not wear any watch. I dislike having something heavy strapped to my wrist.

And I dislike accidentally looking at clocks when I didn't specifically query the clock time; it screws with my perception of the passage of time, causing unpleasant dissonance.

Also I work in food, which means washing my hands above the wrist every half hour at a minimum, and wrist jewelry gets in the way of that.

And I've never been mugged, partly because I aggressively look like someone not worth mugging, and strapping multiple hundreds of dollars to my wrist is counter to that.

No

Why would I need a watch?

Regular watch

I currently have a smartwatch but I don't like how I can't prevent it from getting my text and phonecalls which I find useless because my phone is on me 95% of the time. The only way is to keep it on Do Not Disturb. It also for some reason has trouble updating, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I just want it to tell time without all the fancy annoyances.

I always have my phone on silent mode and have messages turned off for most apps, so I'll have to check them manually. This is less stressfull to me. I just get to relax without being bothered.

So I think I prefer a regular watch since I don't see the benefits of a smart watch in my situation.

Hybrid watch. Still has the hands for manual time reading but in the middle is an eInk display for notifications. I have to charge it about every 3.5 weeks which is amazing. (Fossil gen 6 Hybrid)

Regular watches for me. Specifically, relatively cheap automatics. There's a certain kind of beauty to a mechanical watch, they're impressive feats of engineering.

I've worn Fitbits in the past, but just long enough to know I'm not interested. I don't need yet another thing to charge, I'll just grab my phone for things beyond checking the time.