Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsUseful for working out. Could use improvements.
Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2023
This is my first smart watch, so my review will focus on having the watch in my life versus having no watch in my life. I've had the watch since the beginning of December 2022, so about 2 and a half months now, and I've been using it daily. I also purchased a cellular plan for the watch.
Wearability: I'm not used to wearing a watch at all so it took some time to get used to that. The watch is kind of heavy, so you will feel it on your wrist. The band is a synthetic material and is not breathable, but at the same time is fairly comfortable. One issue for me was that when trying to type on my laptop, the watch is actually bulky enough that it interfered with the way my wrist was used to resting in front of the keyboard and was quite uncomfortable. To the point I started taking the watch off during work.
- I'm a big guy at 6'4" with a large wrist but the band is plenty big. My wrist happens to be at a size where the 4th slot opening creates a slightly loose fit, but the 5th slot opening creates a slightly too tight fit.
User friendliness: I was very used to navigating my Iphone. The watch does not work quite the same, the commands and swipes took me a few days to understand how to swipe them and how I could configure my view. After the initial adjustment period, it's a quick learning curve and you'll understand how to get to the app you are looking for.
- related: you can find a setting option to increase the font on the watch, which for me was very important because otherwise on some of the apps, the print is very small. The buttons are very small and I'm a big guy (6'4") and my fingers sometimes press a nearby button that I did not mean to push, which is quite annoying.
- the watch gets sluggish if you take it for a walk/jog outside. When I've been walking and jogging outside in 35-degree (Fahrenheit) weather for an hour, sometimes the apps are slow, or even stop responding.
- even with a cellular plan for the watch, sometimes apps (that I installed myself) like Pandora will start "buffering" when I'm out on a walk (annoying since the main thing I wanted the phone for was music) and freeze, even though when I used to take my iphone 13 mini (in my pocket) out for the same walk this never happened. This happens frequently enough that it will interrupt your music and annoy you if you are relying on it for your workout. The workaround is to have enough music downloaded to your music library that you can switch to a playlist.
- A big downside for me: when it's cold outside you are going to have longsleeves on, and maybe gloves too. The fabric from these clothing pieces will rub against the face of your watch and the watch will accept "commands" from your clothing. So, you will have all kinds of random things happen: my workout app will pause or cancel my workout (annoying!) or it will skip a song in my playlist or start a whole new playlist, or open up a random app. I've spent quite a bit of time researching online as well as asking other watch wearers for a workaround for this very annoying problem. So far, I have found no successful way to "lock" the watch face so it will not accept commands.
- Fortunately, this is never a problem for me when I workout in the gym as I don't wear long sleeves or gloves there. However, the issue with some apps "buffering" like my pandora music app still happens no matter where I am.
Battery: if you leave the "always on" function on then you'll need to charge the battery every day. With the fast-charging magnet device they give you, charging takes very little time, so it isn't too annoying.
Audio: just a note that although your watch will beep or vibrate at you for some communication, and Siri will talk to you through the watch, you don't get any other audio. You cannot play music on the watch without some kind of wi-fi or bluetooth device connected (e.g. headphones, speakers, etc) - like sometimes I like to play music, without headphones, in the kitchen while cooking dinner - you can't do that directly from your watch the way I am fond of doing with my phone.
Uses: Initially I was interested in all the factory-installed apps: heart rate, EKG, sleep, handwashing, Activity, weather, and Workouts, to name a few.
After some initial excitement about seeing live updates on my heart and testing out the EKG and blood-oxygen levels, they always came out in a healthy range with no warnings and I lost interest. Same thing happened with the sleep app after getting some data for a while that my sleep had no problems.
The handwashing app was, for me, a joke. The watch is supposed to detect when you start handwashing and time you 20 seconds. The problem is that it wouldn't detect for 10-20 seconds so i was wasting water "chasing" that pleasing beep and vibration from the watch that indicated I had succeeded in washing my hands for a full 20 seconds. Good news though the watch is water resistant as promised.
Maps: If using a GPS app, the watch will vibrate for you if you are about to miss your turn, which is cool.
Activity: the app will remind you stand up if you have been sitting down for an hour. You can adjust your goals for things like how many calories you want to burn on a given day, or how far you want to walk or jog. You will earn achievements for more consistent workouts and meeting your goals, which is kind of a nice extrinsic reward: your phone gives you a pleasant beep and vibrates to notify you of such an achievement.
Weather apps: I tried accuweather and weather app. My opinion is that they are both really hard to see detailed forecast information other than getting your current temp and air quality. I was disappointed.
Customizability: you can set the app view to either grid or a panorama view of your apps (which tosses all the little app icons into a big swirl on your watch. You can set favorite apps to appear where they are easier to access. There are all kinds of different watch "faces" you use and toggle which information you want to appear on the standard watch face. I liked the customizability options.
Overall: The main thing for me is that the watch replaced my clunky phone for my nature hikes and jogs, so I can use GPS to track my distance and I can get feedback on how my heart rate is doing and I can listen to music. It does those things moderately well, with the caveats mentioned above. So I do recommend it. That said, there's plenty of room for improvement on the watch that even a watch-amateur like me can see. My sense is that although this is an 8th gen version of the watch, the tech still has a lot of maturing to do in order to become more user-friendly.
I gave up on wearing the watch any other time than my workout: I didn't find it was doing anything terribly useful or fun for me other than the occasional reminder to stand up at work. Your mileage may vary depending on what's important to you, but for the price, the watch technology in my opinion isn't as smart as it could be.
![Apple Watch Series 8 [GPS + Cellular 45mm] Smart Watch w/Silver Aluminum Case with White Sport Band - S/M. Fitness Tracker, Blood Oxygen & ECG Apps, Always-On Retina Display, Water Resistant](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/31ghgqUKaZL._AC_US60_SCLZZZZZZZ__.jpg)
