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People Still Aren't Buying Smartwatches -- and It's Only Going To Get Worse (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Wearable technology still isn't catching up. Despite a year full of exciting new smartwatches, tech-enabled clothing or jewelry, and fitness activity trackers galore, the growth of the wearables market is still on the decline, according to a new report from research firm eMarketer. In fact, the entire category is being overtaken by smart speakers, at least during the 2017 holiday season. "Other than early adopters, consumers have yet to find a reason to justify the cost of a smartwatch, which can sometimes cost as much as a smartphone," eMarketer forecasting analyst Cindy Liu wrote in the report. "Instead, for this holiday season, we expect smart speakers to be the gift of choice for many tech enthusiasts, because of their lower price points."
Maybe it's because I don't want an accessory on my wrist that offers almost no advantages over the cell in my pocket, meanwhile costing the same as a nice watch but looking like an 80's calculator wrist watch.
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I've got enough distractions without another one on my wrist. One that I have to charge up every day. One that doesn't do much without the phone that it is paired with. I like watches - real watches with automatic movements. Little mechanical works of art. Not some stupid little redundant blue tooth toy.
Why is the word WORSE in the headline? There is nothing worse about consumers refusing to be fooled into buying crap they do not need.
Cabbage patch kids? Hulu hoops? Lava lamps? Tamagotchis? Smart watches? Anyone?
In other words, fads come and go.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It's only growing, not growing fast enough... welcome to the new fail. Also iWatch sales are actually up 50% YoY. The convenience of not fishing the phone out of your pocket was always going to be slim. Not everyone wants any watch on their wrist, much less tech bling. Oh and the iWatch 3 comes in a cellular version you can use without the phone, at the cost of battery life. The whole article reads like "they'll never be able to put a useful computer in a watch form factor". Well that's what they said about PCs. And laptops. And phones. I'm not sure saying it about watches is a good bet...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Watch geek here.
The big problem with cheap watch comfort is the terrible bands they ship with. Upgrading the band will always fix this, unless you have something really strange going on with the watch head (e.g. like one dive watch head which, when I weighed, it tipped the scales at over 220 grams -- half a pound!).
Cheap resin bands don't breathe and cut into your wrist, although they can be surprisingly comfortable when you use it with very, very light watch head. Classic el-cheapo Casios come to mind. If the watch weighs nothing, then it's easy to make it comfortable.
Many people like silicone bands, and they're quite comfortable when you first put them on, but they cause skin irritation or even rashes if they aren't regularly removed and carefully cleaned. Therefore I don't recommend them.
Metal bands vary from fiendishly uncomfortable to almost perfect. The very worst are the old school "twist-o-flex" bands -- those are almost sadistic. Otherwise, the more flexibly a metal band wraps around a tight curve the more comfortable. Some of Seiko's dive watch bands are outstanding, but probably the ultimate cheap band for comfort would be a metal mesh band.
Nylon bands also vary from horrible to nearly perfect. Cheap nylon bands are sometimes very thin, or very stiff, and these bands can feel like they're cutting your wrist. A high quality nylon band is very comfortable. I like so-called "NATO" bands (actually more correctly called G10 bands) although they have a slight learning curve and aren't compatible with heart rate monitors. I favor an extra long NATO, which can be wrapped around the outside of a coat sleeve (or a wetsuit if you're a secret agent).
Any watch band will be uncomfortable if it gets dirt or salt trapped under it. That probably makes a fine metal mesh band the best choice if comfort is your #1 priority. A lot of the shmutz ends up inside the mesh rather than rubbing against your skin. If you occasionaly rinse the band out you're OK.
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Two fundamental problems with smart watches:
My smart phone that is always in my pocket does far more and is less likely to get damaged.
My dumb digital watch with an electrolumenescent back-light still does what I expect a watch to do, it does it for $35 dollars, it's permanently water proof for showers and pool swimming, it lasts 6 years on a single battery and I can't figure out why I would want to replace it.
The screen of a smart watch is too small to do jack on and other than maybe buying a fitness tracker, I can't fathom screwing around with watch apps when my nice big phone is right in my pocket. The smart watch is a hangover from the Dick Tracey days of the radio watch fantasy, the problem is we already have better tech than was imagined in the Star Trek communicators, so we kind of leap frogged the whole Dick Tracey watch thing both functionally and practically. Now smart watches are relegated to to the nerd toy aisle unless and until they can be more practical than a real watch with some actually valuable, unique functions.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like