New Apple Watch - Worthwhile Investment or Wallet Squeezer?

23 Jul New Apple Watch – Worthwhile Investment or Wallet Squeezer

The Apple Watch is said to be the most personal product Apple has ever made, because it’s the first one designed to be worn.

Support Engineer, Ashley Proctor gives his views on the positives and negatives on his purchase of the Apple Watch…

A great innovative product:

• The convenience of viewing your notifications without having to get your phone out is great – also means you don’t have to waste any effort on those unwanted calls.
• The ability to access apps on the Watch is a nice convenience, some apps make really good use of the watch (Shazam and BBC News for example) – the downside to this is that it requires the phone in range for this to work – something that will be changing with WatchOS2 due out later in the year.
• Navigation on the watch is pretty simple, although does take a few hours to get used to! That said, the app selection screen can be a bit hit and miss when trying to open apps.
• Apple Pay on the watch is fantastic – who needs to get a wallet out anymore?!? Very, very convenient.
• Activity tracking is quite a nice feature and gives your some good insights into your daily routine (Burnt Calories, Distance Walked, Steps, etc).
• The ability to make and receive calls via the watch is a nice addition too, although not a very commonly used feature I may add.

Always a downside:

• It is considerably expensive for what it is!!! There are some very good Android Wear watches out there like the Moto 360 (I have one of these too) which with recent software updates give the Apple Watch a run for its money (Moto 360 currently costs £149 vs Apple Watches starting from £299 going all the way up to £13,500).
• It needs regular charging! As much as I’m impressed with the battery life on the watch (Apple suggest 18 hours but I can get around 36 hours out of mine) I’m disappointed Apple couldn’t squeeze that extra bit of juice into the battery.
• Lack of third party watchface support – this is quite a big one! Both Android Wear and the Pebble support third party watch faces which are developed by the wider community, this is great as it offers endless customisation on the watch.
• Unfortunately, with the Apple Watch – this is locked down so only watchfaces designed by Apple are available. They are customisable but options are limited!

Ashley feels the Apple Watch as a whole is a ​worthwhile investment. Ashley has gone from not wearing a watch (and using his phone as one instead) to wearing the watch daily!

Ashley states, “Apple seem to be making some good improvements in the watchOS updates to make the device even better as well. Let’s just hope they don’t release updated hardware on a yearly cycle though!”