SIX OF THE BEST… reasons not to buy a smartwatch

Unless you’ve been living completely off the grid — in which case, how are you reading this? — you’re aware that Apple is releasing a highly-touted wearable called the iWatch. It’s coming this Friday, and you absolutely, positively don’t need it… or any other smartwatch.

Bow before Apple’s latest pretty thing that will be obsolete in a year!

In fact, here are six of the best reasons not to wear one:

6. Cost — Let’s get this one out of the way now. An iWatch will cost you $350, minimum, just for the cheapest version. Android versions start at $100 but generally are between $200 and $400. Do you really need to spend that much money on a watch that…

5. Appearance — …doesn’t look that great to begin with? Go ahead, take a look at all the smartwatch pictures on Google. They’re just not that pretty. Most of them are plain black, and they have to be large enough to hold the circuitry and battery as well as a screen that shows you your notifications and so on. Plus, they usually won’t have the clock face turned on in the first place because…

4. Battery Life — …the batteries last maybe a couple of days. Yeah, there’s the Pebble and other upcoming e-ink smartwatches, but the ones being pushed on you by TV commercials? Early reports say the iWatch will get a day of battery life. Yeah, I have to charge my Fitbit, too, but only once every five days or so, and only for a few hours. I can do that at my desk. I’m not going to take my watch off every day at work and leave it on my desk to charge, and if I’m using my watch as a sleep tracker (which a lot of people do with their fitness wearables) I certainly can’t charge it at night. Oh, and by the way, most of the watches I’ve owned have had batteries that lasted a minimum of three years. But even if the battery is working, the watch doesn’t work by itself. It needs…

I hope you like carrying two devices everywhere…

3. Other Devices — …a smartphone. If you want to have an iWatch, you need to have an iPhone. That’s the rule. And it better be a new enough iPhone to run the iWatch software/app store or else you’re going to be buying another one of those too. Android wear requires a smartphone as well. See, a smartwatch is just an additional screen that keeps you from taking your phone out of your pocket. It can do a few limited things (some can take dictation but the voice-to-text is iffy at best even on a phone) but it’s not really a stand-alone device. Most of them can’t play music, which would be great for people who want to exercise without a phone in their pockets. My watch does one thing: tells the time. I have another one that has a chronometer as well as a clock. Anything else, I use my phone…

2. Your Phone is Always With You — …because it’s always in reach. It’s in my pocket, or on my desk, or in the cradle in my car. If it’s away from me, something’s gone wrong. And the kind of person who wears a smartwatch is the kind of person who never lets go of a phone in the first place. Plus, if you get too far away from your phone (such as when you’re at the gym) your watch will drop its Bluetooth connection to your phone and you won’t be able to do as much stuff as you bought the watch to do in the first place. In fact, it seems as though once your smartwatch notifies you of something, you’ll need to use your phone to finish the job. Which makes the smartwatch nothing more than…

1. Status Symbol — …a status symbol that cost you $300 or so. Look, if you want a nice watch, buy a nice watch. If you want a nice phone, buy a nice phone. If you can afford a smartwatch, why not buy a nice regular watch and donate the rest of the money? I get it — wearables and watches are the new hotness for all the tech companies. But they aren’t stand-alone devices (for the most part), not like a phone can be. I could buy a phone from any cell phone provider and never have to use a computer at all; I can buy apps, check my e-mail, take photos, play games, and manage my calendar without ever touching something with a physical keyboard. Not so with a smartwatch. It’s a waste of money, and you don’t need one.

Want to spend over $10,000? This is what you get.

Especially since they’re just going to come out with the iWatch 2 next year. And the iWatch 3 in 2017. And so one. Have fun buying a new iWatch every year to keep up with the software updates.

Bonus Content!

Smartwatches aren’t a new thing. In the 80s, when I was in elementary school, I owned several nascent smartwatches. Mostly the Casio Databank, which had a calculator, chronograph, timer, and Rolodex. Then, in high school, I had a Casio smartwatch that required synching to a phone to get the phone number information, and it used infrared technology. Never quite worked.

Just because Apple has never done it before doesn’t mean it’s a new thing.

By the way, my Databank cost $50, if I recall correctly, and the battery never needed to be charged. Or changed.