[ButWhatFor]

Thank you for this... I still can’t convince myself to get one.

The health aspect I wonder if it really actually makes things easier to improve yourself... or is it just tracking new things for you that keep you accountable to yourself?

I guess they both work... maybe I’m old fashioned but my wife loves it and I can’t figure out why it’s so great to know how many steps (roughly) you walked every day...

[paxswill]

A while back I went to the hospital because of a potentially nasty infection. The doctor was pretty surprised and excited when I opened up the Health app with temperature logs (from a smart thermometer), but they were even more intrigued by the consistently elevated heart rate (from my watch) that had started a few days before the fever. I believe it helped guide the treatment, but I can’t be entirely sure.

For more general health/fitness, the rings can be motivating in a bit of a gamification way. The easier availability of stats from workouts also points out things for me to improve on, or to make changes during the activity. For example, it’s easier for me to see if my pace is slipping while I’m hiking and pick it up, or notice if I’m pushing harder than I should and slow it down so I have the energy for the end (the watch can also be really helpful with navigating as well).

[glutinouspigeon]

I think health features like this will become pretty commonplace in the future and more doctors/nurses will utilize it. In Formula 1 racing they've been integrating sensors and transmitters for vital stats into the drivers' gloves. This allows the medical team to see what's going on as they're driving out to the crash. I believe they keep the gloves on if possible during patient transport so they can continue monitoring.

I imagine being able to provide a doctor with historical data on your vitals can be extremely beneficial. Taking your vitals while you're sitting in a clinic doesn't give the full picture. What does your heart rate mean at that time if they don't know what's normal for you? What if your temp is not high enough to be considered a fever, but it's elevated 3+ degrees higher than typical for you? Of course the accuracy of the sensor could be called into question, but if it's precise enough you can still use it to analyze trends and anomalies.

[reader_mode]

If you just need health aspects get a hybrid smarwatch (I recommend Withings or Fossil hybrid HR) - it has pedometer, HR monitor, ECG and VO2 max sensor, sleep tracking - but most importantly it lasts about 20 days on a charge, is super lite and actually looks like a nice watch - really low key.

There are others too, but I don't recommend Garmin Vivo move - I got the 500€ gold one for my wife and it has constant issues, the battery barely goes 4 days, etc.

I currently use a Samsung galaxy watch I got as a gift and the full smarwatch experience has a few advantages :

- find my phone - I constantly mute my phone and this lets me ring it up even when it's muted so I can find where k put it - also helped me once I left my phone in a wordrobe in the mall - no reason why hybrids don't have this but they don't

- reject calls/turn off alarms without touching your phone - again no reason why hybrids don't have this but they don't

- music controls/smart home controls

- talking through the watch - was actually useful more than once - imagine cooking and not having to grab your phone to answer your wife or stuff like that

My wife also has Apple watch 3.

Overall a smarwatch is a chore to charge and you can't get good sleep tracking because you often charge over night - hybrid watches last 2+ weeks in practice but sacrifice some features

[thewebcount]

> I wonder if it really actually makes things easier to improve yourself

Yes, significantly, at least for me. I tried repeatedly to use a calorie counting app where you enter every food you ate. It had all kinds of conveniences for scanning barcodes, and saving meals you regularly ate, and had every chain restaurant's data. It was such a pain in the ass to use. Manually entering everything, even with the ability to scan barcodes, was too tedious. And it was always inaccurate. How many grams of potatoes did I have when I cooked dinner tonight? I have no idea!

With the watch, I just click a button to say I'm going for a walk or a run, and it tracks my heart rate and knows my weight and height and does a fairly accurate calculation of my calories burned.

It also was a lot more fun than entering calories into an app. I would get little badges for making progress and rewards for reaching a goal. It wasn't much, but it was a reminder that I was moving forward. I ended up "closing my rings" every day for 2 years straight (minus one week where I had the flu). That's the most exercise I've ever done and the most consistently I've ever done it.

[wpm]

Apple’s return policies are pretty generous, there’s no harm in getting one and trying it out for a couple weeks.