[Merman_Mike]

I'm interested in the Apple Watch but I'm very wary of the distracting properties.

Are there good features to help lower the distraction level? Do you find it useful (and worth the price) for the passive health tracking stuff?

[t-writescode]

> Are there good features to help lower the distraction level?

Disable all notifications on it and it quickly evolves into a regular watch on your wrist.

> Do you find it useful (and worth the price) for the passive health tracking stuff?

It's a nice companion to an Apple device in the Apple ecosystem; and, if you're someone that's not into Fitbit for whatever reason, I've found it fine.

I also own the least expensive Apple Watch 6, as I was using it as a test device to see if I'd be interested in staying in the ecosystem. I don't see a reason to leave it.

I've also bought one for my mother - who immediately disabled all notifications, too, for herself; and, she quite likes it so far. I asked her to turn on fall notification and we're friends on Apple Fitness Sharing or whatever it's called.

I think it's fine and it serves my needs. I would need to look at the market again for another device that has over a day of battery life (always-on screen off, no notifications), an O2 sensor, heartrate sensor, doesn't fight with my PiHole or VPN (Fitbit did not like me being on a VPN) and other features if I'm in the mood for them.

I use Apple Pay all the time, so it's nice there, as well.

I mean, I'm happy?

[canofbars]

The AW has a control center which can be accessed via a swipe up. From there you can tap the bed icon and you will not receive notifications anymore. You can also dig deeper in to the phone app and stop each app from showing notifications on the watch.

Personally I leave on all notifications that would show on my phone because I find looking at my watch less distracting than taking out my phone.

If you purely want health features, there are many cheaper options but I'd be cautious about the accuracy of the sub $100 watches. You might find like me that the watch is useful for a load of things you didn't think of. Using apple pay on my watch is slightly nicer than on the phone, setting timers is slightly quicker, checking the weather is slightly quicker, etc.

I find myself using the watch a lot for these tasks because its simply faster and lets me get back to what I was doing quicker.