[flyinglizard]

I don’t get why battery life is important beyond 24h. I just put the watch on its charger at night. Only downside is during traveling, one more thing to carry and possibly the watch won’t make it through excruciating international travel.

So it won’t matter to me if the watch lasts a day or a week, it’s off my wrist when I sleep and goes on it’s charger.

[btowngar]

I’m T1 diabetic and use my watch for monitoring my glucose levels. I wear it 100% of the time, aside from showering when it charges. Charging quickly and having a minimum of 24hrs of charge is really important to me. Apple Watch hits both of those.

[ValentineC]

Do you have a separate accessory for monitoring glucose? I'm really looking forward to the Series 7 which is rumoured to have blood glucose monitoring.

[btowngar]

Yes, I use a Dexcom G6. If the rumors of the Series 7 having a glucose monitor and a blood pressure monitor on it are true, that would be incredible. They’re surely working on core body temperature monitoring too!

[kentlyons]

Several years ago I did some research (published paper here: http://kentlyons.net/pubs/dumbwatch-iswc15.pdf) and one of the findings I thought was interesting was there were 3 groups of people that implied different battery needs. One seemed similar to what you describe: people that took their watch off at night (so could charge it then). Another group wore their watch 24/7. And the final group which I wasn't expecting, but made sense in retrospect, was people that only wore their watch when out of the house. When they got home they'd take it off like setting down their keys.

[cozzyd]

If you want to track your sleep that doesn't work so well

[graeme]

Everyone says this without trying it. I wear my Apple Watch to sleep. In the morning I shower and charge it. It is fully charged and lasts till next morning.

[PragmaticPulp]

No problems here either. Lately I just wear it in the shower and charge it for a while when I sit down at my desk to work. It charges fast enough and I don't miss out on any activity tracking while I'm typing away at my desk.

I plug my phone in to charge at the same time. It's really not a big deal.

The only time it might matter is if I was doing a weekend camping trip or something, at which point the connected features of the Apple watch are less useful and a minimalistic Garmin would make more sense.

[maxerickson]

You missed their meaning. They meant that taking your watch off overnight to charge it gets in the way of sleep tracking.

Edit: People aren't reading carefully. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27321770 clearly means what I've stated and then the parent says that they must not have tried charging their watch at some other time.

[usaphp]

I never understood the point of tracking your sleep or even steps. It’s not like knowing that I had N hours of deep sleep will somehow change my sleep the following night. Same with steps, it’s pretty easy to understand without a tracker when you were active and when you weren’t.

[graeme]

What gets measured gets managed. Both my fitness and sleep improved after tracking.

At the start I was able to use the sleep tracking to troubleshoot sleep issues and improve. After that, it’s mostly a warning system for when I may need to nap later (and thus plan for it) or make sure to get to bed early.

The steps are also a fun social thing. My dad and I talk about them and have streaks of 10,000. If we handle our days well, that’s what we’d get anyway. But somedays, you slack. Being accountable to each other is a fun game and we walk more and are happier for it.

The key to this kind of tracking is you mostly don’t think of it. It happens automatically in the background.

[handrous]

I think people use them to: 1) figure out what's affecting their sleep quality, not necessarily just duration, and 2) trigger alarms within a window, rather than at a specific time, when the device registers that they're between REM sleep cycles so waking up to the alarm is less shocking and unpleasant, and 3) have an alarm or pager-duty-type alert that doesn't bother anyone in the bed with them.

[abawany]

For me, it's the nags (e.g. Garmin's 'time to be active') that make it worthwhile to get me out of my groove. Also, the sleep tracking includes things such as SpO2 measurement, which can help one see if changing sleep positions makes a difference. I feel somewhat confident in saying that my Garmins have likely extended my life by a few years.

[datagram]

To me, smartwatches are about making my life more convenient (not taking my phone out of my pocket). So any inconvenience is going to be a big deal.

Having gone from a Wear OS watch with ~1d battery life to a hybrid e-ink watch with ~2w battery life I don't think I'll ever go back, even though I'm giving up features. You already mentioned travel, but an even bigger issue for me was that if my watch didn't get charged overnight for whatever reason (watch wasn't sitting correctly on the charger, fell asleep with my watch on, etc.), I'd basically have a paperweight on my wrist the next day. And having to disable features (always-on display) to get my watch to last through the day always felt silly.

Overall, it's just one less thing to worry about on a daily basis. If I ever see a low battery warning on my watch, I know that it'll still last for more than a day.