Smart Watch Review

I am a tech loving person.

I’ve had zero desire for a smart watch.
Why?
Mainly because I don’t want another thing to charge.
But I don’t need music on my wrist.
I don’t (think) I need texts on my wrist.
I don’t (think) I need to talk on my phone via my wrist.

Recently I read about the TicWatch 2 and like that it has a reasonably long battery life (greater than a day), built in GPS and heart rate monitor capability. Also it is sort of water resistant.

I’ve had the watch for a solid month now and here’s what I’ve discovered in general about a smart watch:

• If the battery can’t last the day, it is worthless
• I don’t want texts on my wrist, I can’t read them anyway (font too small).  I don’t live and die by the text, so this isn’t necessary
• I don’t want to talk on my wrist, though not a bad option
• I do like the call screening ability
• I like the workout monitoring
• I like the ability to change watch faces

How does the TicWatch 2 fit into all of this?

Battery life is solid.  Normal day use it is maybe down to 50% on the battery.  If I play tennis and have the “run” monitoring on, which also runs the GPS, then it might get down to 30%, but that’s with almost 2 hours of gps usage.

I turned off notifications and texting.  I tried it, didn’t like it.

I have talked on my wrist.  If you can’t get to your phone, not a terrible option.

Call screening is nice.

Workout monitoring is very good.  There are 5 options Outdoor Run, Outdoor walk, Indoor run, Cycling, Free Style.

Outdoor Run & Walk run the gps to monitor/map your route.  Indoor run doesn’t run the gps.  Cycling I haven’t tried.  Free Style is basically a heart rate monitor.

I like the metrics the run/walk gives.  It is very accurate.
What isn’t accurate is the step counter.  To clarify, the plain old, not in workout mode step counter.  It is way off.
The algorithm must not filter out certain movements.
Step counting within the workout are accurate.

The watch does connect to Strava, so you can have workouts sync there.

But, I believe my favorite thing the option of watch faces.

At first I thought there were just the 20 or so stock watch faces.  Not bad, but I want a multi time zone setup.

Then I discovered the app Watchmaker.

Holy cow, it is great.  You can get a watch face, then customize it.

I now cycle between about 5 different watch faces.

I’ve customized them to include Temp, date and 2nd time zone on some.
What’s real nice is, I can adjust the font sizes so I can read them without my readers.

This customizing is quite entertaining.

This watch has always on display and depending on how you design the watch face, it can always be on, always readable and still.

This really is my favorite part of the smart watch.