- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
I have been using the Mi Band for years which I generally like, although it’s quite a simple device
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Still use my Pebble 2 SE and my Pebble Time. Still bummed they never came out with the Time 2.
For something with fitness tracking, I’ve been using the Garmin Forerunner series for years. Recently though, I’ve been using the Pine64 PineTime as my main smartwatch. It doesn’t have much for fitness tracking, but if you’re looking for a basic smartwatch it’s pretty nice!
Garmin ftw
This author has done a few of these tests and Garmin seems to be most accurate. I’m mostly not a fan of the intense styling though
Check out the Vivoactive and Venu lines. Those are nice and don’t look like the $40 Timex Ironmans.
Where’s the “none of the above” choice? Aside from keeping the time, all I want from a smartwatch is the ability to see its screen both in the dark and under direct sunlight, a week-long battery life, 5ATM water resistance rating, receiving notifications from my phone (with the ability to dismiss them), ability to have customizable watch faces, and finally the ability to accept standard size watch bands. The last watch I’ve owned that could do almost all of that (aside from standard bands or ) was Pebble Steel. I still miss it to this day.
Everything else was an overpriced disappointment. I don’t need it to monitor my heart rate, or my blood oxygen level, or my blood alcohol level. I don’t want it to prod me or give me pep talks, or make phone calls, or play music, since my phone can do all of that better.
I miss Pebble so much.
Everything else was an overpriced disappointment. I don’t need it to monitor my heart rate, or my blood oxygen level, or my blood alcohol level. I don’t want it to prod me or give me pep talks, or make phone calls, or play music, since my phone can do all of that better.
That’s the thing. I have an apple watch, and apps on it are complete garbage. They’re not useful, they UI is impossible, browsing for apps to launch them is tedious and painful. Like, I don’t want to order Taco Bell on my watch. I don’t want to play a game. I need notifications, time/date/weather, and easy playback controls for whatever is currently playing on my phone and that’s it.
I also generally don’t trust fitness trackers. If you have a watch that can use GPS to track a run or a ride, then that’s fine. But pedometers are a joke, and counting calories burned is most assuredly bullshit since the human body isn’t a closed system and everyone’s metabolism is different
I’ve had this for 4.5 years and it is amazing. Does everything you want.
Double plus for the Garmin. I’m wearing an Instinct 2 right now. 21 day battery life! It replaced my Vivoactive 4S (6 day battery life) and was cheaper than the Venu 2 (11 day battery life).
I’ve killed at least two smartwatches by forgetting I’m wearing them when I go in the ocean. The Vivoactive 4S was completely unaffected by the salt water, and I’ll test the Instinct 2 this week.
My mom is all about her Apple watch, and has touted the features to me. “I can [insert feature] with this!” Have you used it for that? “No.”
I’ve had three Pebbles, a couple Fitbits, a couple Garmins, a couple Android watches, two Amazfits… I just want something that sends me notifications and has good battery life. If I have to charge the watch every night, I’ll forget I’m wearing it.
That being said, the Instinct 2 is actually worse at tracking my workouts than the Vivoactive 4 was. I do martial arts, so the GPS is actually a hindrance there, and I haven’t found a way to make it move “generic cardio” to the top of the workout list.
Apple Watch. But I recognize there are better options now, just not for iPhone.
Yup. Apple Watch for me. It works mostly seamlessly with the rest of my Apple stuff. I don’t think any others do.
Apple Watch for me, because of how well it integrates with my phone - the point where i end up using my phone a lot less.
I don’t really bother with fitness tracking to be honest. I know in my head that I went for a 50 minute bike ride on the weekend. That’s enough for me. I do appreciate when my watch tells me if I’ve been too sedentary/etc today or reminds me that it’s late and I should probably get some sleep, but that’s about the extent of my “fitness tracking” needs.
I still love my Pebble smartwatches, and of them I prefer the Pebble Time Steel. It still lasts like at least a week on a single charge.
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Same here. I’ve had mine for a few weeks and I love it. The battery life is amazing too, I charge it once a week.
I used the Mi band 1S for several years, on the opposite wrist from a mechanical watch. That was a good solution.
Apple Watch.
I had a couple of Garmins before and the difference is night and day. The Apple Watch isn’t perfect, but it’s clear that a lot of thought went into it.
The Garmins on the other hand, were lowest of low effort.
They blatantly didn’t talk to even a single cyclists while building their cycling app.
Cyclists use average speed, not pace. Even the junkiest $3 cycle computer from Ali Baba gets this right, but not Garmin. They just copy-pasted the running screen.
This is a troll comment.
Let’s review: has “had a couple of Garmins”, but doesn’t know that both speed and lap speed are default data fields in the bike activity. And can be trivially changed to average speed or essentially a bazillion other types of data (HR, power etc) in a highly customisable way.
I said average speed. Learn to read.
I haven’t touched the thing in three years.
I just remember that it had pace where it should have average speed. That is all.
Now go away. I’m not interested in defending myself to someone like you, who’s been nothing but nasty.
Pretty sure my Garmin does pace for cycling. You bed to get a multisport watch from them first. The Forerunner watches are going to be focused on running obviously. Fenix line should do average speed
That’s not the Vivoactive cycling app.
They were Vivoactives. They had pace, not average speed.
Regardless of what the focus of the watch is, the cycling app should show cycling stats.
It’s incredibly low effort to get something so basic wrong.
Seems like your post was incredibly low effort, as the Vivoactive (all the way back to the blocky original) supported speed fields.
https://averagejoecyclist.com/how-to-use-garmin-vivoactive-3-record-bike-ride/
Oh, that’s interesting. I was under the impression that Garmin was best for the actual fitness stuff, but this is good to know
Nah you’re right and this person has obviously never used a Garmin.
The Apple Watch is a great smartwatch though and solid for sports. My wife has one and loves it. I’m on the Garmin side, so we’re always comparing.
Nah you’re right and this person has obviously never used a Garmin.
You mean that you didn’t bother to read my comment properly before personally attacking me. Let me guess, you’re from Reddit.
Garmins are smart fitness watches, not smart watches.
I have a forerunner 255 and it’s amazing for hiking and running which is what I do most times. I can also take calls and see notifications which is all I need and the battery life is amazing.
I only cycle, so I couldn’t comment on the other apps.
I only use devices supported by gadgetbridge. This way I can track me without giving all the data to somebody else. Currently I use a Mi Band 7, but I’m thinking about getting a device with onboeard GPS.
Never heard of gadgetbridge. Excited to switch over
How is gadgetbridge working with the 7? The wikipage has a long list of unsupported features, which has held me back from trying it out, but I really want to give it a go!
Steps, sleep, stress, workouts work quite nice. PAI is supposed to have a tab within the next few releases of gadgetbrigde iirc. My approach is more like… I use gb to collect the data from the watch and then use grafana for a visualisation. which might be overkill.
My previous one was a Withings Steel HR, Fantastic smart watch, did the basics but it’s main draw for me was it’s analog watch face. Approx 1 month battery life. The smart stuff was shown in a small screen behind it. Ultimately I stopped using it due to age, always losing Bluetooth connection so notifications were unreliable.
My current watch is an Amazfit GTR Mini, Fully touchscreen, Again does basics and few more extras. Battery life is about 10-14days. Nothing to complain about so far.
I’m currently using a Mi Band 6 (with a nylon strap that’s real comfy), but I wish the Pebble still existed. The e-paper display, the nice UI and tactile buttons, with good battery life and the ability to make apps was great.
Once my Mi Band breaks, I’m torn between Garmin (since they check almost all of the Pebble boxes, even if I don’t do fitness and they’re more fitness oriented) and a Galaxy Watch with the rotating bezel, since that was really cool to play with, plus the Android integration might be nicer.
I have no idea why no other company has been able to recapture the magic of pebble. It was by far the best smartwatch I’ve ever owned.
There is watchy, pretty sure it is from the same guy who made the pebble.
It’s no Pebble, but I chose the BangleJS 2 for its openness and the ability to load and even make apps myself.
For me it’s the Apple Watch because I can write apps for it
Hard to take this review seriously if they didn’t test Polar. The gold standard of HRM and excellent Garmin competitor.
