Many people get more than 3/4 day. For the Series 10 that 18 hours of battery is based on 300 time checks, 90 notifications, 15 minutes of using apps, and a 60-minute workout with music playback from the watch via Bluetooth. For watches without cellular it also assumes 18 hours of Bluetooth connection to a phone. For watches with cellular it assumes 14 hours of Bluetooth connection to a phone and 4 hours of LTE cellular connection.
I've got mine set to charge to 80%, and over 23.5 hours it typically falls to somewhere in the 30-40% range. I put it on the charger for 30 minutes when I sit on my couch in the evening to watch Jeopardy! and do the NYT crossword puzzle. That's plenty of time to get it back to 80%.
I do have the always on display turned off, so the display only comes on when I turn the watch to look at it or tap or click. Always on display would take more power but my recollection from before turning it off is that it would still easily make it 23.5 hours starting from 80%. With a 20 W charger it can go from 0 to 80% in 30 minutes, so that would still be done by the time I finished Jeopardy and the crossword.
(I didn't turn off always on display to save battery. I turned it off because I didn't really find it useful. When I'm not actively checking the watch I almost hold it in a position where I don't really have a good look at the display, and moving it so I can get a good look almost always would be enough to turn it on in "raise to wake" mode).
They target different market segments, that's all there is to it. Similar to how some phones get away with having an absolute rubbish camera while other brands offer high resolution cameras — they sell to different people and both companies do fine.
I can just leave my phone at home when I’m running or in the gym and get phone calls, send messages, and stream music from my watch.
I have a stand by my bed that I just plop my phone, watch and AirPods on and they all charge wirelessly and use MagSafe so I don’t have to worry about placement.
If you have to charge overnight, you miss out on all the benefits of sleep tracking which personally, has been essential in managing recovery and also illness
Other people are commenting here that they can wake up, put their phone on the charger and it is charged enough to last a full day by the time they take a shower and get dressed in the morning.
It’s fully charged in an hour and half from looking at the documentation.
I usually spend half an hour or less between waking up and leaving for work, and also shower less than half an hour. I definitely find the Apple Watch battery life to be one of its biggest downsides.
From my research, none of the available sleep tracking solutions are reliable, unless you attach electrodes to your head. When using multiple sleep tracking solutions in parallel, they all report significantly different results.
Yes. Simply sleeping on the arm where you wear your watch will make it record crazy values.
The sleep quality and breathing measurements are based on movement - which doesn’t make sense when you have another person or pet with you in the bed that also tends to move at night.
That’s why we still have sleeping labs. However, the watch’s data can be an indicator that something is wrong and get people to at least mention it to their doc.
I’ve got a charger for my Apple Watch on my desk. I charge my watch in the evening while I’m doing stuff on the computer. When it’s bedtime, the watch is at 100% - ready for sleep tracking and the next day.
Ultra has better battery life, most people don’t wear a watch while sleeping, so it’s easy to charge at night like you do with a phone anyway. It also enables you to do almost everything essential in terms of communication without a phone if you want to leave it. Garmin watches do not.
I thought the sleep tracking and resting heart rate tracking is one of the most important features of a smartwatch. pretty sure most garmin users wear them at night for these reasons.
I always thought resting heart rate while sleeping was a pointless metric ?
YOu can have a resting heart rate while sleeping in the 30s, yet your real resting heart rate in the 60s.
I don't need a watch to tell me if I was sleeping or not, I was there, I know if I was sleeping... I also don't see the point if it telling me if I got enough sleep or not. Again, I know if I didn't get enough sleep as I'm tired...
I also don't think it's sleep tracker is accurate, I've had my garmin tell me I have taken naps when I hadn't. I was just lying on the sofa watching a film and didn't get up for an hour or so. That doesn't mean I'm asleep.
One thing that surprised me has been seeing the affects of either alcohol or caffeine on the type and quality of the sleep I get.
Even if the absolute numbers aren't 100% accurate the watch definitely spots when I've had even 1 beer during the evening.
I also find heart rate variability interesting. I can't put much spin on the absolute numbers but after either heavy exercise or if I've been unwell I can see the variability rate really drop.
Sleeping heart rate is useful because it gives you a good "resting" value. Resting heart rate will tell you if you're getting sick, before you have any real symptoms.
Yeah, I first learned that from the "HOW TO SKATE A 10K" ebook[0] that was posted here[1] a while ago. He talks about how he tracked heart rate to figure out when he was going to get sick.
I then started looking back at my historical garmin data, pretty much everytime I was sick, my HRV would drop a few days before. I then started monitoring my HRV closer and taking it easy whenever it dropped. Anecdotal data from one person here, but I found that I get sick less and when I do get sick, it's usually not as bad.
Yeah HRV is especially good for that. Mine doesn't really expose HRV very well, I'm guessing because I'm a couple of generations back, so I have to make due. Works pretty well even so though.
You remember when you fell asleep? I don't. Watch tracks how often you wake up, how long you spend in the deep sleep, etc.
A lot of value is in the long term trends. One bad night doesn't mean much but if our sleep quality is trending down over weeks, it's a sign you should change something.
Yeah, plenty times I've got up during the night multiple times, sometimes out of bed entirely wand walking about and the watch hasn't realised this at all.
Similarly I've been in bed, awake, reading, unable to sleep and the watch has thought I was sleeping.
What makes one measurement "real" and the other one "not real", if you're mainly using it as a personal metric?
The reason that the traditional definition of resting heart rate exists is people didn't have 24/7 heart rate monitors, and doctors had to measure what they are able to measure. And they still can't measure it well, because patients often have white coat syndrome and there's not enough time during an appointment for people to relax fully.
The Apple Watch, which uses the traditional definition, has to use algorithms to guess which of its measurements counts as "resting" or not, which adds complexity. In contrast, lowest HR during sleep is a more reliable and consistent measurement.
What I mean is, you can be pretty unfit and still have a resting heart rate in the mid 30s when you are asleep. The same unfit person takes a resting heart rate just sitting in a chair doing nothing for a minute or two and it's probably not going to be anywhere near 30.
I've known people who have had resting hearts in the low 40s, but actual resting heart rate when awake is closer to 70!
I think Garmin uses resting heart rate when you are asleep as it makes it seem like you have a really low resting heart rate, where you might not. I think it's overly flattering.
You're saying that some devices are measuring "resting heart rate" when it's not using the traditional definition, and comparing that number to the traditional definition is wrong, and I would agree.
I'm saying that the traditional measurement of resting heart rate is bad for a variety of reasons, one of which is that taking it while sitting at your couch at home after 15 minutes and having a stranger take it in the weird doctor's office can have very different results. And if our smart devices consistently measure an RHR on a regular basis, that's probably a better measurement of progress.
I had a review copy of a separate sleep monitor band that you slept on top of from a company that I think Apple bought. Basically I thought it was mostly an interesting curiosity and (possibly) a reasonable first diagnostic step if you suspect you have sleep issues.
However, for me, the results looked reasonable most nights and for those nights when I didn't sleep well for whatever reason, I mostly knew that was the case without the device results.
The Ultra is the most bizarre in the lineup. It's marketed at extreme adventurers, mountaineers, extreme hikers, etc. For that demographic, battery life of less than at least a week is a non-starter, not to mention 100% button navigation as opposed to touchscreen + dial. Those are really hard to operate whilst wearing thick gloves.
I know several people who own the Ultra, and while they are all 'outdoorsy' sort of people, none of them are even close to 'extreme'.
The market more likely is people that see themselves as "extreme adventurers, mountaineers, extreme hikers, etc", despite mostly doing half day rides at the nearest mountain biking trail, national park hikes where they spend one night in a cabin, and a weekend snow boarding at a ski resort.
I'm hardly extreme, and the Ultra is bad enough for me. If I'm out in the cold trying to navigate, I don't want to take my gloves off. When I retire to my tent, I don't want to worry about recharging my watch.
> spend one night in a cabin, and a weekend snow boarding at a ski resort
This should be enough to get people away from any watch without the features I mentioned - long battery life and button-operated.
This is a bit silly. I was gifted an Ultra, and as a climber/skiier/trail runner, it serves my purposes extremely well. The maps using WorkOutdoors are far superior to what I've seen from Garmin devices (although I haven't tried) and I can always get all-day battery and charge within 30-40 min before bed. Yes, I wish the battery lasted longer but it's a tradeoff I'd always take for a more responsive and usable interface.
One gripe is that the functionality with gloves is a little annoying since you can get false positive screen taps from sleeves/cuffs. A second is that the main button is pressed when doing a pushup or in some situations while climbing, which triggers the emergency alarm mode by default (but is configurable to turn off).
Most adventures are not many days long without sleeping (for me) and this watch works pretty well.
I know the Ultra has an extra button, but I wonder if you can start a run on it in the rain (ie without using touch). That was what finally pushed me away from Apple Watch, and the marketing of the Ultra is quite funny if it doesn't solve it.
ANT+ is still very much present in the cycling world and likely won't go anywhere. While most sensors and devices will also support bluetooth it seems to be a much more fragile and problematic connection. From my own experience I'd always opt for ANT+.
Garmin makes solar powered watches for adventures types in the back country. The Ultra is probably good for scuba diving since you aren’t doing it for so long.
Eh, what? When watches were just watches, most everyone wore there watch while sleeping.
On that note, my brother and I were talking about these smart watches the other day and I expressed how having a gshock is nice because with my use I seem to get about 7 years of battery life, so my watch is always on. Whereas people with smart watches has (as he put it) significant time blind-spots. But he made a comment at one point and basically said something like "It's not a watch. It is a fitness device that has a clock in it". I think that is a good point. As a watch, all these actually perform rather poorly. But as fitness/GPS/communication devices they perform well.
What do you mean it performs poorly as a watch? Smartwatches sync time, change time zone as you travel, automatically apply DST. It's actually better watch than classic watch.
That's because the analysis about Garmin is wrong. None of that stuff matters.
Garmin's competition is having kids. Moms and dads will buy Apple Watches because it is more compatible with the having kids lifestyle. In contrast you don't need a dive computer or a bicycle thing when you have no time for hobbies. So an Apple Watch with a diving app meets the demand for aspirational hobbies, which of course, aspirations have a much larger audience than going out and doing something.
That said, people having fewer kids is ultimately what is helping them the most. Every hobby got more expensive, there is more demand. If you believe that more dogs and cats, less home buying, more video game playing and TV watching, etc. is also related to the trend of fewer kids - if you read what experts say about this, and if you can believe that LOTS of stuff people spend money LOTS of money on is DIRECTLY CAUSED by the decision to have or not have kids - then expand your mind and look for it everywhere.
I live in a part of the country where most people still have 3-5 kids. Some of their parents had like 8.
Everyone is very active outdoors here and as a family. The gyms are family gyms and have daycare services while you work out. Fitness is VERY popular here as are fitness trackers and Apple is a distant third to Garmin & Fitbit.
I don't know if you have any data to back up your claims, and I have nothing to back mine up but anecdotes but – all of the most active people I know have kids and all my single friends are amongst the most sedentary.
I have kids and I'm very active too. I'm not saying they're not active. I'm saying they're not diving. And if they do dive, once, wouldn't they be buying an Apple Watch Ultra for Christmas, that says that it can do your dive, but also be useful every single day of the year?
In terms of data, well, the number of kids per family is trending down, marriage is trending down, relationships are trending down... I don't need to measure anything, everyone's audience is becoming the No Kids audience.
My Apple Watch is normally >40% by 10pm then goes on the charging stand when I go to bed. It’s part of the routine. Even if it lasted 7 days my routine would be the same.
Samsung has had 2+ day charge for several generations.
Their software was/is terrible, but since the switch to Google code 2 generations ago it is not bad.
An Apple device would need to bring 9.3x the value of a Garmin device in other ways to compensate the charge gap? I'd say Apple users would agree that it does.
OEM licenses can be kind of funny. They aren’t portable, though I would’ve thought that the motherboard was replaced by a motherboard by the same OEM, etc. and should’ve qualified to use that OEM’s license.
It does, or at least it used to. Back during the Vista days my copy of Windows failed to activate after I replaced the motherboard, but Microsoft support was happy to help me when I explained that it was the same computer with new parts in it.
This has never happened to me even after replacing every component of my computer over the years (other than the PSU). I imagine signing in (and setting up the computer) with a microsoft account is what makes it stronger.
It happened to me on a brand new PC (MSI Z790 motherboard) when I updated the BIOS, with a brand new Windows 11 license purchased from the MS store. It looked like the BIOS update was clearing fTPM keys or something. I ended up hitting my activation limit and had to call in and spend 1.5 hours speaking to various levels of escalation, uploading various invoices as proof of purchase, and then eventually they issued me an alternative product key which has worked ever since.
Yea, I noticed this same thing a couple weeks ago in a relatively small Michigan college town. Used to buy eggs at Aldis for 65 cents not that long ago.
One of my main concerns is how easily and quickly can issues be debugged? Can you attach a debugger in production if necessary? I've seen people experiment with serverless and it seems like they were back to print statements for debugging.
I'm a C++ programmer that's not done anything directly in C. I stumbled by this book Fluent C By Christopher Preschern just published this month and I thought the organization looked rather interesting. It covers many programming concerns and details several patterns for dealing with them. One thing that's neat is it often refers to open source projects where the pattern is applied so one could go take a more detailed look.
