> There's still Garmin... but honestly, I don't understand why people insist on paying hundreds of dollars for a "name",

Another way of saying "paying for a name" is "paying for trust". When you run notifications through a smart watch you give it a lot of sensitive information. For example the contents of texts you receive. Depending on the device/implementation it can be a lot more. If it manages this data via a companion app then it's pretty easy for it to phone home too.

I don't turn notifications on my watch, I'm distracted enough as is, but if I did I'd be careful about the device I use. I suspect some of those bottom of the barrel devices aren't treating this sensitive level of access with the upmost care.

OK, but either way, the preceding comment has offered an explanation for why vendors keep doing this: because they can't make money in this space.

Something that has gps, can display a bit of a map, and is waterproof is somewhere between your two leagues and I think it's genuinely useful.

Why a GPS? Do you ever go anywhere without your phone where a GPS would be useful?

Not the person you are replying to, but I find it vastly more convenient to not pull out my phone all the time to check the directions to make sure I am on the right track. It feels about as frictionless and simple as checking an analog watch for time.

For those running, I can see it being useful as well. GPS for tracking the morning run, with zero need to carry your heavy phone with you. And (talking about apple watch specifically, as that’s the one I have experience with), you can even connect your wireless headphones directly and listen to music too without needing a phone.

It's great for outdoor sports - it's uncomfortable to carry your phone while running or swimming, for example.

When out backpacking its nice to have a GPS that is attached to your arm and always works, as opposed to fighting for signal with your phone.

Yes: using turn-by-turn GPS directions while riding a bicycle or motorcycle. My Pebble Time was perfect for this. I have not found a replacement.

yes. I do outdoor sports, mostly rowing. My phone is not that waterproof, I will not risk dropping it in the water. I would not be able to use anyway. I really like to do things without bringing a phone. Plus the whole privacy issue.

That adds a lot of power drain.

> just enough smaller players to keep Apple somewhat honest

so honest they use unlicensed tech?

With garmin, you can just go use the watch.

I have simply used the watch since the day I bought it. took it out of the box, put it on my wrist.

I've kept track of my SLEEP, my hiking or running, I've acclimatized to the mountains, I can check my resting heart rate, number of steps, maps, sunrise/sunset, respiration, stress, pulseox, etc..

It is not uploading my sexual activity. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37514355

I've never put it online, connected it to my phone or anything else. I've never had to create an account or upload anything.

I put it on the charger when I jump in the shower and that is all I need. A charge lasts 5-6 days.

Fossil is in an entirely different market: fashion acessories. Their smartwatches don't do much apart from displaying texts and vibrating when you get a call. Whoever wants a fashion item that does stuff, buys an Apple Watch instead. I have a Garmin as well, since I don't care for fashion items.

This.

It does what I want it to do and it doesn't do anything I don't want it to do.

The Apple Watch has best in class health sensors + fitness monitoring. Cycle tracking, blood O2 sensing, ecg function are all truly valuable.

I bought a watch for myself, my parents and my girlfriend. The prompting and social aspects of the “close your rings” exercise tracking have already led to a ~10 bpm decrease in my girlfriend’s resting heart rate, suggesting a marked improvement in her cardiovascular health.

Personally, I find the Apple Watch somewhat ugly, but the fitness features are worth the sartorial limitations!

That "best in class" is only true if you listen to Apple's marketing.

The sensors in Garmin, Suunto, Samsung, and many others are equally as good, plus Garmin and Suunto have significantly better battery life than Apple too.

> I don't understand why people insist on paying hundreds of dollars for a "name", when the watch you are describing is only worth $50, give or take.

Why do people pay for The North Face, when you can have knock-off brands for 1/5th the price?

Part of it is paying for better quality assurance, more predictable and coherent UX, and so on. But a big part is that yeah, this day and age, watches are fashion / status accessories. They do nothing your phone can't. That doesn't mean they have no value to the buyers: the continued popularity of pricey mechanical watches is proof that there's more to this story.

The problem is that smartwatches never really positioned themselves as particularly... interesting. They don't signal social status, they aren't pretty, they don't do anything mind-blowing. They're just somewhat cheap-looking and oversized black slabs that display messages from your phone, clumsily.

So far, the closest to a "killer" application for the tech is trying to gamify everyday activities by tracking steps, sleep patterns, or heart rate. But how many people stay fixated on this and really keep it up in the long haul? As for the fashion part... there's only so much mileage you can get out of the ability to change wallpapers or bands.

For me, what has been a "killer" feature is the ability to use voice commands to:

- Send and respond to messages.

- Set timers.

- Set reminders.

This is far easier than getting out a phone and trying to type on a horrid touchscreen keyboard.

Paying for things and timing runs are also useful. The Apple Watch does all these things adequately, though I don't like using an iPhone.

>They do nothing your phone can't.

Huh? The simple fitness tracker watches track your heart rate, sleep quality, step count, etc. Your phone can't do any of that stuff; you need something attached to your body for those measurements.

>So far, the closest to a "killer" application for the tech is trying to gamify everyday activities by tracking steps, sleep patterns, or heart rate.

So you just contradicted your earlier statement.

>As for the fashion part...

My cheap Amazfit fitness tracker is not fashionable at all: it's very boring looking, and no new band is going to change that.

For some people, overpriced watches might be a fashion symbol, but for others (esp. anyone spending less than $75) they're really not.

I'll have to look at the market again, but two years ago the "cheap smartwatch" class was buggy and shitty.

This has been overwhelmingly my experience too, across the entire price range. They're either unusable garbage, or they're mostly functional (and nothing has been as stable as my pebble) but also huge and priced like a fashion accessory.

It's not really. Before my galaxy watch I had a amazfit gts 2 mini which cost me 70 euro, has GPS tracking, barometer, heart rate and SpO2, the works. It is really privacy safe if you pair it with the gadgetbridge app. It works fine , and while you can't install any apps it has a one week battery life even after 2 years of using it. Despite being tiny and light. Not bad at all.

My recent experience with the expensive smartwatch class is that they're buggy and shitty.

I want a brand I trust (not to track me) when using a device equipped with a GPS radio and hooked up to an app on my internet-connected smartphone. I tried an Amazfit and it was pretty good, but the privacy/security concerns were one of the main reasons I didn't go with it.

> when the watch you are describing is only worth $50, give or take.

How do you know that it is «only»? The BOM alone is likely to exceed that for a not very smart watch. There is no «only», as there are other costs of running a smartwatch business:

– The cost of engineering the bloody thing: you have to pay salaries to engineers. Smartwatch engineering is a niche skill and not every engineer is capable of creating a good smartwatch design.

– The BOM itself: engineering decisions will affect the BOM. Sacrifices might have to be made, which has a risk of the final product becoming less reliable or less clamourable to consumers.

– Supply chain management: the cost of a stable supply chain might fluctuate but the supply will be stable. A supplier might be cheaper but flaky which means unexpected repurcussions for the production line; for example, components becoming unavailable and requiring re-engineering thusly.

– Integration with smartphones: most users expect a smartphone app, which means actually 2x apps (Android and iOS), which means salaried mobile app developers. Apps require on-going support, so it will become an ongoing expense. If you handwaive the smartphone apps as a nuisance, the watch might be not as appealing to consumers.

– Scale: for the product to be sustainable, it has to be produced in significant numbers. The manufacturing line is unlikely to agree to produce the product in the quantity of, say, 1k units either.

– Quality assurance: customers will abuse the product. So it will have to be tested within a particularly defined framework to reduce the number of support incidents. QA costs money, too.

– Marketing: customers have to discover the product before it can be sold to them and know why they should want this product and not a competitor's. Marketing is not free, even if it is one man show. If the customers can't discover the product, revenue will be zero or close to zero.

– Distribution network: resellers will take a cut from each watch sold which will have to factored into a unit's price. Direct distribution channels can do away with that, but you will have to negotiate contracts with postal and courier services to get the preferential pricing, or pass the cost onto the customer (not every customer likes high shipping costs), procure quality shipping packaging in numbers (the smartwatch is fragile) and be prepared to run to the post office yourself, like, daily.

– Support: stuff breaks. So you will have to commit to and support the product, and support is not free. Customers will come back to you with all sorts unusual problems and sometimes with zany requests. No or poor support, a backlash from customers and alike will not be conducive to the overall success of the enterprise.

– Costs of running the business: accountant(s), sundries, plus your own salary.

– Taxation: the government in your local jurisdiction will send a tax man to you to get a slice.

– Most importantly: profit. Sustainable profit from each unit sold also has to be factored into the price. The product has to become profitable at some point otherwise it will tank and vanish before it reaches v2.

That is a very, very high level breakdown of things that are just on the surface, and there are many nuances and unexpected expenses. All of that defines the cost of a single unit.

At the $50 price point it is unlikely to become a successful smartwatch product.

Counterpoint:

(1) I see a myriad of products on Amazon fitting the description that parent comment was talking about, the average retail prices being sub-$50.

(2) We are literally conversing in the comments of a post about name brands withdrawing from this space. Because below the Apple level, margins are too thin.

1. It is hard to reason without having a reference to a concrete product. For a start, how would a branded smartwatch and a no-name one compare in terms of:

- Feature parity (hardware and software).

- Build quality (again, hardware, software and materials used in the making).

- Overall quality (will it die in 3 days, in 3 months or will last).

- Support (branded products are sold through local reseller channels and are subject to the local consumer protection laws – if it dies 1 month later, can it be fixed or replaced?)

I did have a quick look at the latest Fossil watch product before chiming in, and their watch seemed like a very sophisticated and polished product. I still have my doubts that there is a $50 functional and quality counterpart to it.

2. Apple has taken up the upper end of the niche for a reason – they have an ecosystem that their watch products weave into seamlessly. Their watch can even be used to unlock a MacBook in the direct proximity of it – it is a bonus feature, unrelated to the watch functionality itself but is possible because of the ecosystem.

Non-Apple products would always remain 2nd class citizens on the Apple platform due to having to interoperate with someone else's platform by virtue of being a standalone watch product and not part of their own ecosystem.

Even if the Apple ecosystem was entirely unlocked and open to third party watch products, the competing watch products would still always lag behind due to having to constantly playing a catch-up with new platform features.

> Their watch can even be used to unlock a MacBook in the direct proximity of it – it is a bonus feature, unrelated to the watch functionality itself but is possible because of the ecosystem.

I know it's a small thing, but I have to wake up early several days a month to perform a production health check at work, and I love the smooth integration:

1. Roll out of bed

2. Put on my Apple Watch

3. Unlock my iPhone with FaceID as I'm walking to my laptop

4. My iPhone unlocks my Watch by the time I get there

5. I tap a key on my keyboard, and my Watch unlocks my laptop

Unfortunately that smooth integration comes to a crashing halt when I have to log into my work VDI, but the Apple ecosystem is a very warm, welcoming place.

I really hope you remember your password. Unless you like being locked out of your device chain when one breaks :)

Apple's pretty good about not letting you get away with biometrics authentication for too long without prompting for a password.

Have you actually used the Amazon $50 devices? It would not be the first time that the claims made in the description were sharply undercut by the actual product. I’d easily believe that a tight BOM lets you put something roughly watch-sized together but that it involves enough compromises that few people would consider it a true competitor.

You say this but Garmin and Xiaomi are the only ones shipping things with week+ long batteries right? There's an extreme qualitative difference in "I need to charge this once every 2 days (or more like every day)" and "I need to charge this once every 10 days"

Every brand I mentioned above has battery life of at least a week. My current watch is between 10 and 14 days.

Do remember that I'm replying to a parent comment looking for "a simple watch with simple features". The watches that I'm referring to are basically pedometers and sleep trackers, with Bluetooth notifications from your phone. Of course it's possible to get week+ battery life with that feature set, even with a nice-looking AMOLED display. If you're willing to settle for an TFT-LCD display (I don't recommend it), then you can get nearly a month.

Then additional replies come along, saying, "Oh, but ---I--- need independent on-board GPS and waterproofing to two leagues of depth for my SCUBA hobby, notifications that never ever glitch, and I want a privacy audit trail for all of my super-secret data about how many steps I take per day". Well, okay. Maybe just buy an Apple Watch then? It all depends on your definition of a "smart watch", but I am discussing how I believe that parent commenter and myself define it. If you're incredulous that week+ battery life is ubiquitous in this range, then we may be thinking about completely different things.

Sure, I just think the battery life thing is really the difference between usable and not. The Garmins are expensive, the battery life is really good, but the UI itself is pretty simple and has some of the "knockoff MP3 player" vibes that you see in the cheaper devices.

What is your current watch? Curious about what model I could confidently recommend to people who have the battery problem.

Amazfit Bip 3. Fifty bucks when I bought it, I see on Amazon that it's creeping up toward $60 now.

Honestly, my favorite watch over the past 5-10 years has been a no-name that shows up on Amazon with a search for "EURANS Smart Watch 44mm, AMOLED Fitness Watch". $20, today. Since it uses standard watch bands, it was easy to find an inexpensive steel upgrade band. The phone app for managing this watch is the best I've used, and there were enough decent-looking watch faces available to make me happy. Battery lasts 12+ days.

Unfortunately, I found that with the EURANS, Bluetooth notifications on my phone were sometimes flaky. With Amazfit, notifications are solid, but sometimes syncing steps from the native app to Apple Health can be flaky. In the ultra low-end range, you're going to deal with something, but for me the Apple Health stuff is easier fix with the occasional manual edit.

> It's really more fashion accessory than practical device.

It’s one of the most practical devices I own but I hadnt considered it a fashion accessory. Nobody who sees my watch thinks that, in fact most think the opposite but I’m ok with it cause I didn't get it to serve that purpose.

Maybe it’s because I own the poor version with a plain black sports band. Maybe if I owned a prettier one I’d get more compliments. However I have real watches when I need something like that which I think look much nicer if I’m going to dress up etc.

edit

To be fair I’m the furthest thing from fashionable and always have been so…I’m probably not the best judge of these things I suppose.