Apple Watch 2

I bought a lightly used Apple Ultra Watch 2 6 months ago and it solved all my issues with my previous Apple Watch - specifically battery life. I can use it as a sleep tracker and only need to charge it once every 2 days unless I take extensive hikes or use a lot of camera remote control. The latter is magical btw especially for solo travelers - ability to set a scene on the iPhone camera while being in it by glancing on your watch is science fiction!

I am currently using both an apple watch SE 2 and a garmin vivoactive 5 simultaneously. Even if the Garmin has better battery life, I don't really like it for 2 reasons: - the round watch UI is ugly and doesn't work with the other UI elements. Also I don't mind using a squared watch, I like it. My Casio is also square-ish. - the UX is terrible, the customization is terrible. The default watch faces are all quite ugly, and the Garmin app makes the customization experience even worse. Also, I feel like the sleep is more accurate on the Apple watch than on the Garmin from a couple episodes that happened and in general from the differences in tracking time. Also, as you already said, I just charge the watch everyday while I shower, so battery life is not really an issue for 80% of the time. For the other 20% it's really annoying... but I think a newer model (and I hope that the new ones will be even better on that side) will have better battery life. When the battery life will be ~48 hours it will be perfect for me.

> The problem with these kind of wearables today is this is just not very actionable. I got the ultra 2 from Costco in the window of time where it still had the active o2 sensor. It told me I probably had sleep apnea and to bring a print out of its chart to my primary care physician. That became a referral to an ENT and that became a referral for a sleep study. Turns out I had sleep apnea. What was really surprising to me -- I was the first person both my primary doctor and the ENT saw who showed up with "my apple watch said I might have sleep apnea." I've had a CPAP for about 10 months now and it's dramatically improved my sleep.

One of the frustrations I've had with a few of Garmin's recent releases is how their high-end MIPS watches, Enduro 3 & Fenix 8 Solar, seem to inherit the same thick, glare-y, ultra-durable glass I assume the Fenix 8 OLED uses, which does a number on the readability of their MIPS displays outdoors. I've never owned the F8 OLED, but I do have an Apple Watch Ultra 2, and the AWU2 is actually more readable than the E3/F8S in all light conditions except high-noon ultra-direct sunlight (which I'm very rarely outdoors in, because, you know, skin cancer). I ended up returning those, and got an Instinct 3 MIPS earlier this year, which is more readable outdoors across a variety of light conditions.

not trying to sway you but just thought it’s useful to know, the apple watch ultra 2 easily lasts me 2.5 - 3 days without a charge with normal usage. That includes sleeping with it and some cellular-only usage as well.