Apple Watch Series 8

As someone with an Apple Watch Series 8 I feel like this was a really bad deal for me. Pretty much the only reason to buy the 8 over the 7 was that it is one year newer and therefore expected to receive updates one year longer (like Apple has usually done before).

I’m sitting here wearing a Hamilton Air Zermatt. I have a half dozen decent watches, ranging from Vostok to Rolex, and the Hamilton is the one that I wear. At ~$1k, it’s a nice balance between “nice enough to make me smile when I look at it” and “too expensive to wear everyday”. I have an Apple Watch Series 8 as well, and while it was certainly convenient… if just didn’t make me happy. The Hamilton does. It’s a pure luxury item for me, meant only for my only gratification.

I have both an Apple Watch 8 and the Garmin Fenix and I use the Fenix for sleep tracking. I find the Apple Watch to be too general with the stats. The Fenix gives a lot more detail. You can debate if the extra detail is useful or not. I also like the heart rate variability tracking with the Fenix (it seems to mirror how tire I feel pretty well). Lastly, the Fenix can hold a charge for several days. I can use it to sleep track and run and repeat and it charges quickly. If I sleep track with my Apple Watch, it may not have enough battery for the rest of the day. I run with both -- the Fenix for running specific tracking and the Apple for calling friends, listening to Audible, or podcasts.

This. I like my apple watch for doing mainly two things; tracking workouts and being a silent alarm clock that lives on my wrist. The <2 day battery life is really becoming annoying, as I have to remember to put it on the charger for at least ~1 hour a day or it won't have enough juice to wake me up in the morning. Also, it boggles my mind but the alarms/haptics in my S8 seem weirdly unreliable. Like 10% of the time my alarms just decide not to vibrate and I don't wake up. Tons of people have this problem and it seems to have something to do with the cover to mute gesture, but disabling it in settings doesn't fix the issue. For those two reasons I'm strongly considering ditching my apple watch and grabbing a garmin instead. Just trying to decide if the move outside of the ecosystem is worth it and which model to buy.

The regular apple watch has some bugs that have been around for years, too. One of my favorite features is on the mickey/minnie watch face, they verbally tell you the time if you tap them..... except when they don't. Sometimes they just stop working until you power cycle the watch lol. Also phone calls to/from the watch seem to go through fits of random failure. Like at least once a week it'll inexplicably fail to get notifications or fail to answer phone calls. And then once a month I'll have to power cycle both the watch and the phone because they fall into a trap where any call in/out fails. I first noticed these bugs on my s4 and iphone xs. I'm currently using an s8 and iphone 13. Still got those bugs lol. Oh I thought of one more. Any iOS device with a home button and an alphanumeric password won't show you the keyboard when it first starts up. You have to hit the power button and then wake it with the home button to see the keyboard lol.