Apple Watch Review

I’m not gonna lie – I basically bought this as a toy for myself. I went with the justification that if I had the watch I wouldn’t feel the need to have my phone out as much because I would get notifications on my watch, but by no means did I really need this watch. I debated it for a little before I went for it. I told myself I had 14 days to test it out and see if I would even use it. In my head, I was going to return it at the end of the two weeks because it was way too expensive for what I wanted it for. Clearly, I ended up loving it just as much as I feared I would and it was never returned. 

The basics:

I have the 38 mm band. You can’t choose which band to get with which color watch so I chose the gold watch the navy band. I have a feeling I’ll be asking for a black band in addition come the holidays. I wouldn’t recommend a lighter color (even though they’re so pretty) because they’re a lot more likely to get dirty and don’t look as good when the color is ruined. The battery lasts about two days and it sits on a round piece to charge. The newer version is waterproof but the only time mine comes in contact with water is when I wash my hands. The watch app for iPhone makes it super easy to customize the faces and add apps. For the summer, my home screen primarily consists of the time and activity trackers and my small icons are to log exercise, check messages, battery, and the date. I’m sure I’ll switch my face to have the calendar when I’m at school though! Below I shared a few more details about apps, reasons I like it and the few minor complaints I do have. (And some proof I wear it ALL the time) 

Why I love it: 

I really do love getting notifications on my wrist. I’ve been trying to keep my phone away more and when I can do a quick check on my watch it’s easy for me to tell when I’m missing something important and when it’s not something I need to look at immediately. 

I also love the exercise and activity trackers. I keep their main activity trackers on my home screen and keep track of my movement throughout the day. At my internship, I spent all day sitting at a desk and I loved the little reminders to walk around or stand up for a minute after I’d been sitting down for an hour or more – sometimes three hours would go by and I wouldn’t have noticed if it weren’t for the reminders! Tracking activity on it is beyond easy too.

Besides the normal tracker, I’ve also been using the Sweat with Kayla app for Apple Watch when I do my resistance workouts. Most of the time I’m home and use my laptop to switch through the moves, but I like that I can rely on my watch when I get back to school and back to the gym. 

I also love the wallet feature. If you go out on a run, you don’t need your phone (the GPS works even when it’s not connected) and if you need to stop for a drink you’re not out of luck if you didn’t bring a wallet. You can even put boarding passes on it so if you don’t want to pull your phone out while boarding the plane you can check-in or check your seat with your watch! 

Why I don’t:

Most of the time the battery does last two days, but not always. I turn it all the way off at night which usually helps push it through to the end of the second day. (On the note of battery – it barely affects my phone battery. I found out that when you’re on wifi you don’t actually need the Bluetooth on, the watch will work through the wifi so that also helps when you’re home!) 

I do wish the bands were cheaper. If they were like $25 I would definitely have 1 or 2 other color options to make it more versatile. I’m very happy with my navy and gold though – it goes with a good portion of my closet. 

I think my biggest problem with the watch is the lack of Spotify. With Apple Music, you can use your watch to change the song, but there’s no official Spotify app and I’m hesitant to download a third-party app. 

Last but not least, don’t expect to be able to use your watch to actually reply to anything, unless you’re at home and can use the voice commands. There’s no keyboard so unless your answer is “yes” or “no” the prompts probably won’t give you what you need. Writing things out is an option, but it takes a while and looks kind of silly. If it deserves a real response, you’ll need to pull your phone out.