This might be the buggiest hardware product Apple has ever launched. It should have a beta tag slapped on it. All I hear about this thing are complaints. And every time I run into a person wearing one in the wild, their wrist spin never lights up the screen. The wheels are coming off in Cupertino.
A few people complaining amongst a sea of those who praise it should tell you something... Either they have no fucking clue how to use this thing, or perhaps they have defective batteries in their watches, wouldn't be the first time in history!
I received my Watch (38mm Sport model) on April 24th, having order it at 3:08am ET on April 10th. I've been out on three bike rides in the last week, one 20 miles and two 16 miles. As an AAPL investor I've been exercising every function of the watch and monitoring its performance. The three bike rides were as follows:
20 mile ride, exercise power save mode ON, Watch used to stream music to bluetooth earbuds, Fitness app used to track ride
Watch battery power dropped about 12% on this 1 hour, 30 min ride.
16 mile ride, exercise power save mode OFF (pulse tracking active), iPhone used to stream music, fitness app used to track ride
Watch battery power dropped about 20% on this 1 hour, 15 minute ride.
16 mile ride , exercise power save mode ON (pulse tracking minimized), iPhone used to stream music, fitness app used to track ride
Watch battery power dropped about 8% on this 1 hour, 15 min ride.
My conclusion is that the pulse monitoring draws about 150% more battery power than the Watch in normal operation without that feature active. Extrapolating from the length of my rides, I can imagine a 3 hour ride dropping remaining power by about 50-60%, worst case, and that's with the Watch streaming music directly to a bluetooth headset while interacting with the phone to receive GPS data and with the user raising his wrist many times to check progress, change music, etc. And that's a 38mm model.
But here's the thing... Every time I completed a ride, I took a shower. Funny how those two activities coincide. And since I have zero reason or need to wear my Watch in the shower, I took it off and set it on it's charger. And that allowed the Watch to recover considerable charge in the 30 minutes before I came back around to strap it back on. I've not had the watch go below 25% charge even on the longest day of use; a day when I took it off finally after getting home at 2am. I also find that I fiddle with the Watch less now that I've owned it for a week, and that means I'm going to bed with 60% charge on it still (last night's experience). It's 1:15pm and I currently have 91% charge today.
Apple shouldn't get a pass to "iron out the wrinkles". If and when other non Apple products behave in any way close to this most people say Apple would never do that or the product is crap because of it. Actually, if this Apple Watch wasn't made by Apple and everything else was the same people would be hammering the product big time.
Actually no, that would be the exact opposite... Other companies put out total crap that fails to work as advertised ALL THE TIME, look no further than Samsung and Microsoft, and yet they get a media pass with flying colours. It's BECAUSE this is made by Apple that they get hammered for even the slightest bullshit, even though their competitors have mountains more issues in their competing products!
I can EASILY get 24 hours of battery life including two 30 minute workout sessions. Hard for me to believe the watch can't go 2 hours.
I've done three 45 minute workouts (with frequent checking of data -- which is a bit of a pain to do, as I posted in another thread yesterday) on three different days since I got the Watch.
On each occasion, by about 11.00 at night, I've noticed that the remaining battery life is about 10 percentage points lower than on a non-workout day. For example, last night, it showed 23% instead of the normal 30%-35%.
I'd say that the battery life has been one of the positive surprises with the Watch.
Yep, I went for a long run yesterday afternoon which ended up being about an hour total. I checked the battery before and after, and it went from ~70% to ~60% using the built-in workout app. By the time I went to bed I still had about 40% battery capacity left. Not too shabby. I don't think I've ever seen it go below 30%.
1. Bluetooth audio is battery draining, if the user is playing music from the watch to their earphones there will be an additional source of battery drain. It's not obscene, but it's noticeable. (Note that this isn't unusual, it's the same on smart phones, bluetooth audio is a known for this.)
In my experience, the BT headphones barely impact battery life. I am talking about approximately one hour of use.
This might be the buggiest hardware product Apple has ever launched. It should have a beta tag slapped on it. All I hear about this thing are complaints. And every time I run into a person wearing one in the wild, their wrist spin never lights up the screen. The wheels are coming off in Cupertino.
doom! doooooom!!! apple is dooomed!!
here you go: i like mine, and there are many non-complaint things i like about it. now youve heard some positive things about it.
2. If the HR monitoring panel is selected (instead of the default time exercise panel) then more HR measurements are taken, also any triggering of the screen forces the device to take another HR measurement when the HR panel is active.
im not certain about that. i did an "Other" workout and reviewed the heart rate date in the Health app, reviewing all data points -- they are constant, like a dozen times per minute, and i didnt have the HR panel active, only the time panel. i believe it samples as its coded to sample (very frequently), and the HR panel just shows you that data.
the main problem, not mentioned here, is that it stops a workout partway through. I'd read about it re a marathon. Now I've experienced it twice - went for a family bike ride, wasn't serious enough to strava so I used the Workout app, hit outdoor cycle, pressed start. When I looked a couple of hours later it had stopped it's self after 1.5 miles - annoying.
fyi, two-hours of constant HR monitoring (mine goes a dozen times a minute) is going to take a bite out of your battery...ive seen it recommended to disable that for extended workouts.
This comes as a complete SHOCK said nobody ever. It was apparent from the get go that the watch couldn't make it more a couple hours. I was skeptical when Christie Turlington ran a half-marathon with it vs. a marathon. I can guarantee you the watch can't do a marathon... the phone can barely do a marathon just tracking location through Nike app and playing music. Source: Tried it.
3. The HR measurement times aren't arbitrary, they seem to be a combination of periodic measurements and additional measurements based on intelligence, likely related to the selected activity and available sensor input (e.g. accelerometers.) One can compare the record of readings using the Health app on the iPhone. Endurance exercise tends to be quite stable with regard to HR; other than being distracting to the exercise, frequent HR checks are unnecessary for long endurance exercising.
Using the work out app the hear rate monitor records every 5 seconds. When you don't use the work out app it records every 10 minutes.
You are going to be sorely disappointed. Let me save you some hassle and recommend the Garmin Forerunner® 920 XT. A good friend of mine has been buying/using fitness watches since their infancy and has been using this for the last 4-5 months. Super long battery life in comparison to Apple Watch. Garmin Connect links with Strava, as well, if I'm not mistaken. If you are serious about the fitness side and want ample battery life this is a better product. If you want to draw emoticons with an over-emotionalized product and track where your dominoes pizza is then maybe the Apple watch.
I received my Watch (38mm Sport model) on April 24th, having order it at 3:08am ET on April 10th. I've been out on three bike rides in the last week, one 20 miles and two 16 miles. As an AAPL investor I've been exercising every function of the watch and monitoring its performance. The three bike rides were as follows:
20 mile ride, exercise power save mode ON, Watch used to stream music to bluetooth earbuds, Fitness app used to track ride
Watch battery power dropped about 12% on this 1 hour, 30 min ride.
16 mile ride, exercise power save mode OFF (pulse tracking active), iPhone used to stream music, fitness app used to track ride
Watch battery power dropped about 20% on this 1 hour, 15 minute ride.
16 mile ride , exercise power save mode ON (pulse tracking minimized), iPhone used to stream music, fitness app used to track ride
Watch battery power dropped about 8% on this 1 hour, 15 min ride.
My conclusion is that the pulse monitoring draws about 150% more battery power than the Watch in normal operation without that feature active. Extrapolating from the length of my rides, I can imagine a 3 hour ride dropping remaining power by about 50-60%, worst case, and that's with the Watch streaming music directly to a bluetooth headset while interacting with the phone to receive GPS data and with the user raising his wrist many times to check progress, change music, etc. And that's a 38mm model.
But here's the thing... Every time I completed a ride, I took a shower. Funny how those two activities coincide. And since I have zero reason or need to wear my Watch in the shower, I took it off and set it on it's charger. And that allowed the Watch to recover considerable charge in the 30 minutes before I came back around to strap it back on. I've not had the watch go below 25% charge even on the longest day of use; a day when I took it off finally after getting home at 2am. I also find that I fiddle with the Watch less now that I've owned it for a week, and that means I'm going to bed with 60% charge on it still (last night's experience). It's 1:15pm and I currently have 91% charge today.
You're kidding right? 1/2 their presentation was about fitness. The other half was drawing hearts and sushi on a postage size screen which seemed pretty stupid.
I did a 3 1/2hr hike this weekend. Turned on the workout app, outdoor walk (should have a hike mode recording assent/decent) Heart rate recorded every 5 seconds. Also had 3rd party app Gaia GPS recording the hike. Used around 30% power on watch and around 30% power my iPhone. I think that'sexcelent battery usage
Apple has been marketing the hell out of the heart rate monitor (in particular), sending your heartbeat to loved ones, all manner of fitness tracking, special labs built just for the fitness capabilities of the watch, even featuring Christy Turlington with a fitness oriented blog.
As far as I know, Apple has't put a disclaimer on using any of those much touted features. So I don't know where you get that these features are not meant to be used for workouts so long. Friends of mine were very excited about using the heart rate monitor for constant monitoring throughout the day, only to find it can't really be used that way due to the battery constraints.
So yes, this is a problem. People work out routinely for two hours and longer, especially serious athletes, and Apple marketed this watch and its features to them.
You are going to be sorely disappointed. Let me save you some hassle and recommend the Garmin Forerunner® 920 XT. A good friend of mine has been buying/using fitness watches since their infancy and has been using this for the last 4-5 months. Super long battery life in comparison to Apple Watch. Garmin Connect links with Strava, as well, if I'm not mistaken. If you are serious about the fitness side and want ample battery life this is a better product. If you want to draw emoticons with an over-emotionalized product and track where your dominoes pizza is then maybe the Apple watch.
If you want to spend $300 on a one use device that you would never wear other than when your exercising. then get the forerunner. If you want to do more, then get the apple watch
Comments
This might be the buggiest hardware product Apple has ever launched. It should have a beta tag slapped on it. All I hear about this thing are complaints. And every time I run into a person wearing one in the wild, their wrist spin never lights up the screen. The wheels are coming off in Cupertino.
A few people complaining amongst a sea of those who praise it should tell you something... Either they have no fucking clue how to use this thing, or perhaps they have defective batteries in their watches, wouldn't be the first time in history!
I received my Watch (38mm Sport model) on April 24th, having order it at 3:08am ET on April 10th. I've been out on three bike rides in the last week, one 20 miles and two 16 miles. As an AAPL investor I've been exercising every function of the watch and monitoring its performance. The three bike rides were as follows:
20 mile ride, exercise power save mode ON, Watch used to stream music to bluetooth earbuds, Fitness app used to track ride
Watch battery power dropped about 12% on this 1 hour, 30 min ride.
16 mile ride, exercise power save mode OFF (pulse tracking active), iPhone used to stream music, fitness app used to track ride
Watch battery power dropped about 20% on this 1 hour, 15 minute ride.
16 mile ride , exercise power save mode ON (pulse tracking minimized), iPhone used to stream music, fitness app used to track ride
Watch battery power dropped about 8% on this 1 hour, 15 min ride.
My conclusion is that the pulse monitoring draws about 150% more battery power than the Watch in normal operation without that feature active. Extrapolating from the length of my rides, I can imagine a 3 hour ride dropping remaining power by about 50-60%, worst case, and that's with the Watch streaming music directly to a bluetooth headset while interacting with the phone to receive GPS data and with the user raising his wrist many times to check progress, change music, etc. And that's a 38mm model.
But here's the thing... Every time I completed a ride, I took a shower. Funny how those two activities coincide. And since I have zero reason or need to wear my Watch in the shower, I took it off and set it on it's charger. And that allowed the Watch to recover considerable charge in the 30 minutes before I came back around to strap it back on. I've not had the watch go below 25% charge even on the longest day of use; a day when I took it off finally after getting home at 2am. I also find that I fiddle with the Watch less now that I've owned it for a week, and that means I'm going to bed with 60% charge on it still (last night's experience). It's 1:15pm and I currently have 91% charge today.
Apple shouldn't get a pass to "iron out the wrinkles". If and when other non Apple products behave in any way close to this most people say Apple would never do that or the product is crap because of it. Actually, if this Apple Watch wasn't made by Apple and everything else was the same people would be hammering the product big time.
Actually no, that would be the exact opposite... Other companies put out total crap that fails to work as advertised ALL THE TIME, look no further than Samsung and Microsoft, and yet they get a media pass with flying colours. It's BECAUSE this is made by Apple that they get hammered for even the slightest bullshit, even though their competitors have mountains more issues in their competing products!
Does anyone know why Apple didn't put a higher-capacity battery in the watch? Theories or what have you..
I can't remember where I saw it (maybe ifixit) but it was mentioned that there are larger capacity batteries that size that would fit.
Really? I mean, really?
Armchair engineers are my FAVY FAV
I can EASILY get 24 hours of battery life including two 30 minute workout sessions. Hard for me to believe the watch can't go 2 hours.
I've done three 45 minute workouts (with frequent checking of data -- which is a bit of a pain to do, as I posted in another thread yesterday) on three different days since I got the Watch.
On each occasion, by about 11.00 at night, I've noticed that the remaining battery life is about 10 percentage points lower than on a non-workout day. For example, last night, it showed 23% instead of the normal 30%-35%.
I'd say that the battery life has been one of the positive surprises with the Watch.
Yep, I went for a long run yesterday afternoon which ended up being about an hour total. I checked the battery before and after, and it went from ~70% to ~60% using the built-in workout app. By the time I went to bed I still had about 40% battery capacity left. Not too shabby. I don't think I've ever seen it go below 30%.
A few observations from my workouts.
1. Bluetooth audio is battery draining, if the user is playing music from the watch to their earphones there will be an additional source of battery drain. It's not obscene, but it's noticeable. (Note that this isn't unusual, it's the same on smart phones, bluetooth audio is a known for this.)
In my experience, the BT headphones barely impact battery life. I am talking about approximately one hour of use.
fix what? a handful of people claiming something on twitter? that doesnt (yet) mean theres an issue to fix.
doom! doooooom!!! apple is dooomed!!
here you go: i like mine, and there are many non-complaint things i like about it. now youve heard some positive things about it.
im not certain about that. i did an "Other" workout and reviewed the heart rate date in the Health app, reviewing all data points -- they are constant, like a dozen times per minute, and i didnt have the HR panel active, only the time panel. i believe it samples as its coded to sample (very frequently), and the HR panel just shows you that data.
im guessing because it's not true.
fyi, two-hours of constant HR monitoring (mine goes a dozen times a minute) is going to take a bite out of your battery...ive seen it recommended to disable that for extended workouts.
This comes as a complete SHOCK said nobody ever. It was apparent from the get go that the watch couldn't make it more a couple hours. I was skeptical when Christie Turlington ran a half-marathon with it vs. a marathon. I can guarantee you the watch can't do a marathon... the phone can barely do a marathon just tracking location through Nike app and playing music. Source: Tried it.
3. The HR measurement times aren't arbitrary, they seem to be a combination of periodic measurements and additional measurements based on intelligence, likely related to the selected activity and available sensor input (e.g. accelerometers.) One can compare the record of readings using the Health app on the iPhone. Endurance exercise tends to be quite stable with regard to HR; other than being distracting to the exercise, frequent HR checks are unnecessary for long endurance exercising.
Using the work out app the hear rate monitor records every 5 seconds. When you don't use the work out app it records every 10 minutes.
You are going to be sorely disappointed. Let me save you some hassle and recommend the Garmin Forerunner® 920 XT. A good friend of mine has been buying/using fitness watches since their infancy and has been using this for the last 4-5 months. Super long battery life in comparison to Apple Watch. Garmin Connect links with Strava, as well, if I'm not mistaken. If you are serious about the fitness side and want ample battery life this is a better product. If you want to draw emoticons with an over-emotionalized product and track where your dominoes pizza is then maybe the Apple watch.
Excellent review. Thanks.
You're kidding right? 1/2 their presentation was about fitness. The other half was drawing hearts and sushi on a postage size screen which seemed pretty stupid.
I did a 3 1/2hr hike this weekend. Turned on the workout app, outdoor walk (should have a hike mode recording assent/decent) Heart rate recorded every 5 seconds. Also had 3rd party app Gaia GPS recording the hike. Used around 30% power on watch and around 30% power my iPhone. I think that's excelent battery usage
Idiots! It's not meant for workouts so long
Apple has been marketing the hell out of the heart rate monitor (in particular), sending your heartbeat to loved ones, all manner of fitness tracking, special labs built just for the fitness capabilities of the watch, even featuring Christy Turlington with a fitness oriented blog.
As far as I know, Apple has't put a disclaimer on using any of those much touted features. So I don't know where you get that these features are not meant to be used for workouts so long. Friends of mine were very excited about using the heart rate monitor for constant monitoring throughout the day, only to find it can't really be used that way due to the battery constraints.
So yes, this is a problem. People work out routinely for two hours and longer, especially serious athletes, and Apple marketed this watch and its features to them.
You are going to be sorely disappointed. Let me save you some hassle and recommend the Garmin Forerunner® 920 XT. A good friend of mine has been buying/using fitness watches since their infancy and has been using this for the last 4-5 months. Super long battery life in comparison to Apple Watch. Garmin Connect links with Strava, as well, if I'm not mistaken. If you are serious about the fitness side and want ample battery life this is a better product. If you want to draw emoticons with an over-emotionalized product and track where your dominoes pizza is then maybe the Apple watch.
If you want to spend $300 on a one use device that you would never wear other than when your exercising. then get the forerunner. If you want to do more, then get the apple watch