Jawbone is liquidating. Fitbit owns the fitness watch/band market. iWatch has a lock on the higher end tech. Not sure if there is much room to maneuver for anyone else.
I feel the fitness gear doesn't really matter what you get. But it will if you care about the community aspect of it (social networking/challenges). Otherwise if you use it for yourself, you'll be fine with any of them. I own an apple watch AND fitbit alta. people wonder why i have the alta, and it's mainly cuz I'm in groups with challenges on weekdays and weekends. this helps my apple watch battery too since I can turn off the activity tracking and heartrate sensor.
Got myself the Garmin Vivoactive 3. It's more of a fitness monitor than a smart watch. The battery lasts about 6 days and that was my primary reason for getting it.
Does that get decent notifications? It seems to be a popular upgrade path from Pebble. I'm still rocking the Pebble Time but 5 years has taken it's toll on the battery. I get about 3.5 days now... and yes, that's enough to irrate the shit out of me. I can't believe nobody has come up with a 10 day batter life "smart" watch for $50 in all this time.
The notification were just basic and nothing like an Apple watch. I stopped wearing it about a month ago when I realised I wasn't really using any of the smart watch features anymore. It's really tailored to be a fitness device more than a smart watch and I'd often get stuck in activities which would prevent me from looking at the main screen. For example if I happened to be doing a lot of walking it will automatically start activity mode and pester me about continuing or deleting the activity. The battery life was pretty good with the e-ink screen but it still needed charging every 5 to 6 days. I'll probably start weraing it again after a break.
That's kinda my worry with Garmin. All the ads are for people climbing mountains and shit. I just wanna track my steps pacing around my house and get notifications. Paying more than $100 for just that is such a hard sell for me. I feel like there is no ideal scenario. I have this half baked idea to buy 2 older Apple Watches and rotating them daily to get around battery life issues lol
So I did some market research... The Amazfit Bip series is probably the best <$100 battery life smart watch. They have a $50 model that will get 2.5 weeks based on user posted data. Per user reports the downside appears to be an always connected app reporting to servers back in China. At a few hundred dollars, Garmin seems to have come a long way with battery life. They will be 3+ weeks to even 2 months. But these are glorified notification watches and not smartwatches and geared towards professional athletes in my opinion. Also, you will pay low end luxury watch prices for some of these models. With the battery advancements I'm wondering if we're one or two generations from a multi day Apple Watch. At the end of the day that will pair the best with the iPhone. I really can't justify $500 on a Garmin just to get notifications lol.
Intersting. I'll take a lok at those Amazon watches and maybe sell my Garmin. Like I said, my biggest complain with Garmin is how it automatically starts a workout activity and ties up the main screen until you go through several steps to stop it. A device that acts like a smartwatch first would be prefered.