I have the Garmin instinct 1, and will be getting the 3 sometime soon.

I love it, because it gives me all of the features I want in a smart watch without all the bells and whistles that I’ll never use. The battery still lasts for nearly 2 weeks, and this is 6 years after purchase. It’s great if you do any nature activities, and even comes in a version that has a solar panel in the face to extend the battery.

The one thing I did wish it did is broadcast BLE packets so I could use it in my smart home setup to track my movements around the house and turn lights on and off and such

Apple Watch 11

I mostly use it for convenience, so I don’t need to pull my phone out

• Apple Pay
• Weather
• Music controls
• timers. Lots of timers
• Reminders/notifications/texts
• random search questions
• occasionally phone calls

In theory I track

• exercise
• sleep

Feature I’m most interested in

• any health sensor

I upgraded from an Apple Watch 3 because I could no longer update in place, only reset and reinstall.

I’ll upgrade again when a compelling health sensor is added. Probably blood pressure

everything that runs well with gadget bridge

Garmin fenix pro 6, I track my runs, bike outings and heartrate during weight training. It also lets me listen to music without carrying my phone.

Garmin Fenix 6 sapphire, this has been the best watch I’ve ever har. At this point I’ve had it for like 6 years and the battery still lasts a week at max power and a month on battery saver. It can record GPS for like 2 straight days on one charge

No touch screen which is excellent because the button input is extremely intuitive to the point where I can often use it without looking if I’m running or working on something.

The spO2 and HR monitors are nice to haves for me for working out but I use them more for differential readings more than absolute.

I keep wanting to upgrade to the newer ones especially to have mobile Internet connectivity but I can’t justify it cause this thing has been bulletproof.

Apple Watch 2. I use it for regulating my emotions. Any time my rage needs managing I ask it a simple question like “Battery?” and its complete inability to hear, understand, and respond in less than five attempts really gets the rage pumping.

Samsung watch 6.

Got it to monitor my heart which does not work on me for medical reasons though. It’s one of the cheapest but is still full featured (imo) but only with Samsung mobiles.

Really nice for managing notifications and using for media controls. A little fitness tracking.

Home assistant usage was great like until a year ago and now it simply doesn’t really work anymore.

Cheap Chinese Amazfit Neo. Basically a fitness tracker with a Casio-like look.

The one advice is, use gadgetbridge (https://gadgetbridge.org/). Replaces the shitty bloated spyware vendor app with something that does not sell your sleep pattern to the highest bidder. Downside, of course, is that you lose features and not every watch is compatible (or in different states of compatibility)

I use both a Garmin Instinct 3 (AMOLED) and a Garmin Instinct 2. When I bought them I added ~ 25 Workouts I do normally. After that I paired it up with GadgetBridge. I use it to track my gym activities and sleep patterns. I hardly ever use the GPS feature, but sometimes I use it when I’m hiking.

I use the PineTime, a fully open-source smartwatch, but it’s not very smart. It shows me the time and my notificafions, which is all I need. (It also does more things I dont use). It only costs like 35 euro as well.

Samsung galaxy watch ultra.

I’ve been using Samsungs since they started making them. The main thing (after the time) is in fact the notifications, since it’s much less disruptive to me or my conversation if I just check a watch rather than pull out my phone.

Other than that, I hike most weekends during warmer months and I track that on the watch. I don’t really use the data too much after the fact, but I like knowing how long it really was, my heart rate, etc.

I work from home now, but when i was in an office setting it was fine to listen to music, and I used the watch to control the player, again without taking out a phone while I’m supposed to be working.

I use a watch face that gives me some quick stuff like the temperature, chance of rain, my last measured heartrate, steps, and my calories (when I was tracking that).

Basically I use it to avoid pulling out my phone for every little damn thing, and for the health tracking stuff.

This is less often, but if i go to a Waterpark or something like six flags in the summer, if you have a data plan on the watch, it’s really handy to have that and leave the phone in a locker or the car. That way you can still message your group, and if you have it set up, pay for food and drinks or merch while you’re there. They’re water resistant well beyond what will happen there so you don’t need to get a special case or worry about losing it on a ride.

I have a Garmin Forerunner. I have had it for 3 years, but I only really unlocked it’s usefulness when I got a power meter and a heart rate strap. It’s amazingly useful for training and it is almost always right about my energy levels and other metrics. I am getting older and it’s important to not over-train and fatigue myself which I would totally do w/o my garmin and I still occasionally do even when it’s telling me to take it easy or rest.

I also use the maps a ton when in the woods, as well as the weather.

I have used the coaching feature but it’s not really for me, I’d rather do my own training plan.

You really have to invest in the features and learn about them. My first year of use I really didn’t know what the hell I was doing with it or what anything meant on it and a lot of metrics and programs were not useful to me since w/o the data senors it was very broad estimates of my energy outputs. My max HR was set wrong for 1.5 years before I figured it out.

Samsung Galaxy 6 Classic in 47mm. I’ve had Wear OS watches since the early days, but this is the first one that didn’t involve any obvious compromises. Readability, responsiveness, performance, and battery life are all excellent.

For a long time, my favorite thing about it was that I could design and use my own personal taste in watchfaces. Unfortunately, Google broke that, when they switched watchface formats. The new one simply can’t do what the old one made possible.

Making Android and Wear less useful and more annoying seems to be the only thing Google does these days. And Microsoft is doing exactly the same things with Windows. I’ve begun the move to Linux, but I don’t see an equivalent option for smart watches, which is sad.

These days I use my smart watch primarily as a way of not missing notifications on my phone. It is convenient, but the fun has gone out of it.

I have two very nice non-smart watches that I would like to wear, but I do need alarms and timers. The sound on both watches is far too quiet for me to hear, even when there is very little ambient noise. That may be partly my aging hearing, but younger people assure me that they really are too quiet to be reliable.

My next move is likely to be switching to one of my non-smart watches and using my phone for alarms and timers. So basically, giving up and going back to what I was doing fifteen years ago. Thanks for all the forward progress, Google.

I dont know if a MiBand9 really count as a smartwatch but i use it to trigger home assistant events either manually or automatically

On my old MiBand5 I could have an automatic alarm after falling asleep during the day, so I wouldn’t have too long naps, I miss this feature

I also use it to get the current time.

I have a Garmin Vivoactive 6, and I use it for the following:

• sleep quality tracking. It judges me in the morning.
• steps and calories burned so that I can justify eating or drinking something shitty.
• whether or not to pull out my phone and respond to a text message
• how far from the green I am

That’s… about it. Would love other ideas.