Hello.
For a long time I have considered smart watches to be a gimmick but since they have become more accessible and common now for some time, I was wondering what the people who own and use them think of them?
So what has your experience been of them?
One thing I am curious about is how functional these (especially the Android ones) are without being connected to a phone via bluetooth since bluetooth drains battery?
They are unnecessarily expensive. I’ve had a few big-name fitness bands. They were OK. Nothing too exciting. A few months ago I bought a Xiaomi Band 5 for $29. It’s great. Small, comfortable, does what I want, and it’s cheap. I bought two more for $27 each.
Without being connected to a smartphone, it’s essentially just a watch with a heart rate sensor.
Yeah I was wondering what kind of privacy nightmare it must be but by simply not connecting it to any device should prevent it from calling home, right? Unless they have hotspots around the world that the watch can automatically connect to but that just sounds paranoid.
The hotspots would then be the other Xiaomi bands or devices (that likely connect to the internet), right?