TechNote: Smart Watches?

Technology can be confusing, but we are here to help.

With the increased interest in wearable technology there has been an enormous boom in smart watches. Companies have now inundated the market with latest designs, easy-to-see retina displays, and even downloadable apps for your newest purchase. But which is best to buy? It really depends on your wants and needs. Now, it’s quite easy to say this, but much more arduous in real world scenarios. So instead of attempting to understand and detail every possible avenue, HuggTech would like to recommend some tips for finding the watch that best suits you in your busy life.

Upon my research, I have continuously run into the same names over and over, the most notoriety obviously falling on Apple’s newest release. Nonetheless, other names and companies exist that beat the Apple watch in several ways.

Let us start with the Pebble Smart watch available for purchase on Amazon. For a mere $100 the Pebble Smart watch is both android and IOS compatible, a 1.26-inch display. The best thing is the battery life is an amazing 7 days.  Also, the Pebble can receive notifications and has watch faces that can be modified. Finally, the Pebble also has an accelerometer so that you can count yours steps and amount of calories burned. Nonetheless, there are some bugs that need to be worked out. So, if you are interested wait a while before purchasing and all the bugs are fixed.

Next on the list is the LG G Watch R that sits at a whopping $300 and can be bought from Amazon. This watch is only compatible with Android, but it has a larger display than the Pebble at 1.3 inches.  What’s more, it has an accelerometer and a heart rate monitor. Sadly, its battery life is only 24 hours. Overall, the only real cons are price and battery life. Android still has some catching up to do.

Then there is the Motorola made Moto 360 that comes in at $250 and is compatible with android only. It has a relatively large screen at 1.56 inches and it is neither the largest nor the smallest watch out there. The Moto sits at only 24 hours of battery life, but has great performance ratings and is extremely classy. If you want a smart watch that makes you look a billionaire and not a techy, this is the watch for you. Nevertheless, there are some downsides. The voice recognition is not up to par with other watches, it is not waterproof, and the screen is sometimes rather pixilated.

Finally, we have the Apple smart watch, which can range in price from $350 to a insane $17,000. But is it worth it? Apple does have a lot of choices when it comes to design and things like display size and tons of apps to choose from. Sadly though its battery life is awful. Absolutely dreadful. It only has 18 hours of battery life, which for the price is just plain obtuse. Still, you are getting a watch that has a 1.32 inch display, with an accelerometer, heart rate monitor, and a sapphire display. If you are already a mac person it may be better to stick with their products. However, if you are not an apple aficionado do and do not have the Iphone, it is probably best to stay away.  So… the battery is terrible, recharging it can be painfully slow, you need an iphone 5 or later and it can be confusing.

Our advice…stay out of the game for a while until all these kinks get fixed and you can enjoy spending money on something that is worth it. 

 

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