Apple watches are one of those products that you either love or hate. Some swear it changed their lives, while others say it’s one of Apple’s least useful products.
If you’ve considered buying one, you’ve likely seen very mixed reviews. So in this article, we’ve summed up all the reasons why the Apple Watch is a waste of money.
Why Apple Watch Is A Waste Of Money
1. It’s Bad For Telling Time
Look. A smartwatch can go crazy with all the futuristic features it can have, but if I need to wave my hand like a subpar Gandalf or tap it with my other hand to tell time, these gadgets have failed.
To be fair, though, Apple has improved hiccups like these over the years. Unfortunately, it still won’t work 100% of the time.
Sometimes, you still have to awkwardly move your wrist to your face for the watch to tell you the time.
2. Needs Daily Charging
It’s such a shame that we went from having to change our watches’ batteries every other year to not being able to go 24 hours without at least a 30-minute charging session.
While this is a problem with all smartwatches, Apple watches’ battery life was never that great even compared to cheaper competition.
The battery may slowly improve with every new model, but its unreliability can still be a huge tradeoff for the added features you get, especially with Apple watches.
The lacking battery also interferes with some of the Apple watch’s most significant upsides. If you want to track your sleep, for example, or go to the gym with it, you’ll barely have any time to charge it.
3. It Just Adds Clutter
Speaking of charging, Apple watches can be a hard sell for people constantly trying to have fewer things to worry about, whether physical or digital.
In terms of physical clutter, having an Apple watch means you now have to worry about its charging puck, sports bands, fashion bands, and, if you’re extra careful, a protective screen.
As for digital clutter, you’ll start with a dedicated app on your iPhone and end up with invasive notifications for just about anything.
4. Non-Stop Notifications
Apple Watches make an excellent tool for someone who needs to be always online, super responsive, and up to date with everything happening.
If that doesn’t apply to you, it can hog every spec of attention you have and unnecessarily take over your brain in a matter of days.
Of course, there are lots of solutions to this. For example, you can turn off non-essential notifications, set up sleep and focus modes, etc.
However, all of that will take time and trial and error to figure out in exchange for adding little value to your life.
5. It Doesn’t Fill A Need Gap
You’d think for the price tag, extra effort, and little pouch full of straps and charging stuff; you’d be getting a particular need met in a way no other product can achieve.
Unfortunately, that’s not entirely true for the Apple watch.
Apple watches can be fun and perhaps quite convenient, but almost every feature they have already exists in another product you already own.
Sure, you can work out or even go diving with it. It’ll monitor your heart rate and tell you all sorts of fun numbers to look at. More recently, it can even measure your blood oxygen level.
However, if you need these things for anything serious, you’re better off buying dedicated wearables. Apple watch biometrics are quite casual and heavily rely on software to make up for its lacking measurements.
6. It’s Useless Without An iPhone
For some reason, you can’t set up an Apple watch without an iPhone. We’re not talking about biometrics and notifications. You actually can’t get it to work without an iPhone.
Apple explicitly chose to make Apple watches a companion device.
It’s somewhat understandable that they didn’t want to make it compatible with other phones, but they could’ve at least made it Macbook-compatible.
7. Cheaper Alternatives Are Considerably Better
Imagine you could pay 75% of the ludicrous amount needed for an Apple Watch 7 and get 5-6 whole days of battery life. That imagination is, in fact, a reality. You could get all of that if you got FitBit’s latest model.
With better price, better compatibility, and, depending on who you ask, better design, Apple watch’s competitors give it a run for its money.
8. It Won’t Make You Exercise
Almost every review, video, and post about Apple watches starts by touting its fitness features, and for a good reason.
Some of the best features of this product are related to fitness tracking. It’ll remind you to move and stretch, stay hydrated, and track your workouts and the calories you burn.
Some would say having an Apple watch helps lose weight, and perhaps it does, but will it make you exercise and stay healthy? Not if you don’t have the motivation to.
This might sound obvious, but some people really do buy Apple watches based on the claim that they can help make their lives healthier. It can, just not without active effort on your part.
9. Siri Isn’t That Good
Finally, we reach the biggest reason Apple watches are a waste of money.
Smartwatches are inherently limited in their controls, so you’ll have to rely on voice controls. Unfortunately, Siri isn’t good enough for that.
If you rely on Siri to respond to a text or search for something, you’re much more likely to send a jumbled-up message or get the wrong result than with other digital assistants.
Not only is its speech recognition far worse than, say, Google Assistant, but the results it pulls up aren’t very good.
To learn more, you can also read our posts on why Apple Watches are so expensive, why Apple Monitors are so expensive, and why Apple Pencils are so expensive.
Conclusion
So we’ve gone through all the practical reasons why the Apple watch is a waste of money. Keep in mind that many of these are subjective. Some of them may not apply to you, and you may have a stronger need for some of the features.
After all, heart rate alerts, haptic notifications, and constant connectivity can be a requirement for some people. So if you’re one of them, you’ll instantly see the value in getting an Apple Watch.