Now before you roll your eyes and close my blog because of another rose gold thing: stop! The Q Venture also comes in black, silver, and gold!
Lately I’ve been trying to decide if I want to take the leap and buy a smartwatch, so I decided to rent this watch through Expese first (you can read all about them here). As soon as the watch arrived, I was excited to take it out of the box and start peeling off the plastic! Read More »
At this point, I’ve had almost every edition of Fitbit. Which is strange when you know me. Regardless, I was very curious about the new Fitbit. You know how much I loved the Moto 360 (and if you don’t, go find out now!) so I was looking forward to testing out the Fitbit Blaze. Turns out, it’s a fitness tracker first, smartwatch…later.
I started off with notifications on. I’m one to leave my phone in another room and be too lazy to grab it when I hear it go off, so notifications on another device are great. Unfortunately, the Blaze only shows about 4 things, and they’re all default apps. I very quickly turned off notifications, because while it showed messages, they wouldn’t go away until you cleared them, even if you’ve read and responded to them on your phone.
So the Blaze isn’t very good as a smartwatch, which isn’t surprising coming from a company that creates fitness trackers. But if I’m going to spend $200 on a fitness tracker, I really don’t want it to just count my steps and tell me my heart rate.
I’m going to be honest here…I stopped wearing the watch on a daily basis about two weeks after I got it. The size of the Blaze is far too big for daily wear, it doesn’t look very good and it was useless as a smartwatch with notifications turned off. I understand that these trackers are designed for people who exercise on a regular basis, or are actual athletes, but I just couldn’t get into this Fitbit. Maybe it’s because it wasn’t rose gold…
As with most new technology, people typically don’t understand the need for something new and innovative. Before I got my first smartphone I didn’t understand why you would need to access the Internet wherever you were, at all times. Before I got an iPhone I didn’t understand the appeal of having every app in the world available to you. So when smartwatches first started getting popular, I didn’t understand why you would need your notifications on your wrist. I’ve even had this same smartwatch before! So why would this time be any different?
First off, the Moto 360 now connects to almost any iPhone or Android. This meant I could connect my personal phone to it, and wouldn’t need a second phone like I did the first time around. Second, this 360 is rose gold. I repeat, rose gold. (If you didn’t know how weirdly obsessed with rose gold I am, you clearly aren’t following me on Instagram, so shame on you.) So I decided to give the smartwatch another try. And holy cow, was I impressed. This time around, it surprised me how much I liked being able to look at my wrist instead of pulling my phone out of my pocket. The 360 had no issues at all connecting to my iPhone, and every notification showed up on the watch. I was able to swipe away notifications which also got rid of them on my phone’s Notification Center, and each notification had a particular look to it, which was a nice way to differentiate texts versus Instagram likes versus emails.
The downsides about the Moto 360 were the notifications and the battery life. I didn’t like that I wasn’t able to interact with notifications on the watch. I’m sure this is because it’s a Motorola watch connecting to an Apple phone, so I understand. Although, I would have liked to have been able to respond to texts, because having to pull out your phone defeats the purpose of a smartwatch. I was able to “answer” calls using the watch, but I still had to talk through my phone. Then comes the battery life. I was able to get one full day out of it, but never two full days. I did have the “always on” option turned on, which meant that although the screen went black, the clock face was always on, and I’m sure that drains battery quickly. This wasn’t a huge issue for me, because I took the watch off to sleep anyway, so I just put it on its little charging station and it was good to go for the next day.
I would definitely say I’m a smartwatch convert now. I like what it can do and am interested to see where they go from here. Especially if they keep making them in rose gold!
(Side note: extra points for you if you counted how many times I said “rose gold” in this post.)
I got the Droid Turbo and Moto 360 around the time that the Apple watch was being announced and released, so I was looking forward to trying out the latest trend. The idea of having something strapped to your wrist that did less than what your phone could do was weird to me. Now that I’ve tried out a smart watch, it still is.
The exterior design of Android phones never fails to impress me, and the Turbo was no different! It had a red carbon fiber back that looked great. You know my feelings on the Android OS, so that’s really all I have to say about the phone.
Then comes the Moto 360. I think this is by far the best looking smart watch. The circular face helps it blend in with a normal watch but still has plenty of screen space to show notifications. The leather band that mine came with was comfortable, although a little stiff. Using the 360 was very simple, but reading the emails that came in was something else entirely. The notifications for the email was clear and easy to read, but formatting causes the emails to show up in an almost alien language. I got the gist of my emails, but found myself taking out my phone to read them. This brings me to the most important fact about the smart watch…what’s the point?? My phone was always a few inches away in my pocket, the incoming messages were hard to read and the watch didn’t always sense when I turned it up to look at it. Personally, the only time I actually used it was when I was showing people how it worked. I rarely even used it as a normal watch, because I’m so used to pulling my phone out of my pocket to check the time.
For me, the smart watch is more of a novelty than a device that’s actually useful. I’m sure I’ll come around eventually, but for now I’ll stick with my trusty Timex.
Lauren Kortbein 