Is a smartwatch a beautiful but useless gadget? Decide whether to buy one after reading this article.

Since Xiaomi released its first - generation Mi Band in 2014, and Huawei and Apple successively launched their first - generation smartwatches in 2015, this smart wearable device worn on the wrist has become a popular category in digital products and an indispensable type of product at mobile phone press conferences.

Of course, what many people don't know is that in 2015, the smart wearable giant Xiaotiancai released its first watch, the Y01.

After chatting with users of smartwatches or fitness trackers around me, I found that the functions they use daily are mainly for checking the time and exercise calories. Some users who dig deeper may check their sleep duration. However, higher - level data such as HRV, ECG, and maximum oxygen uptake are often ignored. Many users may only utilize about 20% of the functions of a smartwatch.

Is it necessary to buy a smartwatch?

On Xiaohongshu, there are more than 8.07 million notes related to the question "Is it necessary to buy a smartwatch?" Maybe you or your friends in front of the screen have bought a smartwatch and then let it gather dust, and come to the conclusion that a smartwatch is a beautiful but useless gadget.

When we talk about smartwatches, we first need to clarify whether you can really get used to using a smartwatch.

The biggest difference in experience between a smartwatch and a traditional watch is that a smartwatch needs to be charged, which is also the biggest pain point of smartwatches. Especially if you plan to buy an Apple Watch and have the habit of exercising every day, then you must develop and stick to another habit: charging your watch every day.

The following picture shows the regular or typical battery life of several popular smartwatches on the market.

The testing standards of each brand are different. For example, Apple's testing standard involves a higher usage frequency within 18 hours, and Xiaomi's "typical Bluetooth battery life" has turned off several detection functions.

Xiaomi Watch S4

In actual experience, the battery life of Apple's S - series smartwatches can exceed 36 hours when the always - on display is turned off. The 36 - hour battery life is quite tricky. One charge can't last for two days, but it's more than one day's use.

If you have a boyfriend who wears an Apple Watch, you should marry him because he will go home every night.

Is a smartwatch suitable for you?

Also, have you noticed that there are significant differences in the battery life of smartwatches from different brands, with an obvious dividing line. Some smartwatches have a battery life of less than 5 days, while the rest have a battery life close to or more than 10 days. This is quite obvious with Huawei's two models. The Watch 5 has a battery life of 4.5 days, and the GT5 has a battery life of 9 days.

This involves two different product concepts: full - fledged smartwatches and semi - smartwatches (also known as lightweight smartwatches). The former runs a complete operating system, supports the installation of third - party apps, and can independently process data collected by sensors. For example, Huawei's Watch 5 even has an NPU unit.

Semi - smartwatches rely more on mobile phones. Much of the collected data needs to be processed with the help of a mobile phone, but they can achieve a longer battery life.

The Apple Watch, Huawei Watch 5, and OPPO Watch X2 are all full - fledged smartwatches, and their regular battery life is within four days, unless you turn on the power - saving mode. In contrast, semi - smartwatches can have a battery life of up to 10 days, similar to that of a Xiaomi Band or a sports watch like the Garmin Fenix 7.

Therefore, if you want to experience the full range of smartwatch functions, you need to determine whether you can accept charging your watch every three or four days, or even every day. If not, you'd better consider semi - smartwatches or fitness trackers with a longer battery life, which are also generally cheaper.

Of course, charging your watch every day isn't that difficult. You just need to take it off to charge while taking a shower and put it on before going to bed. This also requires some adjustment.

Then, the second question arises: if you're going to buy a smartwatch, can you accept the feeling of a foreign object on your hand while sleeping?

I conducted a survey among my colleagues and friends, and a large proportion of them don't wear their smartwatches at night because it's uncomfortable. One of my friends described this feeling very accurately: it's like being used to sleeping naked and suddenly being forced to sleep in clothes.

Of course, it doesn't mean that you have to wear your smartwatch while sleeping after buying it. However, if you don't wear it, you'll miss out on many functions.

For example, the vibrating alarm in the morning, sleep quality monitoring, and the increasingly popular sleep apnea monitoring supported by many smartwatches. Not wearing the smartwatch means sacrificing these functions, just like having a vivo X200 Ultra but never using its telephoto lens, having smart home devices but not connecting them to the Internet, or reading an article on Kejihu but not clicking the little red heart below.

If you want sleep monitoring and want to reduce this discomfort, a smaller - sized fitness tracker is a good choice.

By now, we've mentioned fitness trackers twice. In fact, if you don't have high requirements for the device, a fitness tracker is indeed a better choice. It has a longer battery life, better cost - performance, and a lower sense of presence or foreign - object feeling on the hand.

If the above two drawbacks aren't a problem for you, then you can consider buying a smartwatch.

Next, as a loyal fan of smartwatches who wears one 365 days a year, I'd like to talk about the useful functions of smartwatches.

What are the useful functions of smartwatches?

First of all, there's no doubt that it's exercise recording. The most obvious impact on me is that I used the data recorded by my watch during exercise, combined with skipping rope and using dumbbells, and successfully lost weight. I got rid of fatty liver and sleep apnea syndrome caused by obesity, which means being woken up by suffocation several times a night.

If you're interested in how to control your weight, you can leave a message in the comment section below. I'm very willing to share this pain - free weight - loss process with you.

This has also led me to develop a habit of wearing my watch during exercise. Any exercise that isn't recorded by the watch is considered ineffective, even a trip to the bathroom.

Closing the activity rings is, to some extent, like a magic spell that encourages users to complete them, maintain a high exercise frequency, and quantify the improvement of cardiopulmonary function through data on the watch. This is a very good positive feedback mechanism.

Taking Apple's Apple Watch as an example, the data you can view includes the maximum oxygen uptake, which represents the maximum amount of oxygen the body can utilize per unit of time, and the resting heart rate, which refers to the heart rate when a person is completely relaxed and not in an active state.

The former reflects the maximum cardiopulmonary capacity, and the higher, the better. The latter is the basic state efficiency of the cardiopulmonary system, and the lower, the better.

Although the data measured by smartwatches isn't as accurate as that measured by medical equipment, the relative improvement can actually help us assess the effects of exercise.

Some of you in front of the screen may say that this is being "kidnapped" by the watch. Well, that's true to some extent. But I think a more accurate description is that it's a tool to encourage users to exercise, just like an alarm clock wakes us up, and we even set three or four alarms within ten minutes. It's a positive and beneficial tool for us.

Based on the heart rate, more body data can be derived, such as HRV and ECG, which are supported by more and more smartwatches.

HRV, also known as heart rate variability, measures the degree of variation in the R - wave intervals between consecutive heartbeats. It reflects the heart's ability to respond to various stimuli. In a healthy state, the heart should beat faster when needed and slower when appropriate