The Mature Smartwatch Habit

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I see people. I see them say that they have given up on wearing fitness trackers and smartwatches because they hate the tyranny of the device. I have felt an intense dislike for Apple behaves in particular. At the same time I have been playing wit Sportstracker for eighteen years or so. My fitness tracking habit is old enough to drink and old enough to drive.

This isn’t a post about drinking, or driving. This is a post about having a healthy relationship with your Garmin Instinct 2, your Suunto Peak 5, your Apple Watch SE, your Xiaomi Smartband 9 Pro and many other devices over the decades. it’s about wearing them, without displaying addictive behaviours. It’s about co-existence.

Apple Rings

If I was to be critical of a fitness tracker I would be critical of the Apple Watch and the Fitness app. It’s a great app for tracking progress over time, but it encourages addictive behaviour through having to close rings, and having to run at least once a week for six months to get running data. It punishes you for disloyalty to wearing the device.

Suunto

I am in two minds about Suunto. On the one hand I love that it is/was European, but I feel that it is giving up. It no longer has a website. It only has the app. It’s selection of devices is not growing by much. It was also bought by a Chinese company so I question whether it will be abandoned within a few seasons, or years.

Garmin

If I was to get back into the habit of wearing just one fitness tracker at a time I believe that it would be Garmin. These watches are fast to get a GPS signal, track for days before needing to charge, transfer the data quite reliably to the phone, and from there to various apps such as komoot, Strava and more.

The Garmin Instinct 2 offers a lot of options that you would have to buy a Fenix range watch to get. By being affordable it becomes interesting.

Connect+

Garmin is trying to get us to commit to paying 70+ CHF per year to use their site and extra services. In my eyes they’re losing focus. They should focus on devices for income.

Xiaomi

Xiaomi is unique, in that the devices range from 30-70 CHF. That’s quite a bit cheaper than the Garmin Instinct 2, Forerunner 55s, Suunto Peak 5 and other devices. The Smartband 7,8 and 9 are less than 40 CHF but require your mobile phone for a GPS position. The Smartband 9 pro has it’s own GNSS satellite receiver so it can track location indepently of the phone, for around 60 CHF.

For less than 60 CHF you have a device that tracks HR, hiking, walking, running, cycling and many other sports for a few days at a time before needing a charge, and the charge is fast. You can share to Strava, to Apple Health, to Suunto and more. You can wear this and feed several ecosystems at once.

Strava, Komoot, and Others

Strava makes it easy to find clubs, and to see who was either active with you, or at the same time as you. Komoot makes it easy to plan and find ideas for things to do. Other apps are more specialised so I send them data, but I don’t necessarily look at them.

And Finally

Unlike other people I had been wearing Suunto watches for years to track hikes and more. I then moved towards the Garmin universe out of curiousity to see how different it was, and then I moved to Apple and their smartwatches. I saw the evolution of fitness trackers. I had time to adapt. By the time we got to Apple watches and others I had a strong fitness habit.