Smartwatches: a venture in vanity

My father is a man of few words; and yet for the lack of words he has, he has plenty of watches. Some are old, with worn leather straps that are soft to touch, others new, with fancy dials, roman numerals shining silver in the light. The idea of a watch as a piece of history, a piece of art and a cultural collectible piece was deeply ingrained to me and my siblings as we grew up and admired our father’s collection. With the coming of age, each of us were gifted a watch, old and expensive in design. They were heirlooms, given with thought and care.

This was a few years before smartwatches became common. Does the practicality of smartwatches truly make them valuable? With the amount of negative reviews and complaints, can they even be considered practical? Should humanity start replacing their old wristwatches, a piece of technology that has been around for hundreds of years, for this new, flashy technology that allows people to be connected at all times?

With screens too small to be truly practical, owning a smartwatch can seem like an excessive and unnecessary purchase. Since the technology is also relatively new, it’ll be years until they are updated to the point of comfortable and easy usability. The applications made for smartwatches are considered too small, with many user reviews claiming their fingers are too big for any efficient user experience, and that most would rather pull out their phone than stay fiddling on their watch for too long.

Other reviews point to the watch being too slow for any sort of quick use, along with it being too intricate and fiddly for on the move use. The smartwatch also seems to fail at one of its main purposes; keeping users off their phones. Instead of being a handy little piece of technology that makes it easy to check notifications, it works as a notifier that tells a user to pull out their phone.

One last complaint really highlights the failures of the smartwatches. Most of these watches, with OLED screens, make it hard to read when outdoors in the sunlight. For a product that boasts practical on the go use, it seems like a rather grievous oversight that the watch is rendered useless when on the go outside.

With these many negative reviews, it seems mind boggling that any customer would be willing to pay half a grand for such a product. Unlike a classic watch, which can be needlessly expensive, the smartwatch, like most recent smart technologies, begs to be updated and replaced every fews years, as fancier, faster, friendlier products start making their way into stores. The classic watch though, needs no update. It’s ageless and inheritable.

Not only are these watches not worth the insane price, they cheapen the value of the good old traditional watch. These watches, carefully made by meticulous and practiced hands, over the span of what could be years, are a truly cherished art form. Seeing the geeky square computer screen on the wrist of a passerby is almost offensive in comparison to the clean-cut, groomed look of a Rolex. Though Apple truly tries to make their watches tidy and dapper, it fails when rivaled to the century old craft of watchmaking.

Smart phones exist and regular trustworthy old wrist watches exist. It’s unnecessary to have a half working combination of the two, and just like electric can openers, sometimes the traditional model is just as good, if not better than the new, shiny version.