Hello Everyone, The following is a very, and I do mean very long and comprehensive cNet review of the Apple watch written by Scott Stein.
I encourage you to read this piece in its entirety as it paints a very realistic picture of what Apple Watch currently is and is not. The link to the original article is located at the end of the text. Oh, one more thing. I did my best to clean out the image place holders and advertisement for ease of reading but my eyes got very tired so some garbled stuff may have slipped through. Enjoy, Mark The Apple Watch: A beautiful, bold watch, with complications By Scott Stein The Good The Apple Watch is a beautifully constructed, compact smartwatch. It's feature-packed, with solid fitness software, hundreds of apps, and the ability to send and receive calls via an iPhone. The Bad Battery barely lasts a day and recharge time is slow; most models and configurations cost more than they should; requires an iPhone 5 or later to work; interface can be confusing; sometimes slow to communicate with a paired iPhone. The Bottom Line The Apple Watch is the most ambitious, well-constructed smartwatch ever seen, but first-gen shortfalls make it feel more like a fashionable toy than a necessary tool. Four years ago, I wore an iPod Nano on my wrist and I loved it. I liked the novelty of it, the way it played music on my wrist, and could go with me anywhere. At the time, I wished the strapped-on music player, with its watch faces and little assortment of apps, could do more. And I dreamed of a day it might connect to my phone. Well, here we are. The Apple Watch is a brand-new Apple product, the first from-the-ground-up product line since the iPad and since Tim Cook took the helm. This watch is, in a way, a new type of wrist-worn super-iPod. It's also a symbiotic iPhone companion. And, it's a fitness device. It also embarks onto a churning sea of smartwatch launches -- many manufacturers have set sail with ambitious wearables; very few are bona fide successes. Most people aren't even sure they need one. Can the Apple Watch succeed where others have foundered? The Apple Watch comes in three different models, two different sizes, and six different finishes, with a range of swappable bands and prices ranging from $349, £299 or AU$499 all the way up to $17,000, £13,500 or AU$24,000. It's designed to be Apple's most personal product: fashion as much as it is tech. Apple's products have been fashionable for years, but now Apple wants these watches to transcend into jewelry. Smartwatches may one day be the future of phones, or a seamless extension of both them and your home, or any number of connected devices. Right now, they function as phone accessories. And that's where the Apple Watch lands. Apple designed the watch to help us look at our phones less. I'd call it more of a smaller screen in Apple's spectrum of differently sized screens. I used it instead of my phone, sometimes. Then, I'd go back to my phone. Has it changed my behavior? It's too early to tell yet, but it might. I've been using the Apple Watch for a week. I've worn it on my wrist every day, doing everything possible that I could think of. I've tracked walks and measured my heart rate, paid for lunch, listened to albums while exploring parks without my phone, chatted with family, kept up on email, looked for Uber cars, kept up on news, navigated on long car trips for Passover, controlled my Apple TV with it and followed baseball games while I was supposed to be watching my 2-year-old. The watch is beautiful and promising -- the most ambitious wearable that exists. But in an attempt to do everything in the first generation, the Apple Watch still leaves plenty to be desired. Short battery life compared with other watches and higher prices are the biggest flags for now. But Apple is just setting sail, and it has a long journey ahead. What it does, what it is Much like most other smartwatches, the Apple Watch isn't a standalone device -- it's a phone accessory. Android Wear, Samsung Gear, Pebble and others work the same way. But here, you must own an iPhone 5 or later to use the Watch. A few Apple Watch functions work away from the phone, but the watch primarily works alongside the phone as an extension, a second screen and basically another part of your iOS experience. It's a symbiote. Communication, fitness, information, time: these are the core Apple Watch functions, but the Watch is incredibly ambitious, packed with many, many features and apps. In scope, it reminds me of Samsung's ambitious Gear smartwatches, but more fully realized. Apple Watch receives messages from friends, send texts and lets you dictate messages, make speakerphone calls, ping people with animated emoji, give love taps long-distance or send your heartbeat as a sort of long-distance hug. It tracks your steps, logs runs and monitors your heart rate. And yes, you can use Apple Watch to listen to music via wireless Bluetooth headphones. You can play songs like an iPod, get notifications and run apps like a mini iPhone and make payments with Apple Pay. And it has a totally new force-sensitive display that's never been seen before. And yes, it tells the time. But, once again, this watch needs your iPhone to do most of these things. And it either needs to be in Bluetooth range (30 or so feet), or it can connect over Wi-Fi in a home or office to extend that range further. Design Apple wants you to think of the Apple Watch as fine jewelry. Maybe that's a stretch, but in terms of craftsmanship, there isn't a more elegantly made piece of wearable tech. Look at the Apple Watch from a distance, and it might appear unremarkable in its rectangular simplicity compared with bolder, circular Android Wear watches. It's clearly a revamped sort of iPod Nano. But get closer, and you can see the seamless, excellent construction. I reviewed the stainless-steel Apple Watch, with a steel link band -- a $1,000 configuration. I also wore it with two different Sport Bands, one white and one blue. The Apple Watch feels a bit chunky compared to Apple's stable of super-slim gadgets, but it doesn't look big on the wrist. The larger 42mm version has length, width and thickness similar to the Pebble Steel, one of the smaller smartwatches available. The 38mm version is even smaller. The 42mm version I reviewed felt great on my wrist and didn't feel uncomfortable at all. Apple Watch's curved-rectangle form will polarize: some will find it looks great, others will see it like some sort of space-age iPod. Others will be annoyed it's not circular, or isn't thinner. Some won't like the curved glass (or sapphire crystal) that covers the edges and makes it seem like scratch magnet. Mine hasn't scuffed yet, but I'm trying the higher-end steel-and-sapphire version, not the aluminum-and-glass Sport. The Digital Crown, Apple's specialized way of interfacing with the watch, sits off to the side, looking just like the part of the watch that used to wind older watches. But in this case, the crown is a mini scroll wheel. You can click it or turn it, and it moves smoothly and beautifully. A second button below brings up favorite contacts, or triggers Apple Pay with a double-click. Most navigating happens by swiping and tapping the display, but that crown can be used for some navigation in some apps, or as a pinch-to-zoom replacement. I kept forgetting to use it at first, except to press it to get back to app menu (that grid of apps which I'll get to in a bit). Over time, I got used to it, but I still tended to use my finger for swipes instead. Under the hood All Apple Watches have a new S1 processor made by Apple, that "Taptic" haptic engine and a force-sensitive and very bright OLED display, which is differently sized on the 38mm and 42mm models. The watch has its own accelerometer, gyrometer and heart-rate monitor, but no onboard GPS. It uses Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11b/g/n 2.4GHz Wi-Fi to connect to your phone or your home network. There's a built-in speaker and microphone, but no headphone jack. The many-nested worlds of the Apple Watch interface The old iPod Nano had a grid of apps to swipe through, like an iPhone. Samsung's Gear watches use a similar approach. Google's Android Wear uses a blank slate at first, pushing notification cards while hiding its apps behind a scrolling menu. The Apple Watch has its main watch faces, but also two levels of apps: Glances, which are a lot like the quick-glance app summaries in iOS 8's pull-down "Today" menu (or the occasional cards that appear in Android Wear), and full-fledged apps. You swipe up for Glances, down for on-watch notifications like texts or Twitter/Facebook alerts and click the Digital Crown button in to get to that "home screen" grid of glowing circular apps you've seen in all the ads. Let's start from the top. Watch faces: Things of beauty Apple has spent a lot of time making its collection of watch faces great, and the effort shows: these are a beautiful bunch. The old iPod Nano had fun watch faces, but many of Apple's are actually clever and useful: a chronometer becomes a customizable stopwatch; a solar cycle face shows actual sunset and sunrise times, presenting changing arcs depending on the season; a jaw-dropping planetary face shows the Earth and Moon, but properly lit to reflect day, night, and lunar cycles. You can see all the planets in their current alignment, or spin the crown and see their positions change by date. There's also Mickey Mouse. The watch faces are customizable, to a point: numbers can be added, colors changed and many "complications" (a watch industry term for extra information on a watch) altered. You can see battery life, calendar appointments, daily fitness and more at a glance. Tap, and those zones open the full app. It's a great idea for a launchpad, but Apple's clock collection won't currently allow third-party extensions or watch faces to join in the fun. That will probably change down the road, but for now it limits the possibilities. It's also odd how many of the 10 watch faces opt for round analog designs even though the watch is rectangular. I would have preferred more digital-style options like those on the Pebble Steel. Notifications pop up as they do on the iPhone, and can be managed individually. CNET Glances and notifications, taps and pings: How you get information There are a lot of ways to look at little bits of info surfaced by the Apple Watch. Notifications pop onto the screen as on most smartwatches. You can swipe down and look at them all, if you want, or delete them. There are also Glances, permanent little slides of mini-info that basically work like Widgets on iOS 8 and Mac OS X Yosemite. Swipe up, and you can swipe back and forth through little interactive tiles. Most apps work with Glances, but not all. Battery life, weather, music control, basic airplane mode and find-your-watch pings, quick news headlines -- you get the picture. As I wore the watch on the first day, I felt a rippling buzz and a metallic ping: one of my credit card payments showed up as a message. Apple's "Taptic Engine" and a built-in speaker convey both a range of advanced taps and vibrations, plus sounds. Unlike the buzz in a phone or most wearables, these haptics feel sharper: a single tap, or a ripple of them, or thumps. Sometimes the feelings are too subtle: I don't know if I felt them or imagined them. My wrists might be numbed from too many smart devices. I set my alerts to "prominent" and got sharper nudges on my wrist. Notifications do feel distinct from each other thanks to those haptics, but associating the feelings and sounds with what they are takes getting used to. The range of feelings the Apple Watch can pull off is greater than other smartwatches, and the accompanying sounds also help give the nudges extra dimension (you can silence those sounds, too, but I kept them on). One great thing about the Apple Watch's notifications is that you can individually manage them, like on the iPhone. You can also set them differently than the iPhone, depending on what you need. I haven't even begun to dig deep into customizing mine, but Apple offers a lot of ways to tweak your settings. Siri works hands-free, or by holding down the Digital Crown. CNET Siri on your wrist It turns out that Siri, a feature I barely use on my phone, is noticeably useful on Apple Watch. Like Google Now on Android Wear, it's a catch-all way to speak and do things in ways that can cut through the menus and swipes. Opening apps, sending messages, getting directions or finding out the core temperature of the Earth to settle a debate with your 6-year-old while on a drive. You can reach Siri by pressing and holding the crown button, or by raising your wrist and saying, "Hey, Siri." Voice recognition was excellent, surprisingly quick and more useful than you'd expect. I didn't even use Siri for the first few days, but then I realized how useful it was. Just like on the iPhone, it can also bring up things like movie times and sports schedules with graphics and tables, too. The small display can sometimes induce squinting, though. My wife had mixed feelings on emoji. CNET Communicating: Talk, text, emote Apple has offered a strange spectrum of ways to communicate: a clever friend wheel, which pops up when you click the flat button on the Apple Watch's side, stores favorites. You can dial up someone, literally, and then text, call via speakerphone or headphones, and send a variety of "digital touch" messages if that person also has an Apple Watch. Those digital touches feel mostly like flirting: quick sketches in glowing light, taps the other person can feel, or sending your heartbeat via thumping haptic vibrations by holding two fingers down. I tested these with a willing Apple employee on the other side, and my wife kept wondering why I was getting smiley faces and throbbing heartbeats in the middle of the day. They might be cute for new couples who like buying Apple products together. Apple Watch's calling and speakerphone elements are like what Samsung's Gear watches have offered: the watch connects with your phone remotely. Apple's microphone is excellent: people I called had no problem hearing me and didn't even know I wasn't on my phone, even with the watch down at chest level. But I found that I had to lift the watch up to my face, mainly so I could hear them. It wasn't always easy: the speaker's volume is on the low end and a little tinny. You can use Bluetooth headphones, but oddly, you can't use the Apple Watch as a remote to place calls while your phone is in your pocket and your wired headphones are on. Sending messages via the Apple Watch can be accomplished by dictating texts, much like sending a message via Google's Android Wear, or by sending actual recorded audio messages (as you can do on iPhones with iOS 8). Both come in handy, and audio messages help when transcriptions fail. There are no onscreen keyboards, but Apple supplies canned responses you can pick and customize, like "be home soon." Apple's own set of animated emoji are weird and cute: massive smiley faces that melt into hearts, tears, tongues or any in-between combination. (My wife called them "fun but creepy!") Or, you can pick hearts or hand gestures. No omelettes, airplanes, silverware or pets yet, alas: a full emoji assortment seems called for. Apps The iPhone and iPad have, collectively, one of the most amazing app collections ever created. Games, productivity, entertainment; it's fantastic. On the Apple Watch, for now, you'd better curb your expectations: many of the current apps feel like shaved-down lite versions of the larger apps, at best. But for a smartwatch, this is already a very promising assortment of software. Of course, the original iPhone never had apps right out of the gate. The Apple Watch's early apps feel like those apps from the first days of the iPhone: simple menus, basic functions, common interfaces. Most apps aim for bare-bones utility. Apple has suggested that Watch apps aim for no more than 5-10 seconds of interactivity at a time. That shows in the design of many apps. Of the 33 or so I've seen so far, the ones I've liked the most have been Twitter, Evernote, The New York Times, CNN and TripAdvisor. But none of apps feels as elegant as Apple's own onboard software. Twitter on Apple Watch: it works. CNET Currently, all third-party Apple apps work by cross-loading an extension onto the watch while an app also lives on the iPhone, a bit like Google's Android Wear apps. As a result, these apps work more like remote phone apps -- they tend to load slowly and seem to stream data into the watch. No third-party apps work when the watch is disconnected from your iPhone...yet. Down the road, Apple is planning for native third-party apps that will even work offline, but that capability isn't here yet. When will it get here? That's not really known yet. Maps has turn-by-turn navigation. Scott Stein/CNET Built-in Apple apps, on the other hand, work far more smoothly. Maps allows for quick navigation and turn-by-turn directions that work well in tandem with the iPhone while paired to my car's Bluetooth audio: when driving, my wrist tapped and pinged to indicate left and right turns in advance of exit announcements, and quick glances always showed me the next turn, plus how far away it was. When walking, however, GPS on my phone didn't always place me correctly. I liked Apple's fitness apps, the nicely designed stopwatch and timer apps and Passbook, which usefully shows QR codes at a tap and brightens the display for easier reading. Uber is one of the more ambitious apps, showing an available car and map and offering one-button calling, but the iPhone app offers a better view of other cars in the area and ride estimates. The Apple Watch app on your phone I've worn dozens of smartwatches, so the Apple Watch didn't seem surprising on my wrist. But its pairing and setup process is unique: you use your phone camera to aim at the watch and begin pairing within the Apple Watch app that already lives on your iPhone in iOS 8.2. >From there, the watch starts scanning your phone, absorbing settings, contacts and any apps that might already be Apple Watch-ready, installing mini-apps down into the watch much like Google's Android Wear. The process took me about 15 minutes the first time via an iPhone 6 Plus, but I have tons of apps. The Apple Watch app on the phone has a lot of settings. Notification settings. Individual app settings. App layouts. Glances. Sounds and Haptics. Apple Pay. Health. Privacy. It almost feels like setting up a second iPhone. You don't need to tweak these settings much, but it could get awfully confusing for a newcomer. For instance: there's "Prominent Haptic," a way of increasing notification feedback beyond the standard taps. Would you ever know to tap that on your own? (As mentioned above, it helps, and has become my preferred mode.) Fitness The Apple Watch doesn't work any fitness miracles that the rest of the wearable world hasn't already invented, and it doesn't ship with any new magical sensors that change the game. But the Apple-made integrated fitness apps, Activity and Workout, are far and away the best fitness apps on any existing smartwatch that isn't a dedicated "fitness watch" (Samsung Gear, Android Wear, Pebble, and the like). A clever three-ring method of tracking daily activity, which simultaneously measures and rewards daily calorie burn, active exercise, and standing up, feels like a fusion of rewards and metrics seen on the Nike FuelBand, Jawbone Up, Fitbit and others. The triple-reward system is smart because it pats you on the back three times, or offers three different carrots on a stick to pursue. Caloric burn is basically like a daily step counter, and ends up looking at casual on-the-go movement. The standing-up ring (the blue one) rewards you for a minute spent standing every hour, and reminds you to stand if you've been sitting a while. Many fitness bands work this type of feature into their framework. The active exercise (green) ring is harder to achieve. I had to walk briskly, and move faster than my daily walking pace. Most days, I haven't hit the goal. Active exercise can be earned via other exercises, like biking or stair climbing, via the Workouts app. When necessary, it folds in heart rate. A separate Activity app lives on the iPhone, and shows daily progress, charts, and more. On the watch, you just get your daily progress, in ring and hourly chart form. There are little achievement badges you can earn, too, like little medals, similar to what Fitbit, Nike and some others offer. There aren't any socially competitive elements in Apple's Activity app; instead, it's a solitary experience. Heart rate is measured during workouts, and every few minutes otherwise. There's a heart rate monitor on the Apple Watch (on the rear of the device, facing your skin), using what looks like a similar type of LED-based optical technology that other bands and watches use, but larger. Is it significantly different? Apple's pings heart rate every 10 minutes or so, and also tracks during active workouts using the Workouts app. It doesn't track heart rate nonstop 24 hours a day like the Microsoft Band, the Basis Peak and the Fitbit Charge HR. I found the heart rate varied so far -- compared with the Fitbit Charge HR, results fluctuated greatly between the two. I haven't done a ton of dedicated exercise comparisons yet because I was a bit under the weather during testing, but it bears noting that the Apple Watch allows you to pair a Bluetooth heart rate monitor accessory, like a chest strap. For more accurate heart rate readings? Well, perhaps. Stay tuned for more formal comparisons between heart rate tech on the Apple Watch versus a chest strap or other fitness bands. I glanced at my heart rate every once in a while, and even though Apple's watch doesn't continually track heart rate, it lets you know the last heart-rate measurement, which was usually done just minutes ago...which amounts to nearly the same thing for casual resting heart rate purposes. The Apple Watch uses heart rate data to track calorie estimates in the Workout app. That app's pretty bare-bones from an interface perspective: pick your activity, your target (distance, calorie goal, time, or open-ended) and hit Start. It uses the phone's GPS for distance tracking, and according to Apple, that GPS-based distance tracking calibrates pedometer accuracy and fitness tracking on the device over time. I found its step count a little more generous than that of the Fitbit Charge HR, but step counting is not a big measurement on the Apple Watch's Activity app; calorie-burning is. The data -- including heart rate pings -- all go into Apple's Health app, which for now seems like how the Activity and Workout apps interact with other third-party fitness apps. On the watch, nothing else ties in yet. You can always try other third-party fitness apps. There are a few so far, including Six Pack (which plays back workout instructions) or Lifesum (which lets you track food intake, exercise and water). There are a lot more on the horizon, include Nike+, Strava, Runkeeper and more. Apple Watch stands to be the most well-connected fitness smartwatch simply based on the App Store's reputation. Over time, that could make the Apple Watch a top product in the fitness market. Still, you need your phone with you to engage in GPS tracking: that could be a deal killer for serious runners who can buy watches and bands with GPS built in. But the biggest killer fitness app for the Apple Watch could be music playback. Music playback: works like a remote, or plays stored playlists. The return of the iPod: Music playback Like Android Wear watches or the Samsung Gear watches, Apple Watch can store music: up to 2GB in the form of synced playlists. It's an iPod, after all -- sort of. The watch can also act as a music remote for your phone's stored music, but syncing a playlist via the iPhone's Apple Watch app pulls that music onto the watch fairly easily. You don't need iTunes or a Mac, and while it would be nice to also drag albums, playlists are easy to create on the fly. (So far, music storage and playback only works within iTunes, not with third-party apps like Spotify.) You do, however, need to pair a set of Bluetooth headphones to enjoy this music: there's no headphone jack. You could also set up Bluetooth speakers, or even use AirPlay. When I played music, I found some occasional hiccups that interrupted playback. Music quality sounded fine, except for when it didn't. There was occasional music interruption: pops and hiccups, like the Bluetooth connection wasn't perfect. It happened enough times that I found myself wanting to go back to my iPhone, which was in my pocket. (To be clear, every Bluetooth headphone and speaker we've used occasionally hiccups regardless of its source, but it seemed to happen more often in my first few days with the Apple Watch than I'd prefer.) I tried using several headphones to play back a music playlist of about 100 songs that I synced at night. (Apple Watch requires you to plug in the charger while syncing playlists.) You can store more than one credit card on the Apple Watch. Apple Pay Yes, you can pay for things using Apple Pay on the Apple Watch, but it works differently than on the iPhone. You set your card up separately, then double-click on the side button to bring up your virtual card. Apple Pay works whenever the watch is on your wrist, even when the iPhone's not around. It's fun to pay for things with it, but I don't know how often I'll be away from my iPhone with just a smartwatch on, and Apple Pay still isn't accepted in enough places to be a universal method of payment. But its ease of use, and ability to open doors at hotels as well via NFC -- near-field communication, the technology that makes Apple Pay work -- gives it a lot of future potential. Complications As you can see, this is a lot of stuff. Did I have fun using the watch? Yes, mostly, but there are so many features that I felt a little lost at times. There are so many ways to interact: swiping, touching, pressing harder into the display, a button and a clickable digital crown-wheel. Plus, there's Siri. Do I swipe, or click, or force touch or speak? Sometimes I didn't know where an app menu was. Or, I'd find getting back to an app I just had open would require an annoying series of crown clicks, swiping through apps, then opening the app again. I also lost notifications a few times, before I realized that the watch won't show things if the iPhone display is on. Then I kept losing notifications, and unpaired the watch, which basically means you're deleting all information and starting over. The Apple Watch has so many ways to do things and so many places to go that I wonder if it's gotten too crowded and confusing. Even though Apple wants you to interact with the Apple Watch for 5 to 10 seconds at a time, I sometimes found myself having to take longer than that just to find and open apps. The nested interfaces can get complicated. The settings are complicated. Even trying on and picking a watch by appointment is complicated. Was this by design? The extra bits on Apple's watch faces are called "complications," after an old watch industry term. My grandfather and great uncle were watchmakers, and my mom explained to me how older mechanical watches were often full of these complications: extras and hidden features that showed the quality of the watch. Maybe the Apple Watch is proudly complicated. All I know is, if I'm having difficulty figuring some things out, how would my mom feel? And all the while, of course, always keeping an eye on battery life. Charging happens via a proprietary magnetic cable. Battery life How good -- or bad -- is the Apple Watch's battery life? Apple rates the battery on the 38mm model at 18 hours, using a mixed-use test devised by the company to suggest an average day's behavior. I used the 42mm model for a week -- which Apple says should get a bit more battery life than its smaller sibling -- and no matter what I did the watch never lasted more than a day. I had to charge every night. Some people might find a daily watch recharge perfectly acceptable, since we already charge our phones every day. I don't: having one more gadget to plug in gets annoying fast, and I've worn watches that have made it to two more days. It's a nice feeling. What did I do to drain the battery? I woke up around 7 a.m. on average. The watch didn't make it past 11 p.m., generally. During the day I sometimes streamed music or just let the watch send notifications. I browsed apps and features somewhat regularly. Sometimes I'd ignore the watch for a while. I kept the screen brightness at either the lowest or second-lowest levels (there are three tiers of brightness). I didn't deactivate heart rate tracking. I drove from northern New Jersey to Long Island and used map guidance, 3 hours each way. The battery dipped from around 80 percent to 45 percent during those sessions. I hit 50 percent or lower in battery capacity by around 2-3 p.m. pretty regularly. Apple does say that heavier use can lower battery life, and maybe over time I'll use the Apple Watch less and have it last longer. But this is the lowest battery life on any recent smartwatch I've seen, worse than Android Wear watches or the Samsung Gears which lasted more toward two days. Stay tuned for more testing and impressions over the next couple of weeks, but this type of battery life is the biggest deal killer of the watch. You have to charge it each night. That means if I wanted to use it as a clock at night, I'd have to lean over to my bedside table and tap on it. I couldn't use it to ping a silent alarm to wake up, or use it for sleep tracking. Or even to get subtle notifications: some people like on-call doctors or emergency workers who might want the Apple Watch as an around-the-clock pager should keep that in mind. If you're streaming music, the Apple Watch is supposed to last for 6.5 hours or so. For continuous workouts, again, 6.5 hours. In the coming days, I'll be running full music playback tests to confirm those numbers, but again, less than a full day: that's the important metric. It's enough for a good session, but maybe not enough for an all-day hike while playing your favorite albums. A "power reserve" mode turns off all functions except the time and date in case you're out and nearly out of batteries and just need a basic watch. That's all it does: and when you exit this mode, the whole watch restarts. I wish there were more in-between modes, or ways to try to get super-minimal interaction while heading toward at least two days of battery life. That didn't happen this time. The Apple Watch charges with a proprietary cable that comes in the box -- a magnetic disc that pops onto the back of the watch easily and uses inductive charging, much like the Moto 360 and many smartphones. This tech isn't compatible, however: I tried using the Moto 360 charge dock and a few Qi contactless charge accessories and couldn't get them to work. Apple's charger includes a very long cable, but remembering to bring another dongle to work on when traveling is a hassle. Charging also happens more slowly than Lightning-based charging on an iPhone. An hour of charging only charged the watch about a third of the way. You'll need a good several hours for a complete recharge. Which one to buy? The Apple Watch comes in three basic price tiers: Apple Watch Sport starting at $349, Apple Watch starting at $549 and Apple Watch Edition starting at $10,000. All the watches have the same internal specs and functions, but the material designs are different. Sport is aluminum with strengthened Ion-X glass; Apple Watch is stainless steel with sapphire and a ceramic back; and Edition is 18-karat gold. There are different sizes, different finishes, and many different bands: Apple's selling 38 different versions, and you can always swap other bands, too. Depending on which band you pick, you'll end up paying quite a bit. The Apple Watch with its costly steel-link band costs a ridiculous $1,000, over triple the most expensive Android Wear watch. Even with the basic Apple-made fluoroelastomer (synthetic rubber) band, the steel watch is one of the priciest smartwatches on the market. Each Apple watch has a different weight based on its materials: the Sport model weighs the least. The 42mm vs 38mm size difference refers to the height of the watch. The "38mm" watch is 33.3 mm wide, the "42mm" one 35.9mm. They have the same thickness. The step-up steel and gold models have potentially more damage-resistant sapphire crystals, but it's hard to judge right now whether the Ion-X strengthened glass on the Sport model will perform. I'm not even going to engage the Edition in this discussion: that gold watch is not for you. Pick the entry-level aluminum or the stainless-steel version, and don't spend up for a super-expensive band unless you have money to burn. I'd probably buy the most affordable model I could. Apple's bands are well crafted, but they're priced steeply. I'd wait and see what third-party bands pop up that could cost far less: those will help transform a Sport watch into something that looks more high-end. The future vs. the present You don't need an Apple Watch. In many ways, it's a toy: an amazing little do-it-all, a clever invention, a possibly time-saving companion, a wrist-worn assistant. It's also mostly a phone accessory for now. In the months and years to come, that may change: with Apple's assortment of iPads, Macs, Apple TV and who knows what else to come, the watch could end up being a remote and accessory to many things. Maybe it'll be the key to unlock a world of smart appliances, cars, and connected places. In that type of world, a smartwatch could end up feeling utterly essential. But that day isn't here yet. Apple's aggressive and growing collection of apps could take us there sooner than later, however. This review will be updated over time, as I keep living with the watch. As it gets better, I'll report on it. But the Apple Watch will need better battery life, too. Making it through a day isn't enough: it needs to last through the night, and another day, and another. The Pebble became my favorite smartwatch because its multiday battery made it feel more like a regular watch. The Apple Watch's battery life was sacrificed to achieve its superior software, features, and functions. We're still two weeks away from Day One of the Apple Watch. It's already got tremendous potential, lots of software, and beautiful design. I like wearing the Apple Watch, and it might be my favorite smartwatch...if its battery life lasted beyond one day. That makes me want to return to the Pebble again, or wait and see what Pebble Time, a more bare-bones but much more affordable watch, feels like. If you're curious where Apple is going next and have $350-$400 to spend, the entry-level Apple Watch might be fun to explore. Everyone else, I'd wait and see how the apps shape up, how the kinks get worked out, whether any software updates help with battery life. There's a lot more time to decide. Original Article: http://www.cnet.com/products/apple-watch/?tag=nl.e404&s_cid=e404&ttag=e404&f tag=CAD1acfa04 -- The following information is important for all members of the viphone list. All new members to the this list are moderated by default. 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