Gadgetory

okay so this is the Apple watch this is Apple's first attempt at wearable tech and this is everything you need to know about it first of all there are three versions of the Apple watch Apple watch sport Apple watch and Apple watch Edition and the only difference between these three versions is the materials that they're made of and the bands also every watch comes in two sizes a 38 millimeter and the 42 millimeter not that much of a difference in number but most likely a men's size and a woman's size but do note that the 38 is extremely small and a lot of women will actually go with the 42 anyway the Moto 360 for example by comparison is a 46 millimeter diameter so for the record I'm using a 42 millimeter Apple watch with a classic leather band which does mean the watch you're seeing in this video cost $700 that's as much as an iPhone so for 700 bucks you do need to stand out from the crowd and be noticeably better than the rest of the smart watches out there but does it do that okay well first of all there are a bunch of different band options since the band on the Apple watch one of its best features is that it's easily interchangeable and you can buy any of Apple's pretty expensive bands or there are some third party bands that are starting to pop up to but smartwatches in general are supposed to show you notifications from your phone means you have to take your phone out your pocket less and then anything extra is a bonus so here's how the Apple watch works you have the touchscreen on the front and then two physical buttons on the side one is a knob called digital crown that also presses in as a button and then the other one is a much more tactile button but the digital crown is a bit softer kind of requires you to squeeze the whole watch to press it neither of them are customizable so you can't map them to functions you use more and then on the screen you have your watch face and if you press the digital crown button you get brought to all your watch apps and these I'll get to in a second from the watch face just like on the iPhone you swipe down to view all of your iPhones notifications where you can clear one at a time or just clear them all which is actually really nice and then there's this swipe up from the bottom into what's called glances and glances are these little cards with glanceable information kind of like Google now cards and they come from the apps that you have installed on your watch so they can give you all kinds of info with a single swipe also gives you music controls for iTunes or Spotify or whatever you use and even the shortcut to toggle airplane mode or pin your iPhone to find it if you've lost it alright so your apps where do they come from so the apps on your watch are not standalone apps they're basically apps on your iPhone with a watch counterpart so you have to start to see these apps in the App Store that say they have an Apple watch app and that's how you'll know you're getting into one and you'll have to activate it on your iPhone to get it to appear on the watch and if it has a glances card you can activate that too and basically all of your organization is done from the Apple watch app on the iPhone so organization of that weird bubbly cluster of icons on the watch is done from your phone and the changes are updated pretty much immediately not sure if this is the best looking interface for launching apps but hey it works now actually using the Apple watch apps is okay the experience you get really depends on the functionality built into the watch app but for the most part they work kind of well they're just slow if you're going to open up an app on your watch to do something you're probably doing it because it's faster than pulling out your phone but in a lot of cases Apple watch apps are so slow that you might as well just take out your phone and do the same action at the same speed on a bigger screen there are some good Apple watch apps a lot of the built-in ones are actually the best and they also tend to make more use of the digital crown but for the most part I would describe the app experience as smooth but not fast you really have to want to use the watch to use those apps but it's really best at is notifications so the Apple watch is really good at just quietly tapping me on the wrist and alerting me of a new notification on my iPhone without me having to take my phone out of my pocket that's really nice I end up using my phone less I save a little bit of battery and a little bit of time by dismissing stuff I don't want to respond to without ever touching my phone and that's what smartwatches should be good at the haptic engine in the watch the vibration motor is actually really good too it's much cleaner and better feeling it's almost like a tap on the wrists much better feeling than any other SmartWatch I've used and it uses that subtle tap vibration for not only notifications but reminders and stuff so like the activity tracker which reminds me to stand up every once in a while to reach the fitness goals that was cool unless it was telling me to stand up in class and also it's used for force touch so the Apple watch's display is pressure-sensitive and as the name implies you can touch with a little extra force to open some more options like clearing all notifications or changing watch faces and speaking of watch faces here's a real bummer no third party watch faces at all no downloading any other cool watch faces from the app store and that sucks I mean that's like half the fun of the Android wear smartwatches out there but hey there's your classic Apple lockdown mentality maybe Apple watch version 2 will get third party watch faces but for now if you like one of the default ones and you pick that or you just grab the one you dislike the least my favorite is the modular one it kind of sets up like a regular watch where you use a digital crown like a dial on the side to get the information exactly where you want it and then it constantly gives you that info it's pretty clean not bad but I would have loved to have way more watch face options in the app store seriously so with all this if you're like me you're still having a hard time justifying the price of this iPhone accessory so let me tell you some other things it does really well first of all it has a great display it's an LCD display at 290 pixels per inch so it's really bright and really sharp and yet the blacks get surprisingly black so even though it's not an oled display it's awesome both indoors and outdoors and the watch itself is pretty comfortable actually very comfortable even though it's kind of thick it's one of the most comfortable smartwatches I've worn which is like a decent amount it's also got average battery life I'd say pretty good it's almost always around a day and a half so it's never lasted a full two days comfortably but it's never dead after one day and it has the best gyroscope I've used in any SmartWatch it's hands-down the best at knowing when I'm looking at it and turning on and then knowing when I'm not looking at it and turning the screen off so even if you don't use all the features like taking phone calls with the speakerphone or messaging with the weird gloved emojis or sending heartbeats even if you never use any of that it's still pretty good at patience which is sort of the core of what it's supposed to do but in terms of whether or not you should buy one well just like a battery case for your iPhone or a camera lens it's an accessory for your iPhone and it should be treated as exactly that at the end of the day the base price it doesn't really stick out from any other smartwatches in any crazy way we might just have to wait till version 2 for that thanks for watching now talk to you guys in the next one peace