I started using Apple Watch again after two years and can’t believe I ever stopped using it

My technical judgment side never kept me completely detached from smartwatches, but I haven’t had one strapped to my wrist full-time in over two years. My last full-time smartwatch was a Galaxy Watch 4 Classic. It worked great, and I was quite a fan of the clicky, rotating bezel, but once I threw it away I didn’t look back – until recently.

I paired an Apple Watch with my primary iPhone out of sheer curiosity and not because I was committed to using a smartwatch full-time again. But now the situation is such that I regret ever giving up smartwatches.

My previous smartwatch became too much to handle every day. After a while, I found it frustrating that the watch would buzz every waking moment – plus, both the watch and the phone would light up at the same time, showing the same information, forcing me to ignore everything on both devices.

Suddenly I had not one but two devices to charge. When traveling, I had to remember to bring an extra cable because smartwatches don’t have a universally accepted charging standard like USB Type-C on phones. And then there was all the data and health statistics that were constantly thrown at your face. I had just crossed the data fatigue line when I gave up on smartwatches at the time.

Two years is not short. It gave me enough breathing space to reconsider smartwatches and even rekindle my relationship with them. Now that my mind was clear, I decided to just play with it again, but without any obligation. Since I use an iPhone these days, it had to be an Apple Watch – that’s kind of a rule, I heard.

Why Apple Watch

Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel watches have come a long way since the early days. I’m honestly a fan of what Google has done with Gemini on smartwatches. That said, I still think the Apple Watch offers a more polished experience as a smartwatch, even if it may not match the flexibility of Wear OS.

For example, I love the Apple Watch rings that encourage you to stay active all day long. They’re encouraging enough to get you over the line without acting like a pushy trainer – the kind that bothers you so much you want to take the watch off and throw it away. And I also find it extremely cute when the Apple Watch tells me to leave a loud environment while I’m watching an action-packed sequence in a movie theater.

I only had vague memories of what it was like to wear a smartwatch full-time, so I basically started over. I went in with zero expectations and came away genuinely impressed.

My biggest complaint with my phone (but mostly with myself) is how often I pick it up to check a notification and then spend minutes, sometimes hours, scrolling through Instagram Reels before leaving that zone. The smartwatch helped mitigate this from the first step of that loop.

Since notifications now appear on my wrist, I only pick up the phone when something really needs my attention and needs a bigger screen, like replying to an important Slack message. These interruptions no longer disrupt my workflow like they used to. It has made me noticeably more productive.

Within this first week, I had also gotten into the habit of deliberately “forgetting” my phone and leaving it in my room while I sat in the living room with my family or during meals. It’s so liberating not having to carry my phone everywhere. That’s when I realized the value of mobile smartwatches.

My main reason for wearing a smartwatch is not to track my health, but the notifications. Health and fitness come second, although they are still important. What I use the Apple Watch for most is sleep tracking, especially considering how messed up my sleep schedule often is.

I can sleep and wake up without regard to the time, knowing that the watch will track everything accurately without my intervention. It records my wake times much more accurately than I ever could manually. I’ve found Apple Watch’s sleep tracking to be more consistent and accurate than what I’ve experienced on other devices.

Even though I bought an Apple Watch for the reasons above (and because I use an iPhone as my primary device), I’m not here to convince you to buy an Apple Watch. I’m here to make a case for smartwatches in general.

Just as smartphones have matured over the past five years, smartwatches have quietly matured. You may not see flashy upgrades year after year, but when you return full-time after so long, the progress becomes apparent. I now rely on my smartwatch for my overall well-being, which for me also means I don’t answer my phone as often as I used to. And you can achieve that with almost any good smartwatch nowadays.

Battery life, once the biggest drawback, is no longer a dealbreaker. While I still love multi-day battery life, I’m fine with charging a smartwatch daily or every other day given the value I get out of it.

And that’s the whole point of my return to smartwatches. The Apple Watch adds to my life instead of taking away from it. Yes, it’s another device I’m carrying, but it also replaces an existing device – all without getting in my way.