The wearing and ownership of smartwatches, has been on the increase over the past few years. But will they ever grow in popularity to replace traditional analogue watches outright? We can only make a guess by taking a look at the pros and cons they offer.
Smartwatches today allow you to do a number of interesting and useful things besides just telling the time, which are not possible on traditional watches.
One of the biggest pros of smartwatches is having the ability to use Apps as a feature, and also being able to link it to a smartphone. Bearing this in mind, it is easy to see a near unlimited amount of things you can do now, and will be able to do in the upcoming years.
Pros of Smartwatches
At the moment you can use Apps on a smartwatch, with the combination of a smartphone to do some of the following:
1. Send SMS messages
2. Make Recordings
3. Track your fitness activities, adding even more features when a smartwatch has in-built GPS
4. Receive notifications and make voice calls
5. Listen to your favourite music tracks
As you can see from the examples above, smartwatches can be very useful on a day-to-day basis; they also compliment a smartphone nicely.
They are however cons to wearing a smartwatch that you will not encounter on a traditional analogue watch, and those that you do, will be to a lesser extent.
One of the major cons of a smartwatch has to do with its battery life. The battery life on a smartwatch will only last a day or two before requiring a recharge, while on a traditional watch it is not uncommon for the battery to last for years at a time.
Smartwatches tend to have model updates quite often, sometimes once a year. While some of these model updates are sometimes only minor new features. At other times they are major improvements, which may require you to purchase the newer model depending on your needs. Traditional watches do have new model versions, but these are mostly always cosmetic features.
It can be argued that smartwatches are larger and sometimes unappealing to the eyes, when compared to a traditional analogue watch (excluding some of the more upmarket analogue watches which can be very large). Smartwatches tend to be larger, so to allow functionality e.g. touch screen.
Again, some will argue that a traditional analogue watch looks just that little bit more sophisticated, and is far better for those special occasions.
So let’s break down the pros and cons of each watch below:
Smartwatch Pros
• They provide great compatibility with smartphones
• They can be used to do a number of things, such as making phone calls and receiving text messages, and tracking fitness activities
Smartwatch Cons
• They suffer from poor battery life when compared to traditional watches, one or two days at most before requiring a recharge
• They tend to be on the large side
• Newer models are released quite frequently
Traditional Analogue Watch Pros
• They have a great battery life lasting years at a time
• Newer versions will not make the older ones obsolete
• Looks more sophisticated on special occasions
Traditional Analogue Watch Cons
• Not many features on offer apart from telling the time and maybe a stop watch
So there we have it, the pros and cons of both a digital smartwatch and a traditional analogue watch. It is clear that both have their strong and weak points, and at the end of the day, it all comes down to the needs of the wearer.
Smartwatches provide many great features and will continue to do so in the coming years. But will they replace traditional watches outright? They probably will not.
The best bet is to own both, then you have the choice of being able to wear one for a particular situation, such as work, or a night on the town, and the other for that special occasion such as a wedding or dinner party.