Back at the start of March I added an Apple Watch into my Apple products collection, as a tool to further push me in terms of my motivation towards fitness. Now I’m not about to turn into a tech reviewing blogger, but with fitness being something many of us have picked up and turned to more during lockdown, and with fitness trackers becoming more and more popular, I thought i’d share with you my thoughts and experience after six months of wearing an Apple Watch.
My experience after six months of wearing an Apple Watch..
With fitness being a positive constant in my life over the last five or so years, it was only natural for me to want to keep some sort of record of my daily fitness levels and to help track any fitness goals that I may have. This is where a fitness tracking tool comes into play. Now I’ve personally used both a Fitbit Charge 2 and an Apple Watch Series 5 and both offer different things and both have different pro’s and con’s. So within this post I’m not going to be doing a comparison as such, but personally from the experiences I have had, I prefer the Apple watch for my daily fitness tracking.
Why an Apple Watch?
For a while i’d be toying with the idea of investing in an Apple Watch after many friends and family all raving about how much they loved having an Apple Watch to keep accountability and to motivate them. So when an opportunity came up for me to get an Apple Watch on finance, I bit the bullet and went for it.
Now I’m quite lucky in the sense that I actually have my Apple Watch on finance through my private healthcare provider Vitality Health, where I have the opportunity to decrease my monthly payment amount by getting up and getting moving, which is an amazing motivator! Sounds potentially unheard of, but essentially through the steps or exercise that I do, I earn points and depending on how many points I earn each month, it then deducts money from my monthly payments and so far I have saved a whopping £45. Might be something to look into, or to suggest to your employer but Vitality have a whole load of benefits worth looking into for sure!
What Model?
Now when it came to picking which watch I wanted I was able to pick between a series 3 or a series 5. Personally from the reviews I’ve read, there isn’t a massive difference in the two in terms of what they do, but the biggest difference is the price. In the end, I opted for an Apple Watch Series 5 GPS (from £399) with the gold case, light pink strap and a 40mm screen (for anyone who wants the specifics) and I just love how it looks! All of my Apple products where possible have been gold, so I just had to stay true to my tastes and go for the gold colour way!
What do I use it for?
Personally for me I use my Apple watch mainly as an exercise tracker to track my daily activity and workouts, but I do use it as a watch also (lol). As mentioned above, the points I earn against in order to decrease my monthly payments are calculated by the amounts of steps I do or the length of exercise I do each day, so being able to keep track of my daily activity easily is great! I love being able to track my workouts, especially my runs as the Apple watch activity app tracks your distance, km splits, heart rate and so much more, meaning I can keep accountability and see how much i’ve progressed from my last run.
Pro’sCon’s
Alarm – Another massive saving grace for me is that, when you set your alarm on your phone and you’re wearing your Apple Watch it will vibrate on your wrist, meaning that it wakes you up. As I am the worst when it comes to getting up in the morning I’ve found it to be super helpful and actually stops me from snoozing/sleeping through any alarms.
Comfortable To Wear – A big thing for me when it comes to watches in general is that they are comfortable to wear and don’t dig into your wrist. The Apple Watch actually comes with two watch straps with one being bigger than the other, so depending on your wrist size you’re not going to struggle with the watch strap potentially being too small. For me I wear the shorter strap and it has been super comfortable to wear, to the point when I can’t even feel it on my wrist, if that makes sense? I also find it super comfortable to wear when i’m asleep as I often wear my watch overnight, and again I don’t find it uncomfortable what so ever.
Pricey – With every Apple gadget the price tag is one thing I know that massively puts people off, and is the main reason why it took me as long as it did to take the plunge to buy one. 100% if my Apple Watch wasn’t on finance with the deal that I have, I doubt i’d have one now.
Fake Tan Strap Marks – Yes this is a slightly moaning con, but for someone who wears fake tan a lot, a massive annoyance for me is the mark the watch strap leaves on my wrist when I wear fake tan. It completely strips the fake tan off my wrist and when I reapply tan to my wrist the tan doesn’t take anymore, so I basically have to wear my watch at all times. Proper first world girl problems right here!
Most Used Apps
Activity App – As i’ve mentioned enough times, I use my Apple Watch mainly for fitness tracking and the built in Activity App is hands down my most used. If you’re not familiar with it, you have three rings of which you should try to close every day. The pink ring is your move ring, where you set a goal of how many calories you want to burn each day through your activity. The green ring is your exercise ring, where you set a goal for how many minutes exercise you want to do each day. Finally the blue ring is your stand ring, where it tracks how many hours of the day you stand for longer than a minute. Within the app it also tracks how many steps you do, the distance you’ve walked from those steps and how many flights of stairs you’ve walked up. You can also view the workouts you’ve completed through the day within this app and when you expand this it breaks your workout down further for you.
Workout App – Secondly to the above app, the Workout App works hand in hand with the activity app and it is this app you use to track your workouts. They have a whole host of workout options for you to choose from, so you can track your workouts as accurately as possible. My most used workouts are: outdoor run, outdoor walk, HIIT and strength training. You can also track workouts such as: yoga, swimming, cycling, hiking and so many more. I’m yet to wear my watch swimming, but I am intrigued to see how it tracks swimming as I am very skeptical about wearing my watch in the shower, let alone getting in a pool wearing it.
Sleep Watch – One thing that I got into a habit of looking at when I used to wear a FitBit was my sleep activity and how many hours sleep I got each night. Now I wouldn’t say this app is THE best for sleep tracking, but it’s the best free app I’ve found this far for sleep tracking. It’s fairly basic in what in reports on, but the main thing I like looking into is how my sleep pattern changes throughout the night from lighter sleep, to deeper sleep and essentially how good of a nights sleep I got.
So those are my thoughts after six months of wearing an Apple Watch and a kind of review for you all. If you do have any further questions that I’ve not covered, then be sure to pop it in the comments section and I can try my best to give an answer based on my experience.
Do you own an Apple Watch? What are your favourite apps?
