Apple Watch Series 5 — Worth the Purchase?
Smart watches have been around for a while as people wanted to integrate their phones with their watches. The first apple watch was released in April of 2015 and revolutionized watches. Fast forward to September of 2019, the Apple Watch Series 5 was released and had major upgrades from the preview series. This watch was consisted of a long-lasting battery, software improvements, a built-in compass, and a new shopping feature called Apple Watch Studio. The Apple Watch Series 5 is a form of ubiquitous computing as there is embedded computational power in these devices which make it possible to live a day-to-day life with technology.
Features
Some very popular features in the apple watch were the ability to look at the steps taken, the calories burned, your current heart rate, display of text/call notifications, and the ability to pick up phone calls and reply to text messages. Some other key features include GPS, Compass, Water Resistance up to 50 meters, an electrical heart sensor, international emergency calling, light sensor, speaker microphone, apple pay, and a microphone. The chip is a S5 with a 64-bit-dual-core processor and is able to connect to LTE if one were to purchase the GPS /Cellular model. This apple watch came in silver, space gray, gold, black, and titanium.
This apple watch was particularly interesting as it dominated the smartwatch industry during its time. The goal in this post is to be able to understand what people use this specific apple watch for in the year 2022. I will be interviewing 3 people and try to figure out if it is truly worth it to get an Apple Watch Series 5.
Research
To try and reach a conclusion, I conducted a small scale research with 3 people, Person A, B, and C. Person A is a 49-year-old male adult who travels to NYC daily for work. Person B is a 19-year-old male college student who commutes to college and works out daily. Person C is a 22-year-old female college student who goes for daily runs and is a fitness enthusiast.
Person A was asked what the main function of their apple watch is and why they use it. Person A responded by saying they mainly just use it to look at text notifications and tell the time. While it is very useful to check texts from the watch, having that as the main use for the apple watch does not seem worth it. I proceeded to ask if there were any functionalities that weren’t used often within the watch. He responded by saying he barely notices the other functionalities such as music, accessing contacts, texting/calling from his watch, and looking at the health section. With person A, it looks like none of the functionalities are being used except the notifications.
Person B was asked what they do not like about the apple watch. He responded by saying it is hard to listen to Spotify music as you always need your phone with you, the battery life isn’t as good as he has to charge it almost every night. He does mention that he likes how it tracks your steps and calories burned and thinks it is cool to look at. Person B also does not text or pick up calls from his apple watch.
Person C tracks her calorie intake and expenditure and loves the calories burned feature. She also likes how the apple watch can access her apple music and can listen to music via her watch. Person C mentioned she loves how she can see her heartbeat as she can figure out at what point she is in her fat burning phase throughout the runs. Person C does not seem to use the feature to text or call through her apple watch and mentioned the fact that she has to charge it every night which can be tedious.
Results
In conclusion, the Apple Watch Series 5 seems to be useful only if you have apple music, an iPhone and a reason to use the fitness tracker. People who aren’t into fitness would not have a great use for this watch as most features are just hard to use and can be overwhelming. As mentioned earlier, Person A had no interest in using the Apple Watch for its functionalities, but rather just used it as a watch that notifies when someone texts them. While the Apple Watch does have many features that help ease your day-to-day life, some people are not fond of using it and just like the idea of having an Apple Watch. In reality, only a few of these features are actually being used out of the many and there are many cheaper alternatives if one were to be interested in using one of these features.
Personal Thoughts
With the Apple Watch, I think you can get the same features for a cheaper price. For example, if one were only interested in calorie expenditure and health related reasons, such as Person C, I would be buying a FitBit. It doesn’t make sense to buy such an expensive watch but only use a singular feature on it when there are cheaper alternatives. All in all, through the research-study conducted, it seems that the Apple Watch 5 is not worth the purchase.
