Comment by creinhardt
7 days ago
I wish someone would take all the Fitness sensors of the Apple Watch, and put it in something with a simple e-ink display like these Pebble devices. I don’t care about apps, I just want a thing that measures my heart rate, notifies me if I get a call or text, has more than a couple days of battery life, and that’s it.
> I don’t care about apps, I just want a thing that measures my heart rate, notifies me if I get a call or text, has more than a couple days of battery life, and that’s it.
https://repebble.com/watch says the Pebble Time 2 has
> Heart rate, step and sleep tracking
Isn't that what you want?
Basically! Is heart rate recorded to a Pebble specific app, or can it be synced with things like Apple Health?
I guess the one other feature I like of the Apple Watch is the rings/daily fitness goals functionality. I'll have to look into the Pebble more to see if that's possible. I also like the background monitoring features the Watch has (hypertension, etc.), but I'm assuming that's a little too much for the Pebble.
I believe you can see that stuff on the Pebble app but you can't sync with Apple health. See this previous pebble blog post: https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-...
4 replies →
Garmin watches might fit your requirements.
I've been a Garmin user for 14 years and I wish someone would take the GPS, heart rate, and IMU sensors out of my Fenix and put it in an open-source product.
But GPS is really hard to get right, especially if you want weeks of battery life.
Garmin have been a decent company (in the ethical/moral sense) to be a customer of for many years, but I think they're slowly losing that reputation. Yes, my 2018 hardware still does everything it did in 2018, no, I don't pay for or currently have a need for Connect+, but they're running out of hardware optimization opportunities to push people to new devices, and appear to be seeking alternative ways to maintain growth.
Watches are now roughly in the same spot as phones - form factory is largely complete and each new version is a small iteration over previous generation, with changes that most people don’t care about.
That being said - feature I LOVE added recently-ish that made really happy I’ve upgraded my many years old garmin was a flashlight (proper one, not screen brightness). It seemed like a gimmick but it’s now one of most used features on my watch - walking dog at night, looking for kids toys under the bed, fixing things around the house, looking for things in the bag, etc.
3 replies →
My pebble 2 has a heart rate sensor, and the battery still lasts for a week after almost a decade of daily use.
If battery life really is high up your list, look up Amazfit. The Bip 6 can last up to a month as a dumb watch health tracker. It's got some decent watchfaces too. Another Amazfit product that's popular is their Helio Strap, essentially a Whoop band rip off that does not require a monthly subscription but works just as well.
My Garmin Instinct 2 does all of the above. I charge it every 2 or 3 weeks. Sounds like that would meet your needs.
I’ve got the solar version. It runs a long time between charges. Maybe I haven’t done enough tracked exercise recently
The only comparable to Apple Watch Sensor suite is Huawei watch, with 10-15 day battery life, but due to obvious geopolitics, that's not viable for most people, i.e. even EKG is region locked (unless hoop jumping).
Exactly, why does nobody think about this!
Withings scanwatch 2?
I have an older generation Withings scale that is so bad that I just would never buy another thing from them.
Eats batteries, loses WiFi, changes scale settings on its own every few days… no way I would trust them with a watch if they couldn’t handle a scale.