USED & ABUSED

USED BY Simon Ingram, technophobe and editor USED FOR 1 year

I don’t like fiddly technological things, mainly because 1) I’m not clever enough and 2) I prefer the analogue aesthetic. I’ve had techy watches before and usually end up defaulting to a battered thing that actually ticks. But I like this watch a lot, and it now stays on my wrist for all of my hill time and a lot of the rest. I like it because it’s light and it doesn’t look like a

dinner plate on my arm. It’s the Wrist HR model which means it measures my pulse rate and comes loaded with exercise modes, biometrics, all that jazz – none of which I use. What I do use (a lot) is the altimeter, the GPS route tracking, the stopwatch and surprisingly, the step counter – which I find oddly compulsive. The battery lasts days (sometimes weeks) and recharges via USB. I like that you can customise the touchscreen face, and it even connects into my phone, vibrates and flashes up text messages (though only for about three seconds – grrrr!). But mostly I like how intuitive it is to use. Otherwise I would have given up.