I am always late to the party when it comes to expensive technology. The reason is: I am waiting for the product to be mature and idiot-proof. My Macs were 4+ years old when I bought them from ebay. The only devices I bought new were iOS devices such as the iPhone X, the iPad Pro 9.7 from 2016 and my latest addition the iPad Pro 12.9 from 2018.
When I saw the Apple keynote in September introducing the Apple Watch Series 5 I also thought about getting this gadget. Today I got it. This gadget was the last missing link in the iOS cosmos though watchOS is a different OS of course. But it's strong tie to iOS (the iPhone) makes it another part of the iOS family for me.
I didn't wear a wrist watch for about 22 years now. Sometimes I missed it but ever since I used my phone to lookup the time. Today I started to wear a watch again.
The device
There is nothing you can complain about this device. It's compact, it's smart, it's fast. but it's also quite heavy and bulky especially when you are not used to wear a watch. It feels very smooth and comfortable though. With me not used to wear it, it only took a few hours to adopt. I have the Nike aluminum in black with a black wrist band. It came with LTE and GPS (which is standard with S5). I do not use LTE right now, but maybe later with an eSim. The memory is 32GB and it is more than appropriate for all your apps that you are used from our phone. I only use a small subset of them of course: Evernote, Sygic, Home. I didn't use Spotify or any other multimedia app yet. I think I will use the podcast app, too.
Quality
The unboxing experience is one of it's kind. All Apple products are very well packed but the Apple Watch tops them all. The wrist comes in a separate package and the watch itself is covered in a smooth cloth to protect it. Overall a very good packaging and a great experience. The watch itself with it's aluminum case is well crafted, the glass on both sides looks very sturdy. The wrist band is very smooth but I think is will be the weakest part of it all. If the material is like the silikone cases for iPhones then it will break at a certain age. I am going to buy a metal band, such a classic "male" band with a clip-lock. I already have a cheap metal band with a magnetic clip - which feels ok but not as worthy as the watch itself. I won't buy an original Apple band though - they are way too expensive.
Software
The integration to Apple's ecosystem is fantastic. It was easy to setup, to pair and to maintain during the past few hours. The main setup tasks are done via the iOS app for the watch. You can also do some tweaks on the watch itself, but it's much harder to do so due to the screen resolution and handling with your finger tip. The collection of watch faces is great. Currently I use only 2 faces with different complications but the software challenges you to play around with it for several hours. This is pure fun!
Regarding the battery life I am not able to make a final verdict. I use the "always on" display now to test the lifetime. Time will tell if this will drain the battery a lot.
Resume
Overall this is a great addon to my collection of Apple gadgets and I am looking forward to use it even more extensively (aka fitness).