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I’ve had the watch a little over a week now. Saturday, I ran into the first relatively major glitch. I got my watch while I was cutting the grass and finished cutting it wearing the watch, but using my iPhone for music. This past Saturday was the first time I cut the grass since I got the watch. I had loaded music onto the watch, I paired my Plantronics Bluetooth headphones to the watch and started cutting the grass without my iPhone for the first time in years.

It worked great right up until it didn’t. The watch and the headphones kept disconnecting. I would power-cycle the headphones and they would reconnect and then I could start the music and it would play for a while and then disconnect. There did not seem to be a consistent time frame. Sometimes I could go 2 or 3 songs without a disconnect, other times, it would disconnect 2 or 3 times per song. After I finished the first part of the front yard, I started using my phone as the music source. I have never had a disconnect with these headphones when listening to my phone.

I do not have another pair of Bluetooth headphones here to test. I have a pair at work and will try those next time I am back at work. But it appears that there is s bluetooth bug that Apple needs to work on.

After working in the yard for 2 days this weekend, wearing the watch the whole time, I can tell you that the bright green strap cleans up nicely. It got pretty dirty when I was digging in the flower beds and spreading mulch. But, running it under the tap and rubbing the dirt off made it look good as new. I am concerned that over time this will start displaying the dirt and it will be harder to clean. Once I get my black strap, this will not be as big of a concern for me.

When I was cutting the grass, I had it track it as an outdoor walk workout. I left it running after I finished cutting while I was moving around the yard a lot. I’m assuming the heart rate monitor was running constantly. After 4 hours of tracked workout, my watch was down to about 35%. That’s the lowest it’s been since the first time I charged it, and it was only 4:30. So I charged it for a while to get through the rest of the day.

The step counts I am getting are easily half the number of steps I got with my Fitbit Charge. The Charge seemed to count arm motions that were not associated with walking as steps. The Apple Watch seems to be able to tell the difference and does not count them.

I’m seeing a lot of articles talking about watch docks and combo watch and phone docks. I can’t figure out what purpose these will serve. Unless you turn off the wrist detection (which disables Apple Pay) the watch will only tell time while charging. No notifications, no access to any apps or data (without entering the pin) so I fail to see why you would want to take the time to fasten your watch to the charger. It’s really easy just to lay the watch on the charging puck before going to bed and then picking it up in the morning. The extra time required to buckle the clasp seems like a huge waste of time.

I had a friend tell me that after reading my first two posts he was glad I stated that I was liking the watch because it was unclear from the tone of the articles whether I liked it. I am loving the watch. The purpose of these articles is not to provide a comprehensive review. There are many places where you can get that information. The purpose is to provide details on some of the things that may not have been covered in standard reviews. So, perhaps they sound a little more negative than I meant them to.

I still say if you have an iPhone, you should seriously consider picking one of these up. This is perhaps the best Gen 1 apple device Apple has ever released.