I really liked this comparison by Michael D. Shear for the New York Times and I think it is spot on.
My wife has an Apple Watch. I’d call her a “light user” of the Watch. She wears it every day but mainly uses it for glancing at text messages. There are a myriad of other uses but, just like the original iPhone, they are a bit too slow to be fully useful yet. You can use them but you don’t very often because they are too slow.
I remember the “I can’t believe I can do this even though it is slow” feeling of the latter half of 2007 with the original iPhone. When I test my wife’s Watch that is exactly how it feels. I’m amazed that I can check Dark Sky from my wrist but I’d never choose to use it on my Watch over my phone. It is way too slow. Even while kayaking I think I’d still pull out my phone. It is that slow.
Shear’s advice is the same as my own and the same advice I’ve been giving myself when I ask whether or not I should buy myself an Apple Watch:
I’m tempted to say “no” for most people. Most of what it does, your phone already does better. And the Apple Watch, even with recent sales, is pricier than competing smartwatches that do similar things. By that logic, you should wait until next year, when Apple’s relentless drive to innovate will have improved the watch’s hardware and software. Or wait until 2019, when the fifth generation of the device has unimagined new features.
I will buy an Apple Watch when they are at least 5x faster than they are now (probably two iterations) and a bit slimmer.