Photograph: Misfit
Best for Traditionalists
Misfit Command
Sometimes, you don’t want a digital screen on your wrist. If you much prefer the traditional stylings of analog watches (or maybe you just want to expand your smartwatch collection), I’d recommend the Misfit Command. It comes in 44- or 45-mm case sizes in a myriad of colors and straps, and in no way does it look like a smartwatch. It tracks the usual steps, calories, and distance. Oh, and if you wear it to bed, it will measure sleep duration. It’s quite rudimentary; because there’s no screen, you can only view your activity through the Android or iOS app.
The rest of the features require a bit of memorization. You can get alerts for smartphone notifications (I recommend selecting only a handful of apps, or else your wrist will be buzzing constantly), and you can set these apps to the hours on the dial. For example, I set 1 o’clock to Facebook Messenger, so whenever I got a message on the app, the hands would move to 1 and the watch would vibrate. Once I remembered which apps I set to which number, seeing the clock hands move has been enough to make me decide whether I want to pull my phone out.
You can also assign the two buttons on the watch a particular job, from showing you the time in another city to my favorite—controlling music playback on my phone. Best of all, the watch can survive in a pool, and it doesn’t require any charging! It uses a CR2430 lithium battery, which lasts a year. You can easily buy a spare battery online and replace it yourself.
