We asked, you told us: Most don't see the benefit of a smartwatch or fitness tracker

Several years ago, it looked like wearables might be the next big thing in the technology world. As you can probably assume, they haven’t taken off in the way many hoped they would.

Despite this, over the last several years, we’ve seen a growing number of companies try their hand at making smartwatches, fitness trackers and other wearables. So we decided to ask you, do you own and use a smart wearable? Here is what you had to say.

Do you own a smartwatch, fitness tracker, or other wearable?

Results

When we average out the roughly 50,000 votes between the poll on the website and YouTube, we’re left with the above results. Surprisingly, despite a seemingly large adoption rate of various smart devices, most of you don’t wear or even own a smartwatch, fitness tracker, or other wearables.

It is interesting to learn that more of you have smartwatches than fitness trackers. Looking through the comments, it’s pretty clear that most wear smartwatches so that they can look at notifications in addition to tracking their fitness. Personally, this is why I wear a smartwatch over something like a Fitbit.

Going forward, I can see the adoption rate of smartwatches continue to grow. While Wear OS has been stumbling, Samsung’s Tizen-powered smartwatches and the Apple Watch continue to be more popular. As companies bake in reliable fitness tech, sales of dedicated health trackers might drop.

Noteworthy comments

Here are some of the best comments from last week’s poll explaining why they voted the way that they did:

• I wear a regular watch, it tells the time.
• Galaxy Watch(Midnight Black), every day and night. I charge it in the mornings and evenings when I have little use for it so that I have it throughout the day to help manage notifications, communication & small tasks and then can also track my sleep at night with Samsung Health.
• I own a Swiss watch which increases (or at least holds) value over time, best decision over any of these options
• I use a Mobvoi ticwatch E. I got it and Mobvoi’s ticpods free on indigogo last year and both have been really great!
• Apple Watch Series 4. The best of the best.
• I own a bunch of them. The only one I use, though, is my Gear S3. It’s reliable and useable. It has MST too.
• Well for rough step tracking the pedometer inside my smartphone is more than enough and is very consistent so no need for me.
• It got damaged. So now I used my regular watch

That’s it for this week, everyone. As always, thanks for voting, thanks for the comments, and don’t forget to let us know what you thought of the results below.