The watch that keeps telling Grandpa to stand up

Grandpa was flat on his back under the kitchen sink, wrench on a slip nut, flashlight in his teeth, when his wrist buzzed and told him it was time to stand.

He took the flashlight out of his mouth so he could answer it properly. "I'm lying down," he told the watch. "That's the other direction. You want me standing, come down here and hold the bucket."

The watch, a birthday present from his granddaughter, didn't hold the bucket. Twenty minutes later it congratulated him for closing his rings. Grandpa looked at his wedding band. "Closed that one in 1974," he said. "Nobody gave me fireworks."

What it says it does

A smartwatch is a small computer on your wrist that pairs with your phone. It shows texts and calls, runs timers and alarms, and keeps track of what your body's doing using sensors on the back. Most use an optical heart-rate sensor (that's the green light) and a motion sensor to count steps, estimate activity and notice when you haven't moved in a while.

The stand reminder is that last trick. Many watches nudge you near the end of an hour if you've been parked the whole time, with a daily goal of getting up and moving for a minute or so in a set number of hours. You can usually change the goal or switch the nudges off.

Plenty of models go further. Fall detection can call emergency services if you go down hard and don't respond. There's often an SOS shortcut, high and low heart-rate alerts, and on some models an ECG app. Some come in a cellular version that works without your phone nearby, for a monthly fee through your carrier.

What Grandpa thinks it does

Grandpa's theory is that it's a supervisor. He's had supervisors. This one's worse because it follows him home.

It knows how he slept, which means it knows about the recliner during the ball game. Grandpa maintains he was resting his eyes, on purpose, as a strategy.

He's convinced the step counter has a grudge. He mowed the whole lawn and it gave him credit for about half. Hands locked on the mower handle, wrist barely swinging, the watch apparently figured he stood in the yard for an hour admiring grass. Then he whisked pancake batter for two minutes and it handed him a few hundred steps. "I walked to the stove," he said. "It thinks I walked to Ohio."

He's correct, by the way. Wrist trackers read arm motion, so pushing a mower or a shopping cart can undercount, and vigorous arm work can overcount. Treat the step number as a trend, not a court record.

Then there's the reminder to breathe. "I'm seventy-six," he said. "I haven't missed one yet."

Where he has a point

It wants a charger more than he does. His old quartz watch took a coin battery he swapped whenever it quit, which was rarely. Many smartwatches want the charger every day or two. The battery life a maker lists is usually under friendly conditions; an always-on screen, GPS and constant notifications all eat into it. Most use their own charger, so lose it at the lake cabin and you're buying the maker's replacement.

It has to match your phone. An Apple Watch only works with an iPhone. Many Android-friendly watches won't do much with an iPhone. Check before the gift gets wrapped, not after.

Some of it costs money every month. The cellular version means a line on your phone bill. Some fitness brands keep their deeper stats behind a premium subscription. Read what's free out of the box and what isn't.

Out of the box, it buzzes for everything. Every group text, every app, every sale at a store you visited once in 2019. Half an hour in the notification settings fixes most of it.

It knows a lot about you. Heart rate, sleep, location. Go through the privacy settings, decide which apps get your health data, and put a strong password and two-step login on the account it's tied to. Our guide to locking down every account in one evening covers that in a sitting.

You can't fix it with a screwdriver. The battery's sealed and the screen is glass. Before you buy, look up whether the maker offers battery service and what it charges. The same thinking that helps you make your next phone last five years applies here.

Where he is wrong

Grandma set it up. She turned off every notification except calls and texts from family, made sure fall detection was on, and put his emergency contacts in. Grandpa called it overkill. Grandma called it Tuesday. She was right.

Because Grandpa works alone in his garage. He hauls things. He climbs things. A man who's fixed everything he ever owned also thinks he can fix a hard fall on concrete by walking it off.

A ladder is not a joke. Keep three points of contact, don't overreach, don't climb when you're alone in the house, and tell someone before you go up. A watch doesn't replace any of that. But if you do go down and the phone is on the workbench across the room, a watch that can call for help from your wrist is a real thing, not a toy. Don't assume fall detection is on. Some models enable it automatically and some don't, so check the settings.

The heart alerts earn their keep too, as long as you treat them right. A watch can flag an unusually high or low heart rate or an irregular rhythm. It can't diagnose anything. If it flags something, call your doctor and let them decide what it means.

And the stand reminder he hates so much? He's been sitting more since he retired, and he knows it. Breaking up long stretches of sitting is about as uncontroversial as health advice gets. So now when it buzzes, he walks to the mailbox. Sometimes twice. He's started waving at the neighbors, which the watch doesn't track but probably should.

He'll also admit, quietly, that he likes the grill timer on his wrist. And the button that makes his phone ring when it's lost in the couch cushions. That one's found it four times.

The verdict

Worth it, with conditions.

It's for the person who lives or works alone, especially an older relative who'd rather eat a wrench than wear a medical alert pendant. It's also for the desk worker who'll actually get up when it buzzes. It's not for someone who wants a watch that tells time for years and asks nothing in return. That person should keep the old one and change the battery when it quits.

Three things to check before buying:

1. It works with your phone. Confirm compatibility with the exact phone you or the recipient carries.
2. The battery life the maker lists, and the charger. Be honest about whether this person will charge something every night. If not, look at models whose published battery life runs longer.
3. Which safety features this model has, and what they cost to run. Fall detection, SOS, whether emergency calls need the phone nearby or a cellular plan, and any subscription on top. Check the current price, then add a year of monthly fees to see the real number.

Grandpa still won't wear it under the sink. He takes it off and sets it on the counter, where it can tell the faucet to stand up.