Why a just-smart-enough watch is better than an Apple Watch

WHY a just-smart-enough watch is better than an Apple Watch.

The watches than could beat Apple

THE Future of the Watch will soon be upon us, as Apple’s much-hyped announcement earlier this week made clear, and this future has touchscreens, app integration and a sexy interface.

For old-fashioned analog watchmakers, the coming of the Apple Watch would seem to be an existential threat: Adapt, or become jewellery.

But long before the tech industry ever cast a lustful eye at your wrist, watches were evolving to display more than the time of day.

Today there are mechanical watches with barometers and altimeters, moon-phase and planetary-orbit trackers. Prized by collectors, these “complications” can push the price of collectable watches into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Somewhere between old-world engineering precision and Silicon Valley computer science lies a middle ground, a class of specialist wristwatches — analog, digital or hybrid — with tailored functionality that rivals some of the functions of the Apple Watch, without the battery issues that supporting all of those functions apparently entails.

(The Apple Watch is expected to require a full night of recharging to run 18 hours, but these simpler timepieces can go for months without intervention.)

If you don’t need every last bell and whistle of a superwatch, here are four models that might be just smart enough to get the job done.

Seiko Astron GPS Solar SSE013

Perfect for: World travellers who change time zones more often than they change their socks.

Neatest Trick: The Apple Watch may be accurate enough, but this analog timepiece synchronises directly with the atomic clocks in the 24 GPS satellites orbiting the earth. Just landed, and not sure if it’s happy hour yet? With a button push, the hands of the Astron will automatically adjust to your time zone, anywhere you have a line of sight to the sky. Like higher-end Apple Watches, it’s protected by sapphire crystal.

Beats the Apple Watch by: never needing a recharge. It’s solar-powered. Get outside once in awhile and you’re good. $1,800, seikousa.com

Timex Intelligent Quartz Tide Temp Compass

Perfect for: Fishermen, surfers and others who pay attention to tides and temperature.

Neatest Trick: This surf ’n’ turf model takes a reading of the ambient temperature at least once per minute. You can even submerge the watch underwater to see just how warm the ocean is. (“Come on in! The water’s ... precisely 71 degrees.”) The watch also comes equipped with Indiglo illumination for pre-dawn baitfish raids, a compass, and a tide tracker for timing and aligning all your seaborne adventures.

Beats the Apple Watch by: being submersible in water up to 100 meters deep. $170, timex.com

Edifice ERA-300RB-1A Racing Watch

Perfect for: Weekend drivers who secretly wish they were on the course at Monte Carlo.

Neatest Trick: Activate its compass mode and the second hand will point due north while the digital display shows the cardinal direction that the watch’s 12 o’clock position is facing. There’s also a digital thermometer, five alarms, a stopwatch and a countdown timer — to get you first-away-from-the-stoplight bragging rights every time.

Beats the Apple Watch by: offering all of that functionality while running for an estimated two years on a pair of watch batteries. $500, edifice.casio.com

Casio CA53W-1 Databank Watch

Perfect for: The arithmetical-averse.

Neatest Trick: Enables your OCD with one-button access to a digital calculator with an 8-digit display that lets you add, subtract, divide and multiply using itsy-bitsy keys. A digital stopwatch lets you try to top your best time figuring the tip at dinner.

Beats the Apple Watch by: taking it easy on your wallet. For the price of an entry-level Apple Watch, you can buy 14 of these (or exactly 13.96, according to the watch). The battery life is approximately five years — and that assumes you use the calculator function for an hour each day. $25, momastore.org