Chronos Made My Dumb Watch Dumber

After becoming somewhat attached to notifications on my Apple Watch, I missed them when wearing my automatic watch.

In order to make my beloved analog watch a little smarter, I bought a Chronos. The Chronos attaches to the back of any watch and adds “smart” features like step counting and notifications. This sounded like a great idea.

What I found was that using the Chronos made my dumb watch dumber.

When wearing the Apple Watch, whenever I feel a little tap on my wrist I just glance at the Watch and see the notification details. When wearing the automatic watch with the Chronos attached, I’d get a tap on my wrist and reflexively glance at my watch and see… the time. In order to actually check the notification, I still needed to take out my phone. This was frustrating and not useful.

I like to wear my automatic watch when going out at night. Recently, I grabbed the watch on my way out and realized I hadn’t charged the Chronos. That was the end of it. The whole point of an automatic watch is that it takes no batteries and never needs a charge. I’m not interested in remembering to charge a watch that should never need charging.

I removed the Chronos and my nice, manual, automatic watch went back to its normal task of telling the time and making me happy.