Welcome to amazing.

Ask somebody with one of those fancy Apple or Android smartwatches what they think of their pricey purchase. They’ll probably answer with a sense of vaguely positive ambivalence, an acknowledgement that new toys are fun, and watches are useful… but tinged with a little bit of doubt that it was worth hundreds of dollars.

But if they’d paid less than fifty bucks? Amazing. No brainer. Worth every penny. Fifty bucks is the right price for a smartwatch to seem amazing.

It’s not the smartwatch’s fault that it’s not “the next smartphone”. Nothing ever will be. The smartwatch should be about doing what it does best, not being a half-assed, too-small smartphone clone.

What does a smartwatch do best? A survey says the two most common uses for the Apple Watch are notifications and telling the time. It’s probably safe to assume the various Android watch users would say the same. If something you do with your phone would take five seconds or less - like checking the time, or seeing who just texted you, or getting an alarm that the morning meeting starts in five minutes - it makes more sense to do it by glancing at your wrist instead of getting your phone out of your pocket.

You can do that with the Meta Watch, with a much longer battery life than the Apple Watch. The display is always on, so you’ll never waste a second jiggling your arm around to wake it up. And it’s less than fifty bucks - the right price for a smartwatch. “Amazing” is a strong word. But, taking everything into account, not too strong.