When I received my Apple Watch a month ago, I said I’d write a review after owning it for 30 days, so here it is:

TLDRUT (TLDR Up Top): If you’re a BIG Apple fan and own an iPhone and at least an iPad or Mac that you use every day, then you should really consider buying an Apple Watch. It *will* change your life, but in very small and subtle ways. If you buy the Apple Sport watch, it *will* pay for itself in a year as all of these minor changes to your life build up.

The Apple Watch is essentially a $400 drop of technology grease. Its purpose is to remove some bit of friction from your daily routine by eliminating the need to operate your phone for a relatively significant percentage of the time you used to use it. It does a few other things, but none of those made as noticeable an impact on my daily life.

Smartphones already removed an enormous amount of friction from our lives — they give us instant access to the entire entire and have ephemeralized all sorts of devices from cameras to flashlights to playing cards to metronomes to musical tuners. But they still leave some bits of friction: when I want to do just about anything with my phone, I have to fish it out of my pocket, press a button and tell Siri what to do (or even just to check the time). That’s maybe 3 to 5 seconds of time that the Apple Watch eliminates by having that functionality available at the raising of a wrist.

I’ve read estimates that the Apple Watch save the average user about 330 (5 and a half minutes) seconds a day by eliminating the friction of handling a phone. Over the course of a year, that’s more than 30 hours. Anyone whose time is worth $15/hour would save about $450 in made up time. I think my time is worth considerably more than that, and my experience is that the watch does indeed seem to save more than 5 minutes a day from phone friction.

That’s just part of it though. My watch gives me abilities I haven’t had before. I always know (given a < 1 second glance) what the temperature is outside. I can set my watch so that I always know the price of Tesla stock, or when the sun will set. I always know what’s up next on my calendar. I can’t lose my phone at home any more thanks to my watch. I also can’t ever lose the absurdly tiny remote control for my Apple TV any more.

I don’t use Siri for any of the magical, revolutionary things that Apple tried to sell it with, but I do use it several times a day — to set timers, reminders, alarms, and calendar events. It works perfectly from my watch. The other day I said, “Hey Siri, set an event for dinner with Glen Cambell at Brouwer’s Cafe for 6:30PM on Saturday night,” and she did so perfectly. That’s both mundane and magical, and doing it from my watch felt a bit futuristic.

I work from home, and so with no one to bother but the dogs and birds, I take most of my calls via my watch. Its speaker phone functionality is fantastic. No one has complained about sound quality — it’s just a speakerphone on my wrist.

When I get texts, I respond to almost all of them on my watch when I’m away from my MBP. The voice dictation rarely fails unless I try sending a really long message. Dictation is as good as it is on the iPhone.

There are only two non-Apple apps that I use with any regularity on my Apple Watch — the Remote app for controlling my Apple TV, and the Dark Skies app to check the weather. I haven’t found any of the other offerings to be compelling at all. This hasn’t really diminished my enjoyment of the watch. I’m looking forward to Watch OS 2.0 which ought to bring some new functionality and abilities.

Not having to check my phone when it gets notifications is the killer functionality of the Apple Watch. I have all available notifications turned on, except for Facebook (which is just too many, too often that are almost never important). When it’s about to rain, my watch tells me via Dark Skies. When the stock market closes for the day, I get a notification with full stats from my portfolio thanks to the Portfolio app. When someone replies to a comment or thread I make on Reddit, my watch tells me. I just know, almost instantly, without having to burn a couple of seconds. As I mentioned before, this usually has the magical effect of NOT breaking my concentration while I’m working (though if a bunch of notifications come in all around the same time, that does kill it).

I have the 42mm Space Gray aluminum Sport Watch with the black sport band. I’ve never felt that it was heavy, and while wearing it was very noticeable for the first few days, since then its just faded into the background like most good technology does.

It looks fantastic, but it’s not something I would wear to a very formal affair. I will probably be purchasing a couple more watch bands — perhaps both another Apple band and one or more less expensive 3rd party bands. With at least one of my dress shirts, the watch is too large to comfortable sit beneath the sleeve cuff. This would probably be a problem with other large, modern men’s watches though.

Battery life is perfect. I rarely set it back on the charger at night with less than 65% charge. I know some people rage about having to charge a watch, but I also charge my iPad and iPhone every night, so it’s a non-issue for me.

I have only two or three times used the much hyped “intimate” connection the Watch can make between two people. It’s dumb. All of it is dumb. Worthless functionality I’ll probably never use. I’ll never draw a crappy flower for anyone. I’ll never poke anyone, and I’ll never share my heartbeat to another watch. Even if Lindsay had a watch, I don’t think we’d ever use this stuff. Maybe we’re just old and boring.

I don’t really use the fitness stuff. I do try to stand up once an hour for at least 12 hours a day, but I haven’t used the calorie counter or the other stuff. That’s mostly because I’ve lately been trying to get my asthma under control. I’m not really the target audience. I will say that the heart rate thing is nifty and I do check that sometimes.

So, even without using a lot of the features of the watch, I am getting plenty of value for my money. As I said, it’s subtle. I haven’t had an amazing transcendent epiphany about how much better my life is, but I have noticed that notifications on my watch are awesome and save me time.

So, I’m very happy with my watch and how much I paid for it. I think it’s fantastic, but its impact is so much more subtle than the impact my iPhone or my iPad had on my life. I won’t evangelize it. I don’t think everyone should have one. It’s a small tool for big Apple fans.