There's no stopping wearable technology. Every major tech company has made strides into the nascent field of strapping gadgets to our bodies, and although there have been stumbles (a certain head-mounted display comes to mind), the benefits are real, and the tech is improving every day.

So everyone should rush out to buy an Apple Watch, right? Not so fast. Apple's new toy may be the best smartwatch on the market, but it's also one of the most expensive. As with every gadget purchase, you have to weigh cost versus benefit, and in the case of the Apple Watch, it doesn't add up.

Consider what the benefits of wearable tech — in this case, a smartwatch — really are: The primary use of an interactive, wrist-mounted display is to feed you notifications on a screen that can be brought into view quickly and easily. Texts, emails, tweets and even calls can be immediately seen and acted upon.

Um...woo?

To do the same thing on your smartphone, you'd need to pull it out of your pocket first. This is a tangible benefit, but not a large one. As far as notifications are concerned, all the watch is doing is bringing them to your attention with more immediate clarity and freeing up one of your hands. Is that worth $349, the starting price for the Apple Watch?

Besides, if clearer notifications are what you want, you can configure your iPhone to chime with distinctive beeps for different apps (whistles for texts, doorbells for emails — you can even have a different sound for "VIP" emails). Many third-party apps already have customized alert tones, and if you're a power user, you can change them yourself.

To be clear, you can do all this now for free.

What about the other things the Apple Watch does for you, such as fitness tracking? That's a nice ability, but it's hardly unique. Virtually any wearable will count steps and measure sleep patterns, usually in a device that's comfortable to wear 24/7, keeps a charge for far longer and costs much less. As for measuring your heart rate, wrist-mounted sensors are notoriously inaccurate.

Apps on the Apple Watch are largely an unknown at this point, but from the first batch, they look like what you'd expect: simplified versions of smartphone apps that enable actions just a bit faster. Again, how much more convenient is it to summon an Uber on your wrist than from your phone? Is it starting-at-$349 more convenient?

As for games, the Apple Watch is a fringe player, at best. If Android Wear is any indication, the games will be ultra-simple and forgettable. And why wouldn't they be? Engaging gameplay isn't what smartwatches are for. Putting aside the ridiculousness of furiously tapping and swiping on your wrist, your arm will get tired pretty quickly.

A flawed premise

To see the fundamental flaw behind the Apple Watch, you just have to look at how the world responded to watches themselves. Once smartphones became commonplace, most everybody stopped wearing watches. Think about it: Even though it was unquestionably less convenient to have the time in a pocket rather than on a wrist, we dealt with it because we strongly preferred to carry just one gadget.

Now the Apple Watch wants to revisit that deal by putting far more functionality on the wrist. But the same convenience equation still applies in virtually every use case: If you don't have the Apple Watch, you can still do each and every function on your phone, which you're going to buy anyway. And then you only need one thing.

There are situations — say, keeping track of reps and sets while working out in a gym — where a smartwatch makes a lot more sense than a smartphone. But those situations are rare and specialized. They justify a wearable, but not an expensive, mass-market one.

It may sound like I'm dismissing the Apple Watch entirely, but that's not the point. My point is the benefits are real, but they're incremental. And an incremental benefit isn't worth the price tag Apple has stuck to it.

True, $349 isn't that much in the overall tech-price spectrum, but consider that it's yet another piece of technology you'll need to upgrade on a regular basis. The Apple Watch isn't like a Casio G-Shock or a Fossil Sport, watches that can work just fine for a decade or more.

Since a smartwatch works in tandem with a smartphone, there's no escaping Moore's Law: In a few years, it'll start to feel slow. Soon after that, support for it will dry up. To take full advantage of all the fancy new apps that will keep coming out, you'll need to upgrade. Are you prepared to pay $349 — more than most people in the U.S. pay for a smartphone — every two or three years for a watch?

There's a reason why most of the Apple Watch reviews are basically saying "meh." It's not because it isn't a great gadget — by all reports, including ours, it is — but it's a luxury, not a necessity.

Ultimately, the problem it's solving just isn't that big a problem.

BONUS: Apple Watch Hands-on