The first time I seriously tried to use the Apple Watch was to board a plane on a recent cross-country trip. The experience showed the promise of wearable devices, but it also revealed there are challenges to solve before smartwatches are worth buying for anyone other than tech enthusiasts eager to try the latest gadget.

I previously read that I’d be able to call up my boarding pass on the Apple Watch, so I opened the United Airlines app by tapping its logo in the app menu. But the process was a bit more complicated than I thought.

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The app instructed me to “please add reservations or flight statuses on your iPhone,” which required me to register it on my iPhone's Passbook app and then load Passbook on the Watch to load the ticket. This isn’t particularly difficult once you figure out how to do it but also not as easy as simply calling up the United app.

Image: Mashable, Aubrey

My time at the airport pretty much sums up how I feel about the Apple Watch overall: it's not as seamless as you'd think but it's a big step toward the future.

When I approached the first TSA checkpoint, I loaded the boarding pass by pressing the Watch’s crown and tapped the rainbow-colored Passbook logo. I showed the display to the TSA agent, who noted the TSA Pre-Check logo on the screen, and moved along to the next agent who was checking identification and scanning tickets. I handed him my driver’s license but had some trouble finding the barcode he needed to scan. (It required an upward swipe from the boarding pass — which, again, is simple once you know it but not obvious the first time.)

Unfortunately, the TSA’s scanners aren’t yet made for watches. They usually point upward, so you have to turn your wrist 180 degrees for the scanner to read the screen. That felt a little strange, especially when carrying luggage. Getting on the plane later the same morning required a similar maneuver. But at least once you have the barcode displayed, the Apple Watch is smart enough not turn off the screen when you flick your wrist downward (as it would in a normal app).

Using #AppleWatch as my boarding pass today was fun but not sure about practicality in long run cc @mashable pic.twitter.com/5FlFQbLgm5 — Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) June 4, 2015

I’m sure the TSA and the airlines will solve the arm-twisting challenge eventually, especially as more people adopt wearable technology. However, I was worried about one thing that turned out not to be an issue at all: There’s no need to take off the Watch to go through the metal detector — at least none of the metal detectors I went through.

I forgot I was wearing the Watch during the flight. Physically, the Watch is very light on your wrist and the screen is nice and easy to read. The Apple Watch Sport model I tested had a light blue rubber strap, which can be tricky to put on and looks a little too goofy for me to wear with dress clothes on a daily basis. Someone visited my office recently wearing an Apple Watch with a metal band and I thought it looked a lot better.

During the flight, I was probably supposed to put it into airplane mode, but despite that oversight the plane landed safely in Denver four hours later. This was when I discovered one of the Apple Watch’s most useful features for someone who keeps a busy schedule: The calendar.

Image: Mashable, Phil Nolan

Keeping your calendar on your wrist is very helpful and surprisingly natural. You glance at a normal watch to find out what time it is, so it’s a not a big leap to glance at your wrist for your next appointment. The Apple Watch makes this easy by highlighting upcoming events on the home screen. If you tap them, you can see more details — for example, the phone number of the person who’s supposed to be picking you up at the airport or the address of the hotel you’re heading to (if this information is in your calendar, at least).

In fact, the calendar feature alone might almost make the Apple Watch worth buying for extremely busy people. The soft and silent “taps” that the Watch makes on your wrist 15 minutes before your next appointment could be the perfect un-intrusive reminder to start wrapping up your current meeting in anticipation of the next event. And the notifications call up the details you’re most likely to need as you look at your watch to check the time.

Other notifications might not be quite as critical, and you can often wait to look at them on your phone. I get so many emails that even my iPhone screen is almost too small to sort through what’s important and what’s not. I usually need to open up my iPad to deal with my inbox. But for many people, the email notifications might be helpful on the Apple Watch, too.

The Watch does seem like it could become a great tool for people who travel frequently. In addition to the boarding passes and calendar notifications, apps like Uber, Yelp and Apple Maps make simple tasks as quick as possible. You can call an Uber in two taps as a meeting wraps up without even taking out your phone. You can find a nearby coffee shop with the Yelp app and navigate to it in another tap. You can ask Siri where the nearest McDonald’s is and receive turn-by-turn directions on your wrist. All of these things are useful to someone who’s traveling.

First day on the job as a tech reporter for Mashable. Spent it having fun with the Apple Watch on the Hill. Posted by Newt Gingrich on Thursday, June 11, 2015

Speaking of McDonald’s, one of the stranger experiences with the Apple Watch was getting a notification on my wrist from the McDonald’s app telling me the Washington Nationals had scored six runs the previous evening, entitling me to a free six-piece Chicken McNuggets. You could see how this might be urgent information to some people, but you can also see how ads on your wrist could become an unwelcomed phenomenon.

At the moment, the Apple Watch seems best suited for busy people who need quick access to information on the go, those who want access to their schedules at a glance and anyone who likes being an early adopter of the newest technology. In many ways, the Apple Watch is like a beta product, but one promising a new direction, much like the first BlackBerrys and first iPhones. In the next few months and years, there will be many useful tools among the thousands of apps that will certainly be created for the Apple Watch.

Apple will need to work diligently to improve battery life on future versions of the Apple Watch. I might have been playing with it more than most users would on an average day, but it was running low by the time I was finished lunch in Denver. I was still planning to be on the move for another nine hours.

Apple can make the Watch more useful by ensuring more of its features work like the calendar: You don’t have to go hunting through a beehive of tiny app icons for the information you need (a boarding pass, for instance); it can be right there when you need it. Until then, the Apple Watch isn’t a necessity for anyone, but it will certainly be a lot of fun for a lot of people.

Besides being the former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich is a keen observer of technology. His review of the Apple Watch is his first piece for Mashable, but Newt has also written about his experiences with self-driving cars and virtual reality, examining whether new kinds of consumer tech really solve problems and how they'll affect our society in the years to come.