What time is it? Watches and horology

Nah, for me its a genuinely useful way of keeping on top of my health, training levels and possible fatigue to avoid overtraining. Accurate all day HR is also useful for spotting when you are coming down with a virus early.

The pulsox feature on my vivosmart is also useful for altitude acclimatisation when I'm climbing (because my old model fenix doesn't have that feature).

All day HR tracking is a surprisingly powerful tool. Do I need it? Clearly not as I have lived 38 years without one. Its not a gadget thing for me though, being able to look at a continuous HR history is really useful to me.

My Apple Watch can take a ‘ecg’ of sorts and can alert me to AF , I shave suffered with it for years .
Quite useful to have a record , it’s quite good on HR for me and a good swim watch for open water .
I don’t take my Garmin on the bike now , I don’t really need the phone with me on a ride either but I take pics

I have a Garmin watch I wear most days. It’s useful for tracking patterns in my fitness and general health - left to my own devices, I have a tendency to swing between being a lazy bastard and then binge exercising to make up for it, and the tracking has helped me keep things at a healthy level and I’ve been making much better progress with my fitness as a result.

Can someone explain to me what the appeal of these measurement watches is like vivosmart / fitbit / etc.?

The data is appealing but the actual watches not so much. I would like something that does all the day to day tracking (HR, Activity, Sleep) but not look like...what they currently look like.

Someone embed all that functionality in a strap for a traditional watch without making it gopping, please.

Can someone explain to me what the appeal of these measurement watches is like vivosmart / fitbit / etc.? Is it just blokes being gadget nerds?

I need to measure my HR when doing zoned training. Probably don't need to explain why on a cycling forum. Would be easier than chest strap, and can include GPS data without my phone.