Our Apple Watch try-on experience!

The Apple Watch phenomenon has begun! We headed out this morning to capture some of the madness:

It wasn’t so much madness, actually. The retail store opened at 10:00AM this morning and we were one of about 40 people who entered the store- not all of whom were there to look at the Apple Watch… unless they were pretending and just sneaking looks. In fact, there seemed to be more employees than customers throughout the time we were there.

We had a try-on appointment, which was taken by a very nice, rather nervous Apple store employee who didn’t seem super trained on the functionality or pricing of the watch, which was unexpected, but alright, as he had a cheat sheet right there on an iPad next to the Apple Watch.

This particular store had the Apple Watch edition models in the glass display case, but none available to try on.

We tried on the Apple Watch Sport and the Stainless Steel Apple Watch with the Milanese loop band and the leather band. The Apple store employee was only allowed to bring two watches out of his little drawer at the try-on table at a time.

Both watches we tried on were dead which wasn’t great, but we were able to play with the functionality on the Apple watch attached to the Try-on desk, and at another display section later on after the try-on appointment was over.

Our appointment lasted the full 15 minutes, and we were definitely not rushed, which was nice. The Apple Watch sport felt nice on the wrist, although we were particularly taken with the Milanese band. For those of you who may be confused -and we heard a few questions like this this morning – there is no difference in functionality between any of the watch models, instead the difference is in the metal that the watch face is made out of, and the ability to have different bands.

The larger 42mm was more pleasant to look at and use, although the 38mm size was fine, especially for a finer wrist. The functionality of the Apple watch, limited as it was to being on a stand in the Apple Store and not connected to an iPhone, seemed pretty impressive. Very intuitive, the crown feature was great and easy to use, and we feel like it could become very much a part of your life once you started wearing it and using it everyday.

The watch has no internet browser, no keyboard function (to reply to messages and emails you can speak into the watch or choose a simple prepared answer such as ‘yes’ etc.) The watch does have Siri, you can look at your photos, scroll through emails and messages,log your exercise, check your calendar, and maps seems to work great.

The extra options in messages such as sending your friends a drawing, a tap or tap sequence or your heartbeat were all really pretty rad, but it remains to be seen how gimicky it might seem after a while, and how much it would be used.

Here are the Apple Watch Sport models in the display case –

And some of the stainless steel Apple Watches-

Amongst the customers in-store this morning, there definitely seemed to be the idea that the Apple Watch Stainless Steel models and the Apple Watch edition models were pretty overpriced, which we would agree with.

It is a pretty fun toy, and it will probably become super prevalent and successful, but getting in this early on the super expensive models (especially with the expensive bands, which will likely have cheaper copies made by other companies soon enough) might not be recommended.

It also relies very heavily on it’s link to the iPhone (although it does have limited use without it). One of iPhone Antidote’s friends really wants an Apple Watch, but she doesn’t carry a phone with her half the time. Conundrum. Who can say First world problem?

All that being said: the Stainless Steel 42mm with the Milanese band? Ummm… Our birthday is on July 1st. Just saying. Oh, and hot tip? Don’t lose your grip on the Apple Watch if and when you go to a try-on appointment. We did a pretty comical 30 second slow motion juggling act with the Stainless Steel model and the Apple guy was kinda losing his sh*t. Hilarious, but not recommended.

Have you checked out the Apple Watches today? Get a try-on appointment? Was it similar to ours? Did you drop it and run? Let us know!