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Stephen Hackett on Apple Watch Faces

I’ve been wearing my Apple Watch for a couple of weeks, and while I’m still churning on my review, I wanted to share my thoughts on the ten watch faces that come with the device. While having so many options is great, many of the faces have frustrating limitations in the ways they can be customized or used.

Stephen Hackett has a nice rundown of the watch faces included in Watch OS 1.0. I’m still experimenting with my Apple Watch Sport (which I received a few days ago) and playing around with watch faces and complications.

Here’s Stephen’s take on the Modular face:

On the face of it (sigh), Modular seems like a huge winner. Why take up space faking being a real timepiece when the watch is digital?

Pros: Big, easy-to-read text with lots of flexibility.

Cons: The time is locked to the upper-right corner; I’d love to have it be the biggest thing on the Watch face. Having three complications across the bottom is nice, but can feel a bit cramped.

While I can read an analog watch, it still takes me a second of parsing, and I don’t want that on a device I’m supposed to quickly look at every day. Even if small, the cognitive load required to understand time on an analog face adds up over time, and, more importantly, I need a watch to show me the precise time (down to the minute) for work purposes.

That said, I do wish that Apple offered more personalization for the position of complications on the Modular face. It’d be nice to have time in the middle of the watch face and a smaller calendar complication in the upper right corner.