I have known for a while that a smartwatch would be a very useful tool for me, despite the general belief that this is a pointless piece of technology. The main reason is that I work as an analytical chemist. I spend my days wearing gloves, and working with potentially dangerous chemicals. I am constantly handling Eppendorf pipetters, classical glass pipettes, graduated cylinders, wash bottles, and other assorted lab equipment. In short, my hands are busy, and I cannot easily put down what I am doing to check on an alert from my phone. I got an LG G watch for my birthday, and I have had it for four days. It has been both a blessing and a frustration. There have been many times over the past week when I have gotten an alert on the watch while doing something such as setting up a distillation apparatus to test for cyanide. Given the nature of this test, once I start, I cannot simply drop everything to answer a text. However, I was able to see an alert for the text and touch it quickly with my gloved hand, and answer the text by voice. That was awesome! The frustration was due to the fact that this process was not seamless. It took me a day to figure out that my stock messaging app on my HTC One M8 would not do voice responses through the watch. I could read the text, then swipe to open it on my phone, but I could not reply without dropping whatever I was doing and pulling out my phone. I learned that Textra does allow voice replies, and so I switched to that app. That improved the process greatly, but I still ran into one major problem. Several times when I tried to send a text, I got a message on the watch saying I was offline. I cannot blame my watch for this. It is a combination of the building structure of my lab, which sometimes blocks cell reception, and the fact that Sprint tends to be spotty in my part of Iowa. But it did distract from the usefulness of my watch. My device updated to the newest operating system on Tuesday, which added a feature that promised to be very helpful. I listen to podcasts and music while working, and the update included the ability to control the playback, including volume control. I was excited to try that out on Wednesday morning, but soon discovered a very serious bug. The music played for about a minute or so, then quit. I would have to tap the play button on my watch to restart it. After having this happen for several minutes, I quit using Play Music, the only app this new feature works with, and instead used the HTC music app. The problem was fixed. I downloaded a volume controller, which is not quite as easy to use as this new feature would have been, but at least the music did not keep stopping. I read quite a bit about how it was virtually impossible to see the screen on the LG G watch outside. I have to say, I have no idea what those reviewers were talking about! I have the brightness set to one click above the lowest setting, and I can see my screen even in full sunlight. It is a bit dimmer than I would prefer it to be, but if I was going to spend a lot of time outside, I am sure that the screen would be just fine if I adjusted the brightness up. I have avoided doing so, however, in order to preserve battery power. Speaking of battery, that is another frustration. I am a pretty heavy user, and admittedly because of my activities (frequent pouring, rinsing and dumping of water samples), my screen turns on more than the average user’s would. I have not yet made it through an entire day without having to take the watch off sometime in the early afternoon to recharge. I also have to charge my phone. I am doing this over my lunch hour now, so at least this is not interfering with my productivity at work. My final frustration has been with the quality of the apps. I know that this is a common problem, even on phones. But it is obvious that this is a new technology, and not all the bugs have been worked out yet. Some common problems have been app settings not transferring from the phone to the watch, apps that won’t even open, and at the moment, a fairly small base from which to choose. However, I am sure that developers are working on both new apps, and improving the ones that have already been released. All in all, I am very pleased with the watch. It is not perfect, but it is a fairly new technology. I can’t wait to see the improvements yet to come, and I anticipate finding great new things to do with my device that I never even imagined was possible!