I replaced a £600 Apple Watch with a $26 Pine64 and I am fine
Thursday, 19 March 2026
The Apple Watch Ultra is genuinely impressive.
It has an altimeter. A siren that can be heard from 600 feet. Dive modes. A titanium case. Battery that lasts two days if you're not doing continuous GPS tracking across a mountain range.
I am not doing continuous GPS tracking across a mountain range.
I got the Ultra during a period when I was trying to use quantified-self data to understand my POTS better. Heart rate variability. Resting heart rate. Blood oxygen. The data was interesting for a while.
Then I noticed something: I was spending as much time managing the watch as I was getting value from it.
Charging it every day. Updating it. Being careful with it because £600 is £600. Checking the complications. Getting slightly stressed when notifications piled up. Dealing with the app ecosystem. Closing rings, which sounds motivating until you have a bad health day and the rings become evidence of your failure.
The watch was adding cognitive load, not reducing it.
Enter the PineTime from Pine64.
Twenty-six dollars. Open source. Community-maintained firmware (InfiniTime). It does:
- Time (yes, really)
- Steps
- Heart rate
- Sleep tracking
- Basic notifications (calls, messages, alerts)
- Timer and stopwatch
- Battery lasts 7–10 days
That's it. That's the whole thing.
What surprised me is how restful it is.
There's no ecosystem to manage. No apps to update. No rings. No complications to customise. No "suggested activity" based on my movement patterns. It just sits on my wrist and tells me the time and occasionally buzzes when something needs my attention.
For someone with a nervous system that's already overloaded, this is not nothing. Reducing sensory and cognitive input from your devices is an actual intervention, not just minimalist aesthetics.
The heart rate monitor isn't as accurate as the Apple Watch's. The sleep tracking is basic. There are no ECGs or blood oxygen sensors.
But I don't need the full medical-grade suite on my wrist every day. I need to know if my heart is doing something alarming, and the PineTime catches that fine.
Here's the principle I've landed on:
The right tool is the least complicated tool that does the job.
Not the most capable. Not the most impressive. The one that serves the actual need without making you manage it constantly.
The Ultra is brilliant for people who need it. Mountaineers. Serious athletes. People whose jobs require that kind of tracking.
For a horizontal-sometimes, home-working, chronic illness navigating builder? The $26 watch is the right tool.
And it has a penguin in the boot animation, which the Apple Watch absolutely does not.