Sure many/most are vastly over priced.

While the China markets DO HAVE many many < $100 (often <$50!!) the issues here are that they may/not actually have some of the features that they claim.

Those AMOLED displays really really EAT battery life. Personally I found a Garmin with a MIP display and multiweek battery life very usable.

overpriced is an understatement, ridiculously priced more like

and lets face it, most of the claims they make are hyperbole, they might track heatrate, sleep, etc, but with little accuracy, they just don't tell you that

Nice find! That mounting piece looks like it's doing solid work to keep things tight and aligned. I'd check durability and whether it adds any flex under load though, sometimes these things that look simple end up being the weak point.

At a €50 piece point it'll be tough. At roughly 3x that the new Pebble should get you pretty close if you really needed a smart watch.

But honestly,if you need a watch with alarms and good design/solid build quality/long battery you can't do better than the Casio F91W (or one of its ilk)!

FINALLY!!!
I never posted anything on nbc untill now (because I really want things to change hoping watchmaker devs are "watching" this).
Never mind about thinking "YOU" are the odd one because I thought that "I" was that one (untill I read your comment that is}.
I have an Apple Watch Series SE (LTE) and the things I use are,

1. phone calls and texts
2. agenda, calender, e-mail and alarms
3. payments

That's it!
And none of the other bulls... for the same reasons you mentioned.
These are my two cents.

totally agree. have always questioned why smartwatches can cost as much or more then a smartphone. insanity. figured Samsung or Motorola wld have realized that there's still a larger market for sub-$150 smartwatches and offered some inexpensive devices. but nobody has come (back) to that. guess still too many consumers buying the silly expensive stuff.

The key words are vibration alarm. Feature that exists only on large watches smart or not. I successfully used a smartwatch to diagnose an issue while training, but otherwise I only need the vibration.

50€ for a device with a color screen and decent battery? Maybe ten years ago...

Largely agreeing with the take, which is a gap I feel like the CMF Watch 3 Pro is trying to fill.

User of amazfit neo +1