Arstechnica does a better job justifying the smartwatch than I did in my Pebble review:

I’ve used quite a few gadgets in my time, and I’ve never seen anything become as instantly useful as Android Wear has. It’s not just me, either. At Google I/O, every attendee got an Android Wear watch, and after a single day, it seemed like everyone’s behavior had changed. A notification sound would go off, which would normally send everyone within earshot rummaging through bags and pockets, but by the second day of I/O, we all just learned to check our watches. Strapping on a Wear watch for a few days changes your mobile workflow. It’s an extremely useful device that I plan on wearing from now on for the simple reason that it makes me more productive.

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This is what makes Android Wear so special. Because Google laid the groundwork for Android Wear one year ago with Android 4.3, the OS has out-of-the-box compatibility with most apps. Where most smartwatches need custom-built notification compatibility, what you see above is the baseline functionality for everything in Android Wear.

I continue to be super-impressed by this feature of Android Wear.  Sometimes Google does things in a way that feels lazy or haphazard, but with Wear, they laid the groundwork over a year in advance, and now they can finally reap what they sowed.

Wear is like the ultimate Google Now machine.

Sold.

When you hear a beep, you have to dig into your pocket or purse, fish out your smartphone, turn on the screen, unlock the phone, pull down the notification shade, and see what caused the beep. How you feel about Wear depends a lot on how you feel about that process of digging out your phone to check those notifications: if you do it a thousand times a day and it drives you crazy, then Wear is pretty exciting.

Wearables will never be an “essential” piece of technology, and that’s not the standard by which they should be judged—a smartwatch is a luxury item that’s tied to your smartphone and doesn’t really introduce any new functionality. What a good wearable can do, though, is let you do stuff faster and easier than you can with your smartphone, and it’s by that standard that Wear is a useful product. The days of having to find, turn on, and unlock some lost piece of plastic are over, and now addressing that ever-present beep just takes an effortless glance at your wrist.

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Google has turned the smartwatch OS from a clunky half-baked gadget to a useful tool.

As much as I love my Pebble, I fear it is not long for this world, especially if and when Wear gets RunKeeper support.