Have you noticed tilting always makes things ‘ergonomic’? A laptop stand tilts the keyboard towards you – ergonomic. A vertical mouse tilts your hands into a more natural position – ergonomic. A split keyboard often breaks and tilts the layout in two different directions for your hands – very ergonomic. It’s almost stupidly simple that the human body isn’t designed around perfect right angles. We’re filled with curves, joints, and limitations to how we move – so a simple tilt can often make life a lot easier. The Apple Watch apparently just got the memo.
Designed around a very clever 30° tilt, this Tilted Watch Band puts the Apple Watch at a slight slant, so it’s facing you even when your wrist isn’t. Normal protocol is to lift your wrist up perfectly horizontal, so the screen faces you in the right orientation. Tilt the band and you don’t have to make your wrist horizontal anymore – just hold it at a comfortable angle and the Watch screen faces you a lot more naturally, letting you read the time without flexing your hand or your neck too much… perfect for joggers or bikers who don’t have the luxury to orient their hands while mid-activity.
Designer: MXU
As ergonomically obsessed as Apple is, I’m surprised nobody from Cupertino thought of building a band like this. Does it mess with the symmetry? Absolutely. Could Apple still elegantly work around it? I have no doubt they could. They did such a brilliant job with the iPhone Duo’s folding animation, a tilted screen feels like child’s play.
The band comes in a variety of colors, although the best thing you could do is buy a bunch of them and mix and match pairs to create a dual-tone design. The silicone construction makes the band perfect for any kinds of sports, or for people with hypoallergenic requirements. One caveat, however, is that this watch’s tilt makes it so that it only works on the left hand. The clockwise tilt means if you wore the watch on the right hand, the tilt would work against you, requiring you to crane your neck even further than you originally would. Also, the crown would press into your forearm a lot more, which isn’t particularly fun considering you’d have to deal with constantly awakening Siri every few minutes.
The solution, however, is elegantly simple, and works better for smartwatches than it does for watches. You see, reading an analog watch at any tilt or angle is fairly easy – reading a notification on a screen while it’s tilted can be a chore. That specific detail makes the Tilted Watch Band pretty useful, as it reduces the strain on your wrist and neck while you glance down at your wearable.
The Tilted Watch Band is available online through retailers like Amazon, and works with all Watch series and sizes, even with the Ultra. So you can buy and keep the band even through all your watch upgrades over the years!
