If money is so tight you’re worried about the extra $10 or $15 or so per month to add an active plan for your watch, you can’t afford any Apple Watch — let alone the top-of-the-line model.
If ever there were an example of “better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it,” an active cellular plan is it.
Things happen to phones. All the time. The battery runs out (because you forgot to charge it, the charger wasn’t plugged into the wall, etc.). They get dropped. They fall out of pockets. They get left behind under the napkin at the restaurant. They even get stolen.
With an active cellular plan, this is at worst an inconvenience. Today’s Apple Watch is a non-trivially superior smartphone when compared to the original iPhone. Sure, it can’t compete with today’s phones, but, a couple decades ago, it would have been the unquestioned best smartphone by any and every standard (including call quality).
Now, imagine whatever happened to your phone isn’t just a minor annoyance (like a drained battery). If you’ve lost the phone, you can find it pretty easily with the watch — and, if it’s been stolen, lock it from being used to hack your digital life (if you act fast enough).
One step further … suppose the call you want to make when your phone is dead is really critical — your relationship and / or job is on the line. You need a taxi to get your family out of a rough part of town. Your mom is on her deathbed. You’d probably happily pay more than a decade’s worth of service fees just to place one of these calls.
There are times and places to be cheap, subscriptions to cut to save.
Cellular service for an Apple Watch is not one of them.
Cheers,
b&