“Apple Watch – a smart watch made by Apple that makes you pay around $500 so you don’t have to pull your phone out of your pocket.” –Urban Dictionary

I WEAKENED last week and splashed out on an Apple Watch.

As, dear reader, you haven’t heard about any Canberra newsagencies selling a winning lottery ticket this month, you can safely assume I went for the entry level “Sport” model, albeit in the larger 42mm size.

I’ve bought a new car with slightly less effort made to validate my decision.

The fitting was at least as awkward as getting measured for a new suit, but as a result the silicon band is wonderfully snug and very comfortable.

It needs to be because the back of the watch is a nest of sensors monitoring my bodily functions.

Sadly, I was running late to meet a friend for lunch, so had to decline the one-on-one tutorial in how to use it best.

New watches have always had over-the-top packaging and Apple’s gorgeous packaging is legendary, so it should come as no surprise that unpacking the thing is like getting to the heart of a Russian doll.

Bonding it with my phone went reasonably smoothly.

Then came getting used to a terrifyingly powerful computer strapped to my arm wanting to interact with me near constantly.

Some things are a surprise. It nags me if I’ve been sitting down for an hour without moving. An online editor will get nagged a lot for this kind of thing, but I’ll concede the compulsory minute walking around the office is probably good for me.

The voice recognition to respond to text messages takes some getting used to but works amazingly well.

The mapping function is just brilliant, a wrist-mounted set of directions works better than I’d imagined.

After some fiddling I’ve got a default watch face I like.

At a glance it tells me the time, the temperature outside, my next appointment, and if I have notifications I haven’t dealt with yet.

But what it was all about for me, and where it really delivers, is message triage.

Every moronic PR agent in the world trying to get me to care about their addled campaign to grow the ego of their clients results in an email. It turns out the price of the watch is a small one to be able to consign their messages to the abyss more easily.

Even better is being able to concentrate on a piece of real work without having to check the mail for anything urgent requiring my attention.

Between the automated triage of Google’s Inbox software and the message headers coming up on my wrist my working day in busy periods is much, much less anxious.

It’s not going to be for everyone. But if you have to manage a large volume of messages, of which a small volume require very urgent responses, it’s worth the price of purchase.

The health-monitoring tools might well extend your life, let us not forget the ECB cricket app gives wonderful updates of the fall of wickets in the Ashes and, of course, it’s not (yet) illegal to fiddle with your watch while sitting at traffic lights.

The only downside is that your date will appreciate you looking at your watch during dinner just as much (or as little) as looking at your phone.