Pivot!

Part of it is not having to pull the phone out for simple things like checking notifications, Apple Pay, controlling music playback, etc.

When I’m at home even when the watch is connected to the phone a lot of times my phone isn’t in my pocket and may be in another room, so if I get a call I can quickly glance, see if I want to answer it, and dismiss it if I don’t without having to go get my phone.

I have a cellular watch so I also like not having to take my phone with me sometimes, especially if I go for a run or a bike ride. That way I still can call someone if my bike breaks and I can’t fix it or something like that but I don’t have to carry a bulky phone.

I sometimes put mine on a bicep band for workouts. If I’m going on a run I track the run itself with a Garmin watch (I prefer Garmin for sports tracking but Apple Watch for day to day smartwatch) and the Apple Watch is there for Apple Music, an emergency phone, and things like that. It works perfectly well on my upper arm. I wouldn’t want to wear it there day to day though since it is hard to see the display or navigate the watch’s UI but for a workout where once I start the music I don’t have to do much with it it works.

That said, in your case I’d go with something simpler. The Apple Watch seems like overkill for what you want it to do.

I’ve noticed this before too. If you get back in range of a paired phone it will sometimes take over since I believe the phone gets priority for AirPods over the watch. My solution is that before I start a run I turn off Bluetooth on the phone. This also has the advantage of keeping the watch from trying to reconnect to the phone if you happen to pass by it since if it’s streaming it can sometimes lose the data connection briefly as it switches to Bluetooth and then back to LTE.

If you do this make sure to disable it in the settings. Turning off Bluetooth in the control center deosn’t actually turn it off fully.

Overcast if you listen to podcasts. I like it much better than the built in podcast app.

This is going to vary depending on which podcast app you use, and not all of them support standalone playback. I use Overcast and for standalone to work with it you have to designate a particular playlist to sync with the watch. You can set certain podcasts to add to that playlist automatically but I do it manually. I just add episodes to that playlist.

It’s been discontinued so they’re probably trying to clear them out. Might see even lower prices if they don’t sell at this price.