The Apple Watch is the simplest way to buy from Amazon yet

While many early third-party Apple Watch apps aren’t that impressive, a few stand out – Amazon’s, for one. It’s perhaps the most streamlined and straightforward way to buy something from the retailer yet. Here’s how it works…

The only thing you can do from the app’s homescreen is tap the search button.

This brings up the Watch’s standard voice interface screen, allowing you to say what you want to buy. This isn’t something you’ll always be happy to do in public, of course, but voice is often your only option when it comes to interfacing with the Apple Watch.

(Incidentally, while the Apple Watch lets you take screenshots, it doesn’t work on some screens, such as the voice interface – so here’s a photo of my wrist).

I decided to order a UK power plug with two USB sockets. There’s a single power outlet next to my bed, and now that I need to charge both a phone and a watch at night, a splitter will be convenient.

The Amazon app quickly displayed the top five results from its database of products. You don’t get a full list of results, but in many cases, you’ll want one of the top five items anyway.

Tapping any result brings up a few details, but not much – only a product’s name, a photo, the price, a star rating out of five and the name of the seller.

If you want to buy directly from your Watch, you’ll need to have set up 1-Click purchasing within your Amazon iPhone app. The alternative is to use the Handoff feature to open the Amazon app on the product page and then finish your purchase there. Handoff is also essential if you want the item to be delivered somewhere other than your default 1-Click shipping address.

And boom – there we go.

Obviously, this isn’t always going to be the best way to buy from Amazon, but for those impulse purchases on the go, I’m a fan and can see myself using it quite often. It’s worth noting Amazon has offered a similar app for Android Wear since November last year, too.

➤ Amazon [iOS]

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