using the apple watch as an audio recorder?

I have not really thought about using the watch for recording things; I think it could be cool for like shopping list etc. however, I believe that voice memos have kind of been left out of the watch experience by Apple. I'll play around with my watch and get back to you if I find out otherwise. If there is no built in voice recorder app you are kind of out of luck for now, because third party apps can't really get access to the microphone right now. One this thing that could work is if you send yourself voice messages through texting. You could just text yourself with a voice recording, as you would do with the iPhone. Such recordings are purposely low quality for band width reasons.

This seems to not be possible at present, the best I've found is the iPhone app called Simple Mic. The Apple Watch extension allows you to use your Watch to start and stop recordings on the iPhone. Not a bad start, button what we actually need.

Though it is possible to send a message as text or voice, you can't record a voice message.

this feature is in the Wish List for my article on the Apple Watch and Voiceover at www.timnoonan.com.au/AppleWatch
my Wish List on

This is something I would also like to see.
The Watches microphone is much better than my bluetooth headset, and is the default during dictation.

Perhaps an app like Drop Vox so the large files would not be stored on the watch.

Given that the Apple Watch isn't exactly meant for lengthy interactions when you wake it up, I have to wonder how much something like this would tax the battery. At least the way it looks, it doesn't seem as if the Watch is suitable for long interactions aside from dismissing or acting on a notification.

I can maybe see this for short recordings, but nothing more than quickly recording a memo of a sort. So if that's a correct impression I have of the watch, I'm not sure if I'd label it an audio recorder.

Sadly this isn't possible at the moment, I'm hoping for the second gen watch though. Once it can do all this stuff the phone can do without actually relying on the phone, that's when I think a lot of people will take notice.

That's my thing. If you used the watch as a proper recorder, I'd imagine the life of the battery would not be very long at all.

I can imagine small memos of a few seconds for perhaps reminders, but that's about it. Saying that, Apple did promise in a press release that they would allow native apps later this year, so that should open up a lot better opportunities for applications in general.

I can dictate a note on my Apple Watch using Ever note.
If Ever note can access the microphone, why wouldn't other third party apps be able to?

I think if you can already dictate notes on to it, that's all I'd need anyway; perfect for shopping lists. :)

Yes. I regularly dictate longish notes using DayOne or Drafts4. There is no noticeable battery hit. Further, ToDoist just released an update; I can now also create ToDoist tasks using the watch microphone. One more reason pushing OmniFocus to a shelf -- that one has an Apple Watch component, but you can only view pre-existing tasks. You can view the 4000+ watch apps currently available at WatchAware.com.

Note: To my knowledge, there currently is no worthy genuine audio recorder for the watch now. (A couple of apps claim to be audio recorders, but they're pretty much Mickey Mouse apps.) However, I've confirmed with the dev that Audio Memos Pro will soon see an update, presenting such goodness to the community. This is critical to me, as I've been using it on my iPad & iPhone, in conjunction with IFTTT. AMP auto-stores the recordings in DropBox. IFTTT's DropBox and ToDoist channels permit recipes, so that my recordings are ultimately tossed directly to ToDoist, thus ensuring I have what I need within my preferred task manager.

Between all that and a few taps to memorialize billable hour notations (I'm self-employed), this watch is proving to be one heckuva delightful productivity enhancer.

If you have ideas for things you'd like to see in the Watch out of the box, then go to the Apple feedback site and leave a feature request. The more they get, the more likely it will be considered.

https://www.apple.com/feedback/watch.html

For now (up to v1.0.1), the Watch OS doesn't allow third-party apps to access most of the Apple Watch hardware and this is why all Voice recorders merely remote control the iPhone. It's coming in Apple Watch OS 2 though along with access to the Digital Crown, Accelerometer and the Taptic engine. Crafty Voice Memos App has now been updated to support Watch OS 2.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/crafty-voice-memos-for-ipad/id979339071?mt=8

You can program your own audio-recording AppleWatch complication by using Workflow app. Excellent audio quality!