But even if I do that, messages still won't show like they show on phones / tablets: formatting, wrapping, images, etc.
I don't own any smart watch and haven't even had one in my hands yet. So, I do not qualify to make any judgment regarding how reasonable it is to read entire messages on a watch.
My comment is only about lack of images and formatting.
I am still reading and writing a large portion of emails in alpine, which can display only text.
Before getting my Android phone (about 3 years ago),, 90+% of my personal emails, and 60-85% of my business email were read in alpine.
Now, those numbers are about half of what they used to be.
But again, there, the screen is 80x24.