Originally Posted by
tmiw
In my experience, preauthenticating before reaching the gates eliminates a fair bit of the delay (though probably not all of it). However, having to share a device among multiple people could definitely cause a bunch of hassle.
What I've noticed is that even if they've done that, particularly on the watches, there's still a greater lag than using an Oyster card. My "research" from my daily commute seem to find that Oyster cards are the quickest to register and open the gate, followed by Credit/Debit cards and then phone/watches.
Still, they're all faster than the people who wait until they get to the barrier to reach into their handbag or pocket, pull out their purse/wallet and then pull out their card - even more annoying if you've been doing a slow shuffle to the gate at a crowded station!