Why use INotifyPropertyChanged with bindings in WPF?

You don't need INotifyPropertyChanged if you only intend to use the binding to write to the property (as you have found out), but you do need it so that you can tell that someone else wrote to the property and update the displayed value accordingly.

To see what I 'm talking about, add a button to your window that when clicked directly changes the value of the bound property (not the corresponding attribute of the UI element bound to that property). With INotifyPropertyChanged, you will see the UI updating itself to the new value when you click the button; without it, the UI will still show the "old" value.