Apple Watch Series 1 Review
Editors’ Note: The Apple Watch Series 1 is physically identical to the original Apple Watch but has a lower price, an updated S1P dual-core processor, and ships with watchOS 3. Our review of the original Apple Watch, from April 2015, is below.
Do you really need a smartwatch? Up until seven months ago, that’s a question I was fully expecting Apple to answer. After all, the company is best at coming into a fairly nascent category and showing users exactly why they need to have something. Just take a look at the iPhone. Sure, smartphones were creating some buzz back in 2007, and plenty of people were already hooked on BlackBerry, but the iPhone is arguably the first smartphone that I, like many people, saw as a must-have device.
I didn’t get that feeling when the Apple Watch was announced last September. And I still don’t have it after wearing one for the last five days. Don’t get me wrong: Right now, the Apple Watch is the best smartwatch there is, hands-down. And it’s easily Apple’s most ambitious new product since the iPhone. It’s almost certain to improve with time, as Apple has already managed to attract an impressive lineup of third-party app developers.
Even in its current state, the Apple Watch ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) does more than any other smartwatch on the market. It can deliver all of the notifications from your iPhone to your wrist, so you’ll never miss anything important. With your phone connected, you can make calls through the watch itself, and Apple has added some new methods of communication, including the ability to send taps, sketches, and even your heartbeat. The Apple Watch can tell you when to turn right when you’re walking down the street, or hail a cab with the tap of a button. If you grew up on a steady diet of Dick Tracy and Inspector Gadget like I did, you’re definitely going to like it.
But the Apple Watch isn’t perfect. For starters, it’s expensive; the 42mm stainless steel model with Milanese Loop I tested costs $699. You also have to charge it every night, which is a bummer. And without your iPhone nearby, there really isn’t a ton the watch can do. So while the Apple Watch is the most advanced, polished, and intriguing smartwatch to hit the market, it’s not exactly a must-have.
Models, Pricing, and Compatibility
Getting an Apple Watch isn’t as simple as showing up at an Apple store and walking out with a watch. For starters, you can’t actually buy a watch at every Apple store. Instead, you can check out the various models available, and schedule an appointment to try them on. And there are plenty of models to choose from.
The least expensive model, the Apple Watch Sport, starts at $349 for a 38mm version, and goes up to $399 for a 42mm version. It comes in either a silver or space gray anodized aluminum case, along with interchangeable rubber sport bands in various colors. The next step up is just called Apple Watch, and starts at $549 for a 38mm version with a sport band, and goes all the way up to $1,099 for a 42mm model with a stainless steel link bracelet. This model has a stainless steel case and a sapphire crystal display. On the super-high-end of the spectrum is the Apple Watch Edition, which starts at $10,000 for a 38mm gold model, and rises as high as a $17,000 for a 38mm watch with a ‘Modern Buckle.’ This model comes with a custom leather box with a built-in inductive charger.
I’ve seen all of the models in person, and for the price, I’d say that the standard Apple Watch is the sweet spot. I’m not in love with the sport band, and I’m also not willing to spend as much on a new watch as I could for a new car. But buying this model means you’re dropping at least $549, and even then you’re stuck with a sport band. The 42mm model with Milanese Loop I reviewed costs $699, or the equivalent of seven watches from Pebble . That’s enough Pebbles for an entire family—a large family. Even the fancier $200 Pebble Steel ($129.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) seems like a bargain in comparison.
With this sort of pricing, it’s clear that Apple itself considers the watch a luxury item, and I wonder how this investment will stand the test of time like, say, a Rolex. After all, there will presumably be a new Apple Watch model available in a year or two. What will that mean for anyone stuck with an outdated $17,000 Apple Watch Edition? Sure, you might be able to reuse the band, but the face alone essentially costs $10,000.
I should also mention that you can’t use an Apple Watch unless you also own an iPhone. Because the watch hooks into your smartphone (via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi) for pretty much everything, you’ll need to make sure your phone is within close reach at all times. The watch is compatible with the iPhone 5 or later, so you can use it with the 5, the iPhone 5c ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , the iPhone 5s ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , the iPhone 6 , and the iPhone 6 Plus ($299.00 at Verizon)(Opens in a new window) . It doesn’t work with the iPad.
Design
Pricing aside, the Apple Watch is certainly one of the better-looking smartwatches on the market. As someone that’s worn a traditional Timex(Opens in a new window) watch daily for the last 10-or-so years, I was hoping for a round display. But as we’ve learned from Android Wear watches like the Moto 360 ($179.97 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , a round form factor doesn’t necessarily lend itself well to modern smartwatch functionality.
As mentioned earlier, I reviewed the 42mm Apple Watch model. The face measures 1.65 by 1.41 by 0.41 inches and weighs 1.76 ounces. The Milanese Loop band weighs an additional 1.44 ounces. It didn’t feel heavy on my wrist, which can be credited in part to the terrific design of the Milanese Loop. Not only does it have one of the more handsome, classic designs of the available options, it features a magnetic closure that makes it incredible easy to get a secure fit. Though, the watch looks a little chunkier on my wrist than I expected.
No matter which model you choose, there are two physical buttons on the Apple Watch, which can be found on the right side. The top button is called the Digital Crown, which is your primary control for navigating around the watch interface. Press it once to see the watch face, or twice to see your Home screen, which is where all of the apps are. Rolling your finger over the Crown also controls a number of functions, including zoom, scroll, and data input, depending on what you’re looking at. Although the Digital Crown is versatile and responsive, I found it a little difficult to master with my fingers, which are admittedly about as large and as dexterous as Vienna sausages. Without even thinking about it, I shied away from using the Crown, and defaulted to manipulating things directly on the touch screen whenever possible.
There’s another, smaller button below the Digital Crown, simply called the Side Button. When the screen is on, pressing this button once will pull up your favorite contacts. Pressing it twice will activate Apple Pay.
You can also navigate your way around the watch using what Apple calls Force Touch, which basically means you can just press down hard on the display. The watch uses electrodes to distinguish between a quick tap and a longer press, so pressing firmly on the screen often brings up an additional set of controls depending on what app you’re in. If you’re just on the watch face, for instance, pressing down will allow you to cycle through the various faces available. When sending an emoji, Force Touch can turn the wide range of default happy yellow faces into angry red ones.
And speaking of the display, it’s terrific. The 42mm model features 390-by-312-pixel resolution, which works out to just over 300 pixels per inch. It’s sharp and bright, and I had no trouble seeing it outdoors. I left it at the default mid-brightness setting for most of my testing, so I could get an accurate representation of battery life—more on that in a bit.
All models of the Apple Watch are splash- and water-resistant, but not fully waterproof. That means you can get the watch wet without worry, though it shouldn’t be submerged for an extended period of time. I wore it to the gym for a pretty intense spin class, and later to a bar where someone (not me, I swear) spilled a beer on it, and it kept right on ticking, so to speak.
Specs, Sensors, and Battery Life
The Apple Watch is powered by Apple’s custom-designed S1 system on a chip (SoC). It’s difficult to benchmark this in any appreciable manner, but suffice to say that it feels fast and capable for most tasks. I noticed some slight lag in opening apps, but that appears to be more about the phone-to-watch connection. I also experienced the occasional stutter in some local apps, but nothing noticeable enough to cause concern.
Of course, it isn’t enough to just slap a chip in a watch and call it a day, and to that end Apple has added a number of sensors that provide you with many of the features you’d expect to find in a fitness tracker. The back of the watch face, for instance, is home to a heart rate sensor. It uses a combination of infrared and visible-light LEDs along with photodiodes to detect your heart rate. It does this automatically during workouts, and when you tap on the Heart Rate Glance app. It was accurate in my testing, delivering results comparable with the Basis Peak . That’s important, because not every fitness tracker has the ability to measure heart rate.
The watch is also equipped with GPS and an accelerometer. Well, it doesn’t have built-in GPS, exactly. Instead, it uses the GPS in your iPhone to measure the distance you travel throughout the day or during your workouts, to deliver more accurate information than just steps. The accelerometer, meanwhile, measures your total body movements, counts steps, and helps calculate the amount of calories you burn over the course of the day.
I’ll touch on fitness more later, but in general, the Apple Watch is a viable alternative to many fitness trackers on the market, which helps make the high price just a little bit easier to swallow.
What makes it a little bit more difficult, however, is battery life. Apple rates battery life at up to 18 hours. That means you’ll need to charge it every night, just like your iPhone.
Of course, battery life heavily depends on what you do with the watch. As just a timepiece, it can last up to 48 hours. For working out or audio playback, however, battery life falls to 6.5 hours. And if you’re going to field phone calls, you’ve only got 3 hours to do so. I didn’t have trouble making it from morning to night on a single charge, but there’s no way you can get through the next day without a charge overnight.
The battery life problem isn’t just limited to the Apple Watch. Most Android Wear devices can’t make it through more than one day, either. One of the only smartwatches with acceptable battery life right now is the Pebble, which can last up to a week on a single charge. But the Pebble uses a black-and-white E Ink screen, and isn’t nearly as interactive as the Apple Watch.
Apple attempts to smooth over the battery issue by including a magnetic inductive charging cable. All you have to rest the back of the watch on top of the cable to start charging, which is a lot easier than the cumbersome cradles used by many Android Wear watches.
Setup and Range
We have a handy primer on how to get the Apple Watch up and running, but setup, in general, is fairly simple. First you need to make sure your iPhone is running the latest available version of iOS. Starting with iOS 8.2, Apple added a non-removable Apple Watch app to the operating system. It defaults to placement on your home screen, along with the rest of Apple’s apps, but you might need to poke around in your folders in case you hid it a few weeks back.
First, make sure Bluetooth is activated on your phone. The watch is automatically set to pairing mode when you turn it on, and all you have to do is follow the directions on the app, place the watch face within view of your phone’s camera, and you’re paired. You’ll then be walked through some settings screens, and before you know it, you’ll be staring at the clock face of your watch, wondering what to do next.
I’m a little surprised that there isn’t much in the way of an on-board tutorial on the watch itself, since there are so many ways to interact with it. You can find these in the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, under the Explore section at the bottom of the screen.
As mentioned above, the Apple Watch connects to your phone via Bluetooth 4.0, which generally gives you a connection range of up to 100 feet. The watch also supports 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, to extend the connection farther when your phone is connected to Wi-Fi.
Without a connected phone in range, the Apple Watch can still tell time, track workouts, and play back locally stored content. But you’ll miss out on messages, notifications, and apps that require a connection to the Internet.
Interface
You’ll spend most of your time with the Apple Watch on one of two screens: the watch face and the home screen. The watch face is self-explanatory, and out of the box, Apple provides 10 handsome choices from which to choose (OK, maybe not the Mickey Mouse one). They’re surprisingly customizable, allowing you to change things like the type of information displayed (activity, battery life, date, weather, world clock, and more), as well as superficial details like color.
The home screen is where you’ll find all of your apps. They’re laid out in a cluster across a black background, as if they are floating in space. You can drag your finger around the screen to see all of the apps in the corners, and you can zoom in using the Digital Crown.
I was able to see all of the apps just fine, but the icons are extremely tiny. I found it helpful to zoom in as closely as I could using the Digital Crown (zoom too far and you’ll open up whatever app is in the center of the screen), then navigated around using my index finger. Luckily, touch response is very accurate, and I was almost always able to open the app I wanted (rather than the one right next to it) by simply tapping on it.
Overall, the interface here is a vast improvement over Android Wear. I’ve been testing Android Wear devices for about a year now, and I’m still not sure what’s going to happen when I tap on the screen. The Apple Watch, on the other hand, is far more intuitive. Once you remember what the side buttons are used for, and the various swipes and taps, they become second nature. That said, it took a few days to get there. Because different actions have different effects on different screens, I occasionally forgot about using some of them entirely.
If you ever get totally confused, you can always just trigger Siri. Simply hold down the Digital Crown, and you’ll get a screen on the watch that asks, “What can I help you with?” I haven’t used Siri on my iPhone in a while, and I was impressed by just how capable the voice assistant has become. I was able to open apps, search maps, and schedule appointments on my calendar, all without Siri ever missing a beat.
Notifications
Perhaps the most useful feature of the Apple Watch is its ability to deliver notifications from your iPhone straight to your wrist. When I’m at home, for instance, I don’t have my phone on me at all times. But my apartment is small enough that, no matter where my phone is, the watch remains connected at all times. This means I could see text messages while washing the dishes, Facebook group messages while folding laundry, and I got a call from my mom while vacuuming.
Sure, none of these were instances where something couldn’t wait a few minutes until I saw a notification on my phone (sorry, mom), but I can see this coming in handy for business users that want to always be connected. Looking at your phone during a meeting can be rude, but glancing at your watch is definitely more discreet.
You’ll know you’ve received a notification in one of two ways. The first is through audible alerts, which I immediately turned off. The second is through what Apple calls the Taptic Engine, which is really just another term for haptic feedback. In other words, the watch gently vibrates whenever you receive an alert or a notification (and also when you press down on the display). It feels a bit too gentle at first, but once I got used to it, I found it to be just the right amount of force. I like that you don’t receive notifications on the watch when you’re using your phone, which would be redundant. I never missed a notification while wearing the Apple Watch.
Messaging and Phone Calls
The Apple Watch is much better for receiving messages than it is for sending them. I enjoyed feeling a buzz from the watch, then scrolling through an incoming text. Writing back, however, usually didn’t happen until I was able to pull my phone out. The Apple Watch has a number of canned responses you can reply with (“OK,” “Thank you,” “Text you in a bit,” and so on). You can also add customized responses of your own, but while testing, I didn’t have a single experience where a pre-written message would fit.
You can’t type messages out on the watch. You can dictate a message by voice, which worked very well, but I never found this to be a practical solution. So instead, I would read a message on the watch, then pull out my phone to reply. It’s fine if you’re waiting for an incoming message, but it never really saved me from reaching into my pocket.
If you’re messaging another Apple Watch user, you get a few additional communication options you can access right from the watch. You can send your heartbeat, which is rather unique. The watch reads it through your wrist, and delivers it to someone else in the form of haptic feedback. Or you can send a sketch by dragging your finger across the display. Or, like a Facebook Poke brought to life, you can simply tap a few times on the face of the watch and send that. Each of these options are fun, but ultimately, gimmicky.
I was surprised by how much I liked using the Apple Watch for phone calls. I often use speaker phone at home, just so that I can carry on a conversation and still be able move around my apartment. But that can be limiting, especially if you want to move from one room to another. Taking calls through the watch, however, was completely seamless, and I was able to come and go as I pleased without losing connection. Better yet, I could hold my wrist wherever I wanted, and the call was still perfectly audible on both sides. I took a phone call while I was making dinner, and not once did I need to juggle phone placements in my tiny kitchen. Also, if you live somewhere with poor reception, it means you can leave the phone in an area where you get a good signal, then make a call elsewhere through the watch.
Apple Watch App
Ironically, the one place you’ll be spending a lot of time while using the Apple Watch is your iPhone. That’s because you’ll be using the Apple Watch app, which gives you a much greater degree of control over the watch functions and settings than you can get on the watch itself.
There are four different menus in the app, which can be accessed by tapping on one of the icons located at the bottom of the screen: My Watch, Explore, Featured, and Search. Explore is a series of videos about using the watch, which is a helpful place to start for beginners. It shows you everything from customizing your watch face to using Siri.
Featured is basically the Apple Watch app store. It’s simple and fun to browse through, especially in the beginning, when you’re trying to figure out exactly what the watch can do. Search is just a blank screen where you can type in the name of an app you’re looking for, or a keyword if it’s just a type of app in general. I’ll discuss apps in more detail in the next section.
My Watch is basically the control center for what you see on your wrist. You can easily modify the app layout you see on the home screen, thanks to a mirrored version of the screen that appears on your phone. You can also control Glances, which are the screens you see when you swipe your finger up on the watch face. The default glances include a calendar, music, weather, stocks, battery, heart rate, and a few others, but you can pick and choose which ones you want to keep, as well as add any additional screens from third-party apps. The watch is extremely customizable, which is somewhat surprising for Apple, which tends to control the user experience more closely than other manufacturers.
You can also adjust things like screen brightness, text size, sounds, and haptic feedback. And if you want to store music locally on the watch, you can use the app to sync a playlist from your phone’s music app. You can decide the maximum amount of songs you want to sync, or the maximum amount of storage, which maxes out at either 250 songs or 2.0GB (the watch comes with 6.2GB of available storage out of the box). Since you can use the watch as a remote to control the music on your phone, syncing audio files is primarily for when your phone won’t be nearby, like if you leave it at home when you go for a run, or in the locker room at the gym. It works the same way for photos.
Third-Party Apps
Just like the iPhone and the iPad ($445.00 at eBay)(Opens in a new window) , the Apple Watch has the best third-party apps available, without question. The watch hasn’t even been available for a full week at the time of this writing, and already the app selection eclipses both Android Wear and Pebble, which have collectively had years with which to attract developers.
When setting up my watch, I chose for it to install all of the compatible apps on my iPhone. This provided me with sixteen apps right off the bat, including Philips Hue, Instagram, The New York Times, Seamless, Twitter, and Uber. That’s impressive.
Of course, some of these apps are more useful than others. The New York Times app gives you a brief rundown of five to six top headlines, which I liked to cycle through on my morning commute. Uber lets you hail a car with just one tap on the display, and the Philips Hue app lets you control connected lighting throughout your home, which I found handy. But Seamless just lets you place reorders of recent food deliveries, which is only helpful if you always order the same thing. And weight loss app Lose It! lets you see how many calories you have left for the day, but doesn’t let you log anything new. For that you’ll need to pull out your phone. I also ran into problems with the Twitter app, which occasionally wouldn’t load any tweets during testing.
Still, many of these apps will gain functionality and grow more refined over time. And the sheer breadth of quality content currently available is unmatched by any other smartwatch ecosystem. Aside from the names I mentioned, other heavy hitters include Evernote, MLB At Bat, Pandora, TripAdvisor, and Yelp. If you’re looking for third-party apps, the Apple Watch is the smartwatch to get.
Apple’s own apps are also worth mentioning. Passbook let you keep boarding passes, loyalty cards, and tickets on the watch. Apple Pay lets you use the watch to make in-store purchases without needing to reach for your phone or wallet. And Maps can give you turn-by-turn navigation, complete with a tap on the wrist when it’s time to turn. I had no trouble using any of these features, and Apple Pay in particular seems like something that could become useful on a daily basis (provided your local coffee shop accepts it).
Fitness Tracking
In addition to the titles mentioned above, two other apps you’re likely to put to good use are Activity and Work Out. Activity is an attractive app that uses three different circles to show your daily activity progress. The app tracks three categories: Move, Exercise, and Stand. It’s a good way to get a glance at your overall activity at any point in the day, and I liked keeping a small Activity icon the watch face itself, so I only needed to open the app when I wanted a deeper dig.
When you use Activity, it automatically downloads a companion app to your phone, which can be used for an even more detailed breakdown of your progress. Each category shows your level of activity on an hourly basis, and provides information like the amount of calories you burned and your total active time for the day. You can set goals for yourself and unlock achievements, which I found encouraging when I took the watch for a trip to the gym. And if you haven’t moved in a while, the watch sends a notification reminding you to stand up once an hour (which you can turn off if it becomes annoying).
The Work Out app allows you to record and analyze a number of different activities, including indoor and outdoor walk, run, or cycle, as well as elliptical trainer, rower, and stair stepper workouts. You can then set a target for the time, distance, or amount of calories you want to burn, and the watch will vibrate to let you know when your goal has been reached. You can also just start working out without a goal, and the watch will record your progress in each of those categories. The built-in heart rate monitor kicks in automatically during workouts, which provides another layer of detail through which you can assess your progress.
The Apple Watch isn’t exactly a competitor with dedicated fitness trackers like the Fitbit Surge ($249.95 at Fitbit)(Opens in a new window) or the Basis Peak. Both of those devices will still provide you with more detailed information about your daily fitness regimen. But the Apple Watch certainly provides enough to make most casual users happy, myself included.
Conclusions
I definitely enjoyed my time with the Apple Watch, but I still don’t think it’s a replacement for my trusty old Timex. After all, the $699 model of the watch I reviewed is the same version I would want to buy, and I just can’t see myself spending that much for what is essentially a very cool iPhone accessory.
The Apple Watch occupies the high end of the smartwatch space, along with some Android Wear devices like the $299 LG G Watch R ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) . We don’t have an Editors’ Choice in this price range yet, as we’re still waiting for a device that can justify its high price tag with truly essential features and functionality. On the lower end of the spectrum, we’ve given Editors’ Choice awards to the Pebble and the Pebble Steel. Neither of these watches are must-have devices, but they also aren’t priced like it.
Still, the Apple Watch is the best smartwatch available, and that certainly counts for something. The amount of third-party content already available is impressive, and in a year from now, when more app developers figure out what to do with it, the experience will only be better. So while I’m not sure quite how well the watch will hold up as a high-end fashion investment, from a technology standpoint, it’s a pretty safe bet.
While I was expecting Apple to deliver the world’s first must-have smartwatch, the truth is, you don’t need the Apple Watch. Yes, you’ll still probably want to have it, and you’ll likely be happy if you buy it. For a first-generation device from one of the largest companies in the world, that’s a good start.
Apple Watch Series 1
4.0
(Opens in a new window)
Check Stock
at Amazon
(Opens in a new window)
MSRP $269.00
Pros
Cons
The Bottom Line
The Apple Watch is the best smartwatch yet, but it’s more of a luxury item than a replacement for your Timex.
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