The problem with the vast majority of smartwatches is that they’ve been designed as a bit of technology, not also as something that you’d be happy to display on your wrist the entire time. It’s a trap that Apple has been keen to avoid with its Watch, aiming to design a smartwatch that’s both more powerful than what’s come before and more customisable than any other watch available.
As Apple says, the Watch is its “most personal device yet”: that ethos even stretches to the way that company sells the product, with the in-store experience more jeweller than technology retailer. Even the packaging says high-end watch, rather than tech product.
We have to say that Apple has been rather triumphant in both of its goals, with the wide range of models letting you choose a Watch that looks different to what other people may be wearing; crucially, every model has the same experience, so you’re only really choosing on looks, not features.
Available ranges
What makes the Apple Watch more flexible than any of its competition is the sheer range of design choices available. At the base level, you have the choice between two sizes: 38mm and 42mm. Where possible we recommend the 42mm version, but the smaller version at least means that there’s an option for people with smaller wrists, which is something that other manufacturers have completely ignored: the Moto 360, for example, looks ridiculous on some people.
Once you know your size, it’s a matter of choosing the model that you want. The differences here aren’t in features but in the build materials. The entry-level Sport edition has an aluminium body, with a textured feel to it, and ships with the soft-touch Sport Band available in five colours. It costs £299 for the 38mm version and £339 for the 42mm version.
Next up is the standard Apple Watch, which has a stainless steel body and sapphire glass. It starts at £479 for the 38mm and £519 for the 42mm version, with the soft-touch Sport Band. Here you get more choice of straps to buy with the Watch, although prices rapidly increase: we’ve got the Milanese Loop on the 42mm version, which costs £599; at the top is a special black Watch with a Space Black Stainless Steel Link Bracelet that costs a whopping £949.
At the very top is the Apple Watch edition, which has a gold body and costs between £8,000 and £13,500, with each model having a unique strap. It’s fair to say that the standard or Sport editions are going to be the right choice for most people.
All of the standard Watch’s straps are available to buy separately and fit any edition of the Watch. Apple’s proprietary strap fitting means you can change a strap within a minute, giving you the option to have different straps for different occasions. This connector is available for licensing, so third-party straps will be available for less although we can’t vouch for their quality.
Design and build quality
No matter which version you choose, the Watch is beautifully designed and has the quality that we’ve come to expect from Apple. From its rounded edge to the way that the screen curves down to meet the metal body, the Watch is superbly designed and is a cut above any other smartwatch currently available. It’s also much thinner than you may expect, making some of the Android watches we’ve reviewed look rather chunky.
The same level of detail has been put into the straps. Our Milanese Loop was beautifully finished, with the magnetic clasp making sure it stayed tight against our wrist while remaining comfortable at all times. Once we had it on, the Watch looked and felt as though we were wearing a regular watch, not just a bit of tech.
Setup - Bluetooth and Wi-Fi
You need an iPhone 5 or later to use the Apple Watch. Setting it up for the first time is simple: you turn on the Watch, open the Watch app on your phone and then use the phone’s camera to take a picture of the pairing animation. After that, your Watch uses Bluetooth LE to connect to your iPhone. You only have to perform a few simple steps to complete the process, including setting a four-digit passcode. Not that you should have to enter it often, as the Watch stays unlocked while it remains on your wrist (it locks automatically when you remove it) and you can tell it to unlock with your iPhone, which is particularly handy if you’ve got Touch ID. For most people, then, they’ll only need to put their Watch on in the morning, tap Touch ID on their iPhone and they’ll be set for the day.
During setup, you can also choose which apps you want to install on the Watch, or just to install all that are available from your phone. For most applications, the Watch talks to your iPhone using Bluetooth, but it also has 2.4GHz Wi-Fi built in. You can’t select which network the Watch should join, but it will connect to any 2.4GHz network that your phone has connected to before, automatically. If you use dual-band Wi-Fi at home, such as with an 802.11ac router, make sure that you’ve connected your phone to both the 5GHz and 2.4GHz networks in the past.
Wi-Fi means that Watch keeps working when your phone is out of Bluetooth range. It automatically switches from Bluetooth to Wi-Fi when it can't detect your iPhone, so the Watch can communicate with your phone provided they're both on the same physical network. It’s great news, as it means that your Watch keeps working, for example, when your phone’s upstairs on charge and you’re elsewhere in the house.
Screen and interface
Everything you do with the Watch appears on the screen, so it’s good news that Apple has picked a high-quality and power-saving OLED screen. Resolution differs between the two sizes (340x272 on the 38mm and 390x312 on the 42mm) but both have a similar pixel density: 290ppi and 302ppi respectively. On both models, the screen is sharp, clear and easy to read. In truth, there’s not much more that you could want from a display on a smartwatch.
It’s a touchscreen display, so you can tap on on-screen icons to select options, with Apple’s interface ensuring that buttons are big enough to use comfortably. On a device with a screen this small, the usual touchscreen gestures don’t work very well, such as pinch-to-zoom. As a result, Apple has added its Digital Crown to the Watch, which you twirl to zoom through lists and in some apps, such as maps, to zoom in and out; clicking it in makes it act like a home button. It takes a little while to get used to, but once you do, the Digital Crown is a far superior way of interacting with your Watch.
There’s a second side button underneath the Digital Crown, which displays your favourite contact when you tap it once and brings up your credit cards for Apple Pay if you double-click it.
On top of that, the Watch also has Force Touch, which senses force as well as screen contact. You activate it by pressing the screen and then pushing a little bit harder. This kind of touch does different things depending on the app, ranging from accessing an additional menu to getting into settings.
Of course, we have to mention Siri, Apple’s voice assistant, which makes a lot of sense on the Watch. Rather than using the small on-screen interface, you can just use Siri to launch an app, send a message or start of phone call. Siri can be started by holding down the Digital Crown, but when you raise your arm and the screen comes on, you’ve got a few seconds to launch Siri by saying, ‘Hey Siri’.
It’s largely the combination of new ways to interact with the Watch that makes it so successful, though. Apple has completely thought about how you’ll need to interact with a device strapped to your wrist and has come up with new ways of doing so. The result is a smartwatch that’s easier to use than any other model.
Charging and battery life
There's no room for a Lightning port on the Watch, so it's charged via an inductive charger that magnetically attaches to the back of the Watch. It's quick to charge, with 2.5 hours all you need to take the Watch from flat to 100%. As good as the charger is, our favourite thing in the box is the UK adaptor where the prongs fold flat into the plug. Finally, you get the benefits of a UK plug (safety, it plugs in and stays in) with the fold-down convenience that US plugs have had for a long time.
Battery size depends on the type of Watch you have, with the 38mm version containing a 205mAh battery; the 42mm Watch has a larger 246mAh battery. The larger battery in the 42mm version is likely offset by the larger display, but could last slightly longer.
Apple quotes the Watch has having an 18-hour battery life when in general everyday use, such as checking the time, notifications and a 30-minute workout. In our tests, we found that we had around 50% of battery life at the end of the day, which meant that we could probably push the Watch to last two working days. Realistically, it requires you to charge it every day, but given that most smartphones require the same thing, it's not a big problem.
There's a Power Reserve mode, which disables everything on the Watch bar the time and extends battery life to 72-hours. You can enable it manually if you know that you won't be near a charger, but it turns on automatically when the battery is low.
Watch faces
As one of the primary functions of this product is, as you’d expect, a watch, it makes sense that the digital watch face is one of the best and most prominent ways for you to interact with your Watch. Apple has provided 10 watch faces, which include a chronograph, digital watch, Mickey Mouse and even one that shows the position of the sun based on your current location. Most of the watch faces are easily customisable, letting you pick the information that you want to see up-front. These range from your current level of activity, to the date, upcoming appointments and the current weather. Tapping any bit of information automatically launches the related app, so you can get more information. It means that everything that’s really important to you on a daily basis is viewable, while more information is just a single tap away. There are no third-party watch faces at the moment, so the choice is a little restrictive, but third-party ones should be available with the new OS update, due later in the year.
To save power, the screen turns off automatically, but the motion sensor in the Watch is brilliant and you only need raise your arm to look at the screen to turn it back on and see the time. At no point, did we have to shake our arm or perform an exaggerated movement to get it working.
Apps
Although the Watch comes with a range of built-in apps (more on those later), you can extend its capabilities by installing new apps. What’s clever is that Watch apps are a sub-set of iPhone apps not a separate download; it means that from day one you’ll most likely have a wide range of apps that work with Watch. You can easily uninstall the ones that you don’t want to use, using the Watch app on your phone.
The quality is a bit variable and the apps aren’t always very useful, though. For example, you can shop Amazon from your Watch, but the experience is terrible on the small screen. Conversely, other apps work brilliantly and we love getting Tube updates on our Watch while the eBay app is a handy way to check items that you’re bidding on or selling. Overall, the general experience we’ve had with the Watch is that the apps are better and there are more of them than with any other smartphone.
There’s 8GB of storage on the Watch, which means that you don’t have to worry too much about running out of space for apps. However, there’s one good reason why you may wish to limit what you install; the main menu. Due to the small screen when you click the Digital Crown to go to the home screen, you see icons, but no text. If you’ve got too many apps installed, it can be a bit tricky to find the one you want by icon alone. It helps that you can rearrange the home screen using the Watch app, but even so, we recommend being a little more brutal on the Watch then you usually are with your iPhone; you can always quickly reinstall an app if you need it.
A lot of apps can’t work unless your Watch is connected to your phone. This also means that they need to pull data from your handset, which can make them a little slow to load in the first place, although we generally had few performance issues. An OS update is coming later in the year, which will make it easier for developers to create faster apps.
Glances
As well as having full apps, some applications also come with Glances, which you can choose whether or not you want to use them. Glances are accessed by swiping up from the bottom of the watch face screen and give you snippets of information, such as the weather, or a cut-down set of controls, such as for music playback. It’s great having this kind of information or control on tap, but we wish that Glances were better integrated with apps in some cases. For example, fire up the Music Glance and you get the same control interface as with the Music app; however, you can’t Force Touch the Glance to change the playback mode. Instead, you have to tap the music link (top left) to launch the full Music app instead. It’s by no means a deal breaker and Glances are truly useful, but a bit more integration between them and full apps would be good.
Notifications
One of the main benefits of having a smartwatch is getting notifications on it. The Apple Watch handles these brilliantly, with a quiet ping and, even better, the Taptic Engine. The latter vibrates to ‘tap’ you on the wrist to grab your attention. It works brilliantly, managing to make you aware of something without being annoying.
Provided there’s app support for the Watch, you can respond to most notifications from the Watch, such as accepting a calendar invite. It means, again, that you can do a lot from your Watch without having to reach for your phone at any point. Past notifications are listed in the pull-down menu from the top of the Watch, in a similar way to how they are on the iPhone. You can dismiss a single notification, while Force Touch lets you clear the entire list.
Phone calls
Making phone calls on your Watch may not seem like the most natural or easiest thing in the world, but it’s actually incredibly useful. Thanks to its speaker and microphone, the Watch acts like a hands-free kit. You need to hold the Watch up to your mouth to get it to register your voice clearly, but once you do, the sound quality is pretty good.
This feature is particularly useful if someone calls you and you can’t get to your phone quickly, as you can answer on your Watch before they ring off. Should you want to make a longer call that you’ve either started or answered from your Watch, you can unlock your iPhone and tap the green bar at the top of the screen to take over the call. The speaker’s also useful if you get a voice mail, as you can listen to it without having to get out your phone, and then decide if you want to call back.
Making a call from the Watch is easy, as it brings up your most recent calls. You can choose to call people in your phone book, too, although it’s easier to use Siri to do this, rather than scrolling through the entire list.
Messages
Messages come through to your Watch, where you can read, delete and even reply to them. The Watch is pretty clever in the reply options it gives, taking context from the message. For example, if someone sends you a message asking if you want to go for dinner or lunch, two of the reply options will be ‘dinner’ and ‘lunch’. There’s also a set list of pre-defined replies, such as ‘Thanks’ and ‘Can I call you later’.
Our slight issue with this system is that replies can come across as a bit terse and almost need a warning on them to tell the person you’re messaging that you’re sending the message from your watch. You may want to edit the default replies to say something like this, using the Watch app on your phone.
A far better and more personal way to respond is to use Siri to dictate a reply. In our tests, we found Siri to be very accurate and more than good enough for sending a message: the only question is, do you want to dictate a text message in public?
Do not disturb
If you want to stop your Watch from popping up notifications and grabbing your attention, you can use Do Not Disturb on it. This works the same way as it does on the iPhone, stopping incoming calls and messages from displaying any notifications or playing any sounds (unless you’ve set the phone to allow incoming calls from favourite contacts). The default setting is to mirror the iPhone’s setting, which means the Watch follows the same schedule as your phone, plus enabling and disabling Do Not Disturb manually from either device sets the same mode on the other device.
While the Messages app is pretty good, the Email app is slightly disappointing. It gives you a list of email, but you can only view all inboxes and you can’t choose a single mail account from the Watch; instead, you can use the Watch app to choose which email account or folder you want to view.
Due to the limitations of the screen size, not all messages are viewable on the Watch and we got the ‘The full version of this message isn’t available on Apple Watch’ message a lot. You can mark email as read or delete it, but you can’t reply to an email or start a new one, dictating via Siri. As such, we didn’t use the Email app very often.
Apple Pay and Passbook
Apple Pay is now available in the UK and means that you can pay for goods in-store using your Watch. Our short version of this is that it’s beyond brilliant. You just have to double tap the side button, pick the card you want to pay with and then hold your watch to the contactless terminal and the transaction is completed. A lot of stores are limited to the contactless maximum of £20 (rising to £30 in September), but if they’re Apple Pay enabled then there’s no limit. Since launch we’ve used our Watch to pay for everything where there’s contactless, as it’s a lot easier than pulling out a wallet and then finding the right card.
With Apple Pay and the ability to store credit cards comes Passbook for loyalty cards and tickets. Again, the Watch is perfect for this kind of application as it’s right their on your wrist and easily accessible. We found it great for plane tickets, with the QR code going full screen, so that it’s easy for the airport to scan. If the airport has a fixed scanner, you can hand them the Watch: the QR code stays on screen and the Watch doesn’t lock. Don’t worry about security, as a timeout will lock the Watch when the screen turns off after a couple of minutes, if you haven’t put the Watch back on your wrist.
Maps
Maps is another fine example of the Watch getting things right. As well as a quick way to get your bearings and see where you are, you can use the app for directions. To input a direction you can Force Touch the Map screen and use Siri to dictate a location, choose from recent and favourite directions from a list, and you can even select an address from a contact. Alternative, you can use your phone’s Maps application to do the searching and route planning, then fire up the Maps app on your Watch to view the instructions.
Using the Watch to navigate is much better than using your phone. It ‘taps’ you on the wrist when you need to make a change in direction and clearly says on the screen what the next instruction is, such as ‘Turn right onto Maple Street’, giving a distance to the turning. It means that getting around you no longer have to have your face buried your smartphone’s screen and you can just walk around, paying full attention to your surroundings. Fortunately, Apple Maps has become a lot better since launch and we’ve not had any problems with it finding an address or screwing up the navigation.
Music
Music’s always been a big part of the iPhone and via the Watch you can control what you listen to. As well as seeing what’s playing, you can even navigate through your entire music collection to choose what to play. If you’ve signed up to Apple Music, that means that you can also select any music that you’ve added to My Music. If you’ve got any AirPlay speakers or an Apple TV, you can choose to send what you’re listening to them directly from the Watch, too. For Spotify users, you can skip tracks, but without a dedicated Spotify App for the Watch you can’t change playlist or select other music that you’ve saved offline.
If you want to go out without your phone, you can use the Watch app to transfer a single playlist to the Watch, up to 2GB in size. It means that you'll need some Bluetooth headphones in order to listen to the music, but it's a handy feature if you want to take the Watch out running and don't need the bulk of the phone. Cleverly, if you've saved music offline through Apple Music and added the tracks to a playlist, you can copy this music to your Watch. The one slightly strange restriction is that Music will only sync from your phone when the Watch is connected to its charger.
Fitness and Heart Rate
A big reason to own any kind of wearable technology is for fitness tracking and to get fitter. It should come as no surprise that Apple has built a lot of this into the Watch. The basic tracking is provided by the Activity app, which you use to set yourself a a daily calorie burn goal. The Watch then tracks how many calories you’ve burned through activity and how many minutes of exercise you’ve got based on when you’ve done more than a regular walk. Whether or not you like this will depend on the kind of person you are, but it’s a handy way to check that you’re staying active if you don’t want to go for a full-on exercise schedule.
The Watch also prompts you to stand if you’ve been sat for 50 minutes or more in a row, with the goal to spend more at least one minute out of 12 separate hours standing each day. The tracking’s not perfect, though, and we’ve had prompts to stand up even though we use a standing desk all day.
On top of that there’s a heart-rate sensor built into the back of the Watch. We’ve read reports that chest straps are more accurate, but for most people that’s not important: with the Watch you get a decent sense of your current heart rate and if you’re pushing yourself or not.
Next, there’s the Workout app, which lets you set yourself a goal (calorie, time or distance) for a range of different activities, such as walking, running or cycling. The first time you do any distance training on foot it’s recommended that you go out with your phone, so that the Watch can use its GPS and calculate your average stride; after that, the Watch can fairly accurately predict the distance you’ve travelled.
Dedicated fitness kit with built-in GPS tends to be more accurate, but that’s kind of missing the point of the Apple Watch. What it gives you is a simple way to set yourself a goal to keep yourself active and fit, not necessarily to train for a marathon or push yourself to extremes. For a lot of people, ourselves included, we like the occasional walk and being able to simple set time or distance goals is useful; we’re not interested in getting more data or having a training routine. Distance accuracy is good enough for most people, too: who cares if your final walk is plus or minus 100m or so on the distance you set?
As you can get different apps for the Watch, you’ll be able to choose your own fitness app and use that in conjunction with the Watch’s sensors if you do prefer to get a more in-depth training regime. Serious runners may well be better off with a dedicated tracker, but the amateurs and those just doing it to stay healthy will find it good enough. Of course, all of the data tracked by the Watch is fed back into the Health app on your iPhone, so you have one place to keep track of everything.
Camera
We quite like the Watch’s camera app, which gives you a live feed from your phone’s camera and lets you snap off a shot without having to touch your iPhone. It’s handy for taking shots where you may not easily be able to reach the phone, such as to get a crowd shot by having someone hold your phone up high. It’s also great for taking group shots that you want to be in, particularly as there’s a three-second delay timer mode (something the iPhone doesn’t have), which fires off a burst of shots letting you pick the best one.
Other apps
Finally, Apple has stuffed the Watch full with a range of other utilities, including a stopwatch, countdown timer, Remote for iTunes and Apple TV, and a neat Weather app. Together it makes the Watch a much more rounded products and gives you a few little tools that are helpful day-to-day.
Conclusion
Apple has certainly managed to make a smartwatch that has the class of a real watch, while being the best smartwatch for iPhone users. More than that, the Apple Watch is better than Android Wear, outstripping it for features, interface and controls. More importantly, the more we wore it, the more we got used to it and turned to the Watch to do everyday tasks. That’s the crux of this product: it’s not essential, but it makes the things that you do all of the time quicker and more convenient. Now, with Apple Pay available in the UK, the Watch really is the perfect way to pay for things.
The biggest issue for many people when looking to buy an Apple Watch is the price. There’s no getting round the fact that for most people to get the model they want with the strap they want, they’re looking at spending £600, which may be too much for some to justify. For the people that are willing to spend that much, or opt for the cheaper Sport Edition, the simple summary is that they'll love what the Watch can do.
We came to really rely on our Watch and when we didn’t wear it, we missed it. As such, we firmly believe that anyone that buys one will be happier with this product than any other smartwatch. Those on a tighter budget may want to look at the Pebble Time, but it simply isn’t as good for iPhone users.
Pedometer: Yes, Heart-rate monitor: Yes, Display size: 38mm/42mm, Resolution: 340x272 (38mm)/390x312 (42mm), OS support: iOS 8.3+, Battery life: 18 hours