Apple Watch Series 10 review: Big and beautiful upgrade

Ten years ago, the Apple Watch burst onto the scene and changed the wearables landscape.

Before it, smartwatches were big, ugly, biblically nerdy, and worst of all, they didn’t really do anything.

A decade on, Apple has solved all of those problems – and it’s done it with a mixture of genre-defining innovation, and good old slow, methodic evolution. It’s barely changed the design, or the look at feel of the OS. But it’s answered questions about utility, style and purpose. 

The Series 10 offers a design upgrade, adds one big new health feature, and sets the tone for the next 10 years of Apple Watch. 

It won’t change the minds of Apple Watch skeptics. But first-timers or those on Watch 5-8 generations will get a great upgrade.

Read on for our in-depth review of the Series 10.

Design and comfort

The design of the Series 10 is the biggest talking point: and to cut through the noise, the newest Apple Watch is thinner…but also bigger. 

To accommodate another 30% jump in screen real estate, the case has grown to 42mm and 46mm, up from 41/45mm on the Series 9. And the display here is actually 3% larger than the Apple Watch Ultra 2.

I wear an Ultra 2, so it didn’t feel like a jump to me. But I imagine for some, this will feel like a bigger change. I wore the 46mm in titanium and aluminium, and it’s a big piece of OLED on your wrist – and it feels a bit more *SCREEN* than an Ultra thanks to the impressive edge-to-edge case. But it’s also way slimmer and more comfortable.

The bigger display does make using the Apple Watch much easier – there’s more text, it’s easier to use on-screen buttons, and the big, bold watch faces look gorgeous. So a lot of people will like this change.

And everyone gets a thinner Apple Watch. Tt drops 10% in thickness to measure below 10mm for the first time. I found the reduction in thickness noticeable, both in terms of wearability and design. It sits better on the wrist, and offsets any gain in heft from the increasing case size.

There is something else to consider. I have slim wrists, and the smaller 42mm Series 10 actually felt fine – so if you think 46mm looks ludicrously large then that’s a definite option.

Those who lose out, in my opinion, are (predominantly) women that really don’t want a large watch. The smallest 42mm Series 10 is now the same size as the largest Series 3 from back in the day. So, if you’re someone who already thought an Apple Watch was too big, this isn’t good news.

But I suspect the people who complain that an Apple Watch is too much screen are a) in the minority and b) not going to buy any smartwatch anyway. 

New watch faces and finishes

Apple has introduced a metallic aluminium in black (above) – the first time it’s done a shiny finish in this material. It’s a great addition to the lowest cost Apple Watch range.

A big change is that stainless steel models also change to titanium. I tested the silver titanium model and it looks great with a redesigned Milanese mesh bracelet – it oozes class. And it’s now carbon neutral, which stainless steel wasn’t. There’s a modest reduction in weight too.

Apple has also added two new watch faces with Series 10. Flux is designed to make use of the larger screen and show off the Series 10’s ability to display a seconds hand in low-power mode. It’s better at doing that than showing the time, but my Plymouth Argyle color scheme pleases me.

Reflections also shimmers as you move the watch – pretty, if again, less functional. Neither make room for complications.

Most people will love the increased screen size, and the improved usability. And the Series 10 feels slimmer, with that improved thickness. If you ever had a nagging feeling that wearing an Apple Watch was too much screen on the wrist, think carefully about whether the 42mm watch could be a better option.

Health features and sleep apnea

There’s only one out-and-out health addition on the Series 10 – and that’s the addition of sleep apnea detection.

Sleep apnea is a breathing condition that affects millions of people – and 80% of sufferers don’t know that they have it. It can leave people tired and irritable even after long sleep, and is a leading cause of strokes and heart conditions. So it’s a seriously important health feature that will help a lot of Apple Watch users.

You really need months of data to make it work effectively. A prompt to warn that the user might have sleep apnea will only be delivered if half the nights tracked over an entire month show elevated breathing disturbances. You can see that in the ever-complicated Apple Health app by going to Respiratory > Breathing Disturbances. And you’ll need to go in and turn it on first.

So this isn’t a feature that you can just test and tick off – perhaps like ECG. We’ll update further as we finish a full month of sleep apnea testing so you can see what it looks like – but you can see a sample of the testing above. 

Disturbances can be caused by a host of factors (as usual, alcohol is at fault) so it’s not about individual nights but long term trends – theme of truly insightful wearables. It’s a bit of a set-and-forget feature, and it’s not something to check in with every morning. 

Another new feature (for most people) is also Vitals – which lands as part of watchOS 11. It will roll out to Series 6 and later – but lands on Series 10 natively. It offers an overview of your core vitals (heart rate, temperature, blood oxygen, sleep and breathing rate). It will alert you if two or more of these vitals goes out of range.

It’s a good implementation, and similar to Fitbit Health Dashboard and Whoop Health Monitor. It can help act as an early warning sign if you might be getting sick, or in my personal experience with these kinds of tools, act as a guide to when you might be recovered enough to take on life’s challenges once again.

Other smart new watchOS 11 features include the ability to pause your Activity Rings – as every day isn’t right to be smashing out fitness goals. And there are new pregnancy tracking insights, too. Women can see the baby’s gestational age and log symptoms within the Cycle Tracking app – which uses the temperature sensor to validate predictions.

Sleep tracking

While sleep apnea detection has been introduced, the sleep tracking experience itself has remained unchanged. It’s still quite a minimal look at your rest, with time asleep tracked alongside some information on sleep stages.

You can see a grading of how consistent your sleep schedule is – which is one of the best metrics you can focus on for improved rest. I don’t think Apple makes enough of this feature, but it’s right there on the watch.

Head into Apple Health and you can see heart rate during sleep, respiratory rate, and sleep averages over week, months and years. It’s still very data heavy in there – and doesn’t have any actionability.

It’s still a long way short of the likes of Whoop and Oura in terms of the analysis of sleep trends – and things like recovery. Missing information I’d like to see are things like average bed times, or sleep need, which can prompt you to have a few early nights. It feels like an overview of sleep, rather than an active sleep tracker.

In terms of accuracy, it’s normally pretty good. It tracks, on average, around 30 mins longer than Whoop which is notoriously aggressive in terms of its sleep estimates. Apple Watch Series 10 was largely in time with Oura – so as long as you just want a sleep duration estimate (the most important bit) then you should be OK.

And of course, you can always grab a third party Apple Watch sleep app.

Sports features

There are new features for kayaking and other on-water sports on Series 10 – and water-based activity feels the major changes on Series 10.

Swimming workouts can now be customized, so you can do pool intervals and Apple has added the depth sensor and water temperature sensor from the Ultra – and data will feed into activities such as snorkelling. That is covered by an expanded Oceanic+ app, an officially recommended third party app, which Apple has previously used for the Ultra’s diving capabilities.

The Depth app will track automatically when submerged in water, but you can also use it manually – and water temperature readings are useful for beach bathing and new parents doing a baby’s bath and other uses (probably).

Sports tracking also now gets Training Load Insights, which will tell you whether you’re above or below a rolling average of your training. I didn’t find it quite as detailed as Garmin’s same feature – but it’s simply presented, with two lines, one with last week’s load, and one with the current weeks.

There’s loads more detail in the Fitness app, and this is where you can see how different training affected your health via your Vitals.

This is a really neat and simple view – and something that’s captured elements of Whoop insights, but in many ways, improved on it. It’s a good way of ensuring that you’re not falling behind – and seeing the effects of over-training.

I also just want to thank Apple for the Tide app – which natively adds really useful functionality for coast dwellers. I quickly added in my local beach (although had to use the on-screen search which was still very fiddly). A really useful time saver.

Heart rate accuracy

The heart rate sensor array hasn’t changed on Series 10 – so there’s no real change in accuracy expected. I found it more than good enough for my weekly workouts, even for training via zones.

Against the chest strap, the Apple Watch Series 10 performed admirably against a chest strap, with no statistical difference. That’s good news for runners and cyclists – and anyone that undertakes steady workouts. But we’d expect that from most wearables in 2024.

Functional fitness and workouts with a lot of wrist flex are a different story. We didn’t see any massive outages during a yoga workout, which had a lot of push ups, which can be notoriously difficult for watches to track.

But I wouldn’t recommend wearing an Apple Watch and chucking a lot of weights around – the risk of scratching is too high.

Smart features

In terms of exclusive smart features, most of the additions are via watchOS 11. 

But there’s a redesigned speaker on board too. And for the first time, Apple lets you listen to music or podcasts via the watch itself. The speaker is surprisingly good, yet…significantly worse than the iPhone. So I can’t see too many eventualities where this would be useful.

Apple has also added some clever new voice isolation too, which make you clearer to the other person if you take calls Dick Tracey style – which is sometimes really useful.

In terms of improved smart features, SmartStack is improved, and apps can now take advantage of the APIs. So scrolling through cards is more personal than last year – with relevant bits of information displayed. It just feels way more useful and contextual.

The Photos watch face has also been overhauled – so it makes portrait shots look much better on the dial, with AI used to show the clock over the image.

You can read our full guide to the changes in watchOS 11 here.

Battery life

At the start of this review I mentioned that Apple solved the problems of utility, purpose and design. But there’s one thing it hasn’t: battery life. It’s not alone here – all the main smartwatches (Galaxy Watch/Pixel Watch/Series 10) have poor, single day battery. But some rivals (TicWatch Pro 5/OnePlus) have made strides using clever co-processors.

This is the 10th Apple Watch Series review written here on Wareable, and each one has listed the unmoving single day battery life as its biggest flaw. And it is a serious flaw.

This time out Apple has added faster charging, via the redesigned metal back of the Series 10. This improved charge time to 80% in 30 minutes –which I tested and was borne out, almost exactly.

It does help take pressure off the battery, which is hard to manage when you use the sleep tracking, which now powers Vital, sleep apnea and all that other good stuff.

Popping the watch on in the morning usually left me with around 30% at bed time – with a 30-60 min workout included. That would usually be around 15% by morning – with the watch dead by mid-morning. That’s difficult to manage and the fast charging helps if you make sure you pop it on charge as soon as you wake up – but it’s also just a bit of mental load having to plan in a charge.

Battery life for GPS workouts has improved dramatically over the years and a 1 hour 20 run depleted just 15% of the battery. So it’s easily good for most runners to do a marathon, or big races.

Is the battery life good enough? No. But it can be made to work. It’s just a question of whether you want to run that daily battle.

The post Apple Watch Series 10 review: Big and beautiful upgrade appeared first on Wareable.

Source link