The thing to understand about Apple Watch releases, is they aren’t targeting last year’s buyers. Nor even the year prior. Instead, they’re targeting previous Apple Watch owners 3-5 generations back. And true to that form, Apple each year just slightly increases the specs to make the upgrade path a bit more appealing. A bit more shiny. And a bit more brilliant.
Which, is exactly what the Apple Watch Series 10 does. There are no earth-shattering new features here for most consumers, well, unless you snorkel a lot. But under the covers, it’s a substantial change in terms of the internals to fit into the thinnest Apple Watch to date, with also the biggest screen on any Apple Watch to date. And you’ll certainly notice that big screen when comparing it to even just the 45mm unit from last year. Instead, the majority of the new features come from the also new WatchOS 11, bringing in sports training load, overnight sleep metric trending, a new Tides app, and more.
I’ve been putting all these features to the test, both in the Apple Watch Series 10, as well as within watchOS 11, to see how well they work both day-to-day, as well as in sports applications. As usual, this watch is a media loaner, and it’ll go back to Apple. After which I’ll go out and get my own for any future testing needs. If you found this review useful, you can use the links at the bottom, or consider becoming a DCR Supporter, which makes the site ad-free, while also getting access to a behind-the-scenes video series And of course, it makes you awesome.
With that, let’s get into it!
What’s New:
As is always the case with the Apple Watch releases, it’s really divided into two major camps: Things that are new on the watch itself (usually hardware) relative to the previous hardware version, and then things that are new due to the new WatchOS platform (which is announced months earlier in June). In this review, I’m aiming to cover both of those things, given I’ve spent all summer on WatchOS 11 since back in early June.
Starting on the Series 10-specific side first, here’s what’s new there:
– Totally new design internally, and new model sizes being introduced: 42mm/46mm
– Biggest usable display area to date in any Apple Watch: 374x446px for the 42mm 416x496px for the 46mm
– Thinnest design to date (9.7mm versus 10.7mm on Series 9)
– New ‘Ionic Glass’ screen design, which tapers further down the edge of the display
– New “Wide Angle OLED’ display, which is 40% brighter when viewed on an angle
– Always-on display mode will now show seconds even when wrist is down (updates at 1-second rate in standby mode, versus 1-minute rate)
– Added ability to have speaker play media/music (previously it wouldn’t, had to connect headphones)
– New faster charging times, 80% charge in 30 mins (fastest Apple Watch to date)
– New S10 sip (chipset) inside the Series 10
– Adds new voice calling automatic background removal with new neural network
– Adds depth gauge (supports depths to 6m/20ft for snorkeling – still maintains 50m waterproofing)
– Adds temperature sensor (supports water temperature for swimming activities)
– Adds new ’Tides’ app to show tidal data globally
– Adds snorkeling support for Series 10 (via 3rd party Oceanic App/partnership)
– Adds sleep apnea detection, monthly reporting with analysis reports
– Adds new sleep metric: breathing disturbances (which feeds into sleep apnea detection)
– Adds new ‘Flux’ watch face
– Adds new ‘Reflections’ watch face
– Adds new metal backplate to watch
– Three color options for base edition: Rose Gold, Silver Aluminum, Jet Black
– Three new polished titanium versions, weigh 20% less than existing stainless steel variants
– Titanium Series 10 is a carbon-neutral product
– Same pricing at $399 (42mm) & $429 (46mm), or $499/$529 for the cellular editions.
– Pricing for titanium is $699 for the 42mm, and $749 for 46mm (but includes cellular)
– Shipping on September 20th, 2024
Got all that? Good, now we get to layer in the WatchOS 11 features, which cover plenty of areas, but I’ll be mostly focusing on the sports/fitness/health ones. They are as follows:
– Added new workout Training Load features
– Added Vitals app (for trending overnight sleep metrics)
– Added custom routes for hiking/walking/running
– Added true offline maps to watch
– Added ability to pause Activity Rings
– Added ability to adjust goals on a per-day basis (e.g. Saturday)
– Added structured swim workouts
– Added distance and route maps to a pile of sport types
– Added safety check-in feature at start/end of work-out
– Added intelligent Smart Stack
– Added automatic offline language translations when you arrive in a country
– Added new watch faces/styles
And again, there’s a smattering of other very minor tweaks as well, but that’s the bulk of them.
Finally, note that there’s no change in the SpO2/blood oxygen sensor status. That remains as it has been since earlier this year, wherein Apple is unable to sell units with it enabled within the US. Existing users can keep the feature on their watch, as well as all non-US purchases. But units purchased in the US will not have that feature enabled. The hardware remains the same, so in the (seemingly unlikely) event something changes in a court case, it could be re-enabled. In fact, you’ll notice in WatchOS 11 on the Series 10, the user interface slot that was there in the ‘Vitals’ app for SpO2 is now removed.