from £299 | £599 as shown
For
Great design, Glances, stylish, battery life, reply to text messages, photo watch faces, Apple Pay
Against
Apps are slow to load when not native, no GPS, no third-party watch faces, doesn't offer huge amounts over what is on the market
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Before it even went on sale the Apple Watch, which some affectionately call the iWatch, polarised opinion around the globe. Six months on from initial launch and it's still up against a multitude of challengers, with the number seemingly growing by the week.
You probably either believe the Apple Watch is a product moving technology in a positive direction or one simply not worth the time of day. In reality it's neither one nor the other. Apple's sentiment is that the Watch is as much a fashion statement as it is a functional tool to get stuff done. Oh, and to tell the time.
But can the Watch, even with the latest WatchOS 2 update, walk the fine line between fashion and function? Is it an accessory that others will lust after and promote your social standing - regardless of how vain you fancy being that week?
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We've been wearing an Apple Watch on the wrist since its UK launch - having now experienced what it's like to use in daily life and how people react to it - to bring you our definitive and updated verdict.
Apple Watch review: Which one to choose?
There are now four variations of the Apple Watch (Hermes being the newest addition to join the Sport, standard and Edition line-ups), available at a range of very different price points. The core experience of each is identical, so whether you opt for the aluminium, stainless steel or rose gold model the interface and what it can do doesn't change, the materials used and price point do.
And that price variation is quite drastic, ranging from the entry-level silicon band of the £299 Apple Watch Sport, to the £13,500 Rose Gold Apple Watch Edition. In the middle sits the "normal" Apple Watch - a stainless steel variant, available either polished or in black, complete with a sapphire crystal front - with a choice of straps, priced between £479 to £949 total.
In addition Apple has already confirmed details of a "Made for Apple Watch" strap programme and we expect a number of exclusive seasonal straps to surface to tie-in with spring-summer and autumn-winter fashion cycles. So far that's only extended to Hermes - the leather is beautiful, but we could easily see other tie-ins with fashion houses or brands like Tiffany or LVHM, or even perhaps an exclusive WWDC (Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference) strap.
Important though the strap choice is, back to the watch itself. It comes in two sizes: either a 38mm or 42mm rectangular OLED screen measure, loosely pitched as men's and women's devices, each of which fits comfortably on the wrist, well balanced in weight. The smaller watch has a slightly smaller battery capacity.
Apple Watch review: Straps, designs, and faces
Whichever Watch you choose the craftsmanship is exquisite. Our polished silver model has an air of Tiffany about it, although the black stainless steel version is more "manly", while the lesser polished Apple Watch Sport doesn't appear as premium in its approach when in silver - but that changes with the rose gold and gold versions, with a touch of colour making all the difference.
This isn't the LG Watch Urbane or the Huawei watch, both of which have taken their design ethos from watches like the Rolex Yachtmaster and Tag Heuer Carrera. Apple's lead designer, Jony Ive, has a love of clean lines that is ever apparent in the Apple Watch - the way the curved glass drops off to curved metal, there's not a single sharp edge on the thing. The design language apes other Apple products, but at the same time forms its own statement.
Over the last six months two of the Pocket-lint team have been wearing three different watches. A 42mm silver stainless steel with a Milanese Loop, priced £599, a 42mm rose pink Apple Watch Sport with sports strap, and a 38mm silver stainless steel Apple Watch with a metal link bracelet. These straps - from the Milanese Loop and metal link bracelet, to leather or silicon options - are easily changeable, sliding out to be replaced for different occasions. If, that is, you can afford spare ones. While we've been surprised at the quality of the Sport Band which is made from a silicon composite, the Link Bracelet has been prone to scratching. Our favourite, although no good for exercise, is the Milanese Loop.
Watches are fickle things and Apple's approach to tackle this is to let you change the faces. It's the same approach as Android Wear, which offers a variety of downloadable watch face options. Whether you want something timeless and classic or something more punchy will depend on your style, or even your mood at the time. You might even want to go with the Mickey Mouse option, and why not. However there are no third-party watch faces for Apple, as it's not an open platform system.
We've been wearing plenty of smartwatches over the last couple of years, but the world seems to always forget that Apple isn't the first player in this market. In the first couple of days wearing one pretty much everyone we met commented on it, but a number of months on that interest has died down. People don't comment on it, but are still intrigued if we interact with the device. It still brings a moment of amazement when we pay for things with Apple Pay (more on that later) but the excitement of the watch has gone.
Apple Watch review: The Digital Crown and more
Apple Watch's operating system is so different to any Apple OS that has come before it. And more complex.
Sporting a rectangular display rather than a classic round face, it is a better shape for reading notifications, but the icons and user interface is predominantly circular in its approach - an apparent play on replicating the digital crown control that sits on the right side, slightly above the middle of the watch.
The Watch operating system is based around three distinct areas - the watch face, Glances, and apps - with the digital crown the main physical controller, used to dial in and out of apps, elements within those apps, or return to the home page.
The digital crown isn't the only controller though. You can also voice command, push, talk, swipe, touch, tap and Force Touch press (different touch pressures resulting in different actions) your way through the interface. If you stop to think of all the possibilities the Watch presents, you'll quickly become overwhelmed.
It took us a couple of days to get to grips with the intricacies of the new interface and how to effectively interact with it. But once it's etched into your brain it quickly becomes second nature. A number of months on and it's incredibly easy to navigate around the interface - although using the dial is still a very considered thing to do.
Saying that, interacting with such a small screen could be fiddly for some. Thankfully we've got 20:20 vision to view those dinky icons, so we've not found using both the 38mm and 42mm to be a problem. Everyone we've shown over a given age has suggested they would need glasses to use it on a regular basis.
Apple Watch review: Shake to wake
Move your wrist and the Apple Watch springs into life, showing you the time, just like many other wearable devices. Well, that's the idea.
This wrist motion activation works most of the time, although you will find yourself adopting a certain "Apple Watch flick", as we are calling it, to make sure it happens. That's no good for casual glances in a meeting, but perfectly fine when it comes to raising your arm to see what time it is.
To conserve battery the screen quickly goes dark again, but in WatchOS 2 you can set it to remain on for 15 or 70 seconds; we recommend the later. There's no way to force the screen to be on all the time, but you can always press the digital crown or tap the screen to illuminate the screen once more.
Apple Watch review: Watch Faces
In addition to the 12 main current watch faces, there are a series of options (or complications as Apple calls them) to further manipulate the visuals. You can change the colour, reduce or add elements, or determine what auxiliary information (like moon cycles for example) to add or remove. There's third party support as well, so your favourite app can detail flight times there on your watch face, or a diet app can tell you your current calories consumed at a glance.
The designs range from serious to fun, through to kooky - so there should be something to suit everyone. You can create variations of the faces to be stored and selected, so you can have five versions of, let's say, the Simple watch face, and no Astronomy watch faces.
The kids will love Mickey, the do-ers Utility, and those looking for something different might like Motion which features either jelly fish, butterflies, or flowers. There are some clangers though: X-Large is typographically disgusting.
Apple also offers six time-lapses from six major locations around the world including Hong Kong, London, Mack Lake, Paris, New York, and Shanghai. All very pretty and they change depending on the time of the day. In addition to the moving images there is a new Photo watch face and a Photo Album watch face introduced with WatchOS 2.
You can feature your own images on the face of your Apple Watch too. Setting up a new picture is easy and the possibilities are endless regardless of whether you go for something iconography based or a picture of your family. The photo album option gives you the same focus, but like the Motion faces already available, changes the image every time the screen refreshes - ideal for an album with all your kids or your favourite places. It's not restricted to just photos either, so you can draw up an illustration, sync it to the Photos folder you’ve selected and away you go.
As with all smartwatches you can change the face when you want. A long press on the screen (Force Touch) means the moment you go off a design, find yourself in a different environment, or fancy a change, you can easily make a change.
There are some frustrations. You can't have third party watch face apps (one of the great things about the Pebble, for example), nor can you currently have faces change based on the time of day or your location. The Photo faces also can't be customised or any complications added - it's a digital clock, day, and date and that's it for these - in the same way certain other faces are restricted (for example a shortcut to the stopwatch is only available on the Chronograph watch face and not the Utility face).
Apple Watch review: Glances
One of the key ways to interact with the Apple Watch is through Glances.
These are best seen as shortcuts to an app that allow you to quickly see what's happening. Swiping up from the bottom of the watch face reveals your Glances, with left and right swipes then cycling through them accordingly.
You can manage which Glances you can see via the Apple Watch app for iPhone - and it's only from here you can determine whether or not a Glance is active or not. The app is also the hub where you'll find apps that work with the Apple Watch from its own store to save you having to randomly hunt them down in the main Apple App store.
By default Apple offers a number of Glances, such as your next calendar appointment, how much battery you have left, your heart rate, or activating Airplane Mode for both Watch and iPhone. We find it more approachable than Android Wear's cards, which feature everything all at once - not ideal if you're always checking the same thing over and over again.
Third-party app developers also offer Glances. Shazam, for example, allows you quickly tap to "listen" to music you are wanting to know more about without having to even touch your phone, while CNN will give you the latest Top Story from the site so you can see what's happening (to a point) in the world.
