Apple Watch Series 2

It’s been a while coming. The constantly evolving iPhone and iPad line-up has taught us to expect Apple products to be updated on a yearly basis, but the original Apple Watch was on the market for 16 months before its successor was released. And here it is: the Apple Watch Series 2, which attempts the classic second-generation tech product trick of correcting everything that went wrong with the original, retaining everything that went right, and expanding its appeal from early adopters to the elusive mainstream.

Design

Depending on the model, colour finish and watch strap you plump for, you may not be able to tell the difference between the Series 2 and the original Apple Watch.

There are new colour options and straps, but the exterior chassis design is in essence the same – just slightly thicker (a barely noticeable 11.4mm versus 10.5mm). Most of this extra thickness seems to have gone into the screen, on which more soon.

It’s a strong and attractive design, in our opinion, albeit one that divided opinion at launch and continues to do so. Many people prefer the traditional aesthetics of a round watch face (such as the Guess Connect semi-smartwatch), although a rounded-corner rectangle is more practical for text display purposes.

The minimalist design includes just two discreet hardware controls: a small rotatable dial that can also be pressed (the Digital Crown), and the Side Button. These are both on the same side of the device. We found that the Digital Crown got a bit sticky over 16 months of sweaty and often fitness-focused everyday wear – of late we often tap it and accidentally activate Siri, which is supposed to respond to a long-press. It’s too early to say whether the Series 2’s improved waterproofing will make it more resistant to this kind of thing, but we hope so.

There are new straps from Hermès, and we were impressed by the looks and design of the new ceramic Apple Watch Edition (shown opposite). This will set you back a cool £1,249 for the 38mm version, but on the plus side you do get what can only be described as a ‘solid block of unicorn horn’ on your wrist. The off-white sport band that comes with it might not feel ‘premium’ enough to reflect the price of the watch, but aesthetically it’s a decent fit for the overall look of the ceramic Apple Watch Edition.

Given the different straps and material available for the Apple Watch Series 1 and 2, there’s something for everyone: which is important when you’re talking about something as personal as a watch. It still comes in a 38- or 42mm version, this size referring to the height of the body rather than a diagonal measure of the screen.

Waterproofing

Whereas the original Watch was water-resistant to a depth of 1m for 30 minutes, the Apple Watch Series 2 has a water-resistance rating of 50m under ISO standard 22810:2010. In other words, we’ve gone from wearing it in the shower to wearing it swimming, and to celebrate this Apple has added two swimming options to the Workout app.

This improved water resistance is achieved by the use of stronger glue and more gaskets, along with a clever new feature that ‘spits’ water out of the speaker cavity after the watch makes it back to dry land.

A new Water Lock mode stops the touchscreen being activated underwater. It’s accessed by pressing the ‘drop’ icon in Control Centre, but will be turned on automatically when you start one of those swimming routines in Workout. After you get out of the water, you’ll need to rotate the Digital Crown. This turns off Water Lock and plays a noise from the speakers in such a way that the vibration ejects liquid from the speaker cavity.

GPS

Fitness tracking was a huge aspect of the first-generation Apple Watch’s appeal, but it was stymied in this to a certain extent by its lack of GPS: this meant that runs could be tracked only by approximation.

Well, that gap has now been filled and the Series 2 has built-in GPS, so it can be considered a genuine standalone fitness tracker. This means you can go for a run or cycle ride and extract accurate data from your workouts.

We’ve observed noticeably improved accuracy when tracking runs with the Series 2. Doing

circuits round a track that Google Maps reckons is a kilometre in circumference, the Series 2 gave successive reports of 940-, 960- and 960m – and these were done at deliberately inconsistent speeds, a trick which always used to stump the first-generation watch and its stride estimation. The route to and from the track, which the map puts at about 1.5km, was reported as 1.54km on the way there and 1.53km on the way back, again recorded at different speeds. It’s certainly consistent.

For comparison with the first-generation, GPS-free Apple Watch, we went out again the next night and did three more laps. This time the Series 2 was even more consistent – 960-, 960- and 960m – while the original Watch, which had received a respectable amount of stride-learning training, reported 880-, 900- and 910m – consistent in its own right, but clearly tending to under-report the distance. If you didn’t train the first-generation with an iPhone it would be far less accurate than that; if you spent more time training it, you could probably improve things a little, but not by much.

Having GPS has a secondary benefit, and this is the ability to track runs on a map. If you open an Apple Watch 2-tracked workout from within the Activity app, you’ll see a little map thumbnail at the bottom; tap this and you’ll be shown a fullscreen map of the route you took.

Also on the fitness front, the Apple Watch comes with a good range of preinstalled apps: Activity, which tracks calories burned, exercise minutes and hours in which you’ve stood up for at least a minute; Workout, which tailors fitness tracking to a range of specific sporting activities; the self-explanatory Heart Rate; and Breathe, which helps with mindfulness and may assist with relaxation although your mileage may vary.

Display

The Apple Watch Series 2 has an AMOLED display that is twice as bright as the screen on the original watch, according to Apple – and sure enough, it’s a lot easier to make out what’s on the screen in sunny conditions. In fact, subjectively the screen feels sharper, although the screen resolution is actually unchanged.

Be warned that in direct sunlight, you may still find yourself struggling to clearly see what’s on the display – this is the nature of the technology.

Every model of the Series 2 is protected by sapphire glass, which is stronger than the Ion-X glass used on 2015’s Apple Watch Sport model (the other models of the first-generation Apple Watch had sapphire glass). All Series 2 watches have a sapphire glass, making it a more durable option in the long run.

Performance

The processors in the Apple Watch Series 1 and Series 2 have been upgraded to the S1P and S2 CPUs respectively. Both are dual-core and offer 50 percent faster speeds over the S1 (the single-core processor found in the 2015 Apple Watch). The GPU that handles the visual display on the Apple Watch has also received a boost: it’s twice as fast as its predecessor.

This healthy boost in speed is a pleasing addition, but we feel watchOS 3 greatly contributes to the user experience being noticeably quicker: our first-generation Watch, updated to feature watchOS 3, has also got speedier. It’s available on all Apple watches as a free upgrade, but comes out of the box in the Series 1 and 2 models.

Battery life

While the specifications quoted opposite peg them at the same ‘up to 18 hours’ figure for battery life, our tests show that the Series 2 has a better battery life than the original Apple Watch.

We started with a short-term comparison test. We took a Series 2 and a first-generation Watch off their chargers at noon; eight hours later, using both devices for the same tasks throughout the afternoon and early evening, the Series 2 was on 86 percent and the first-generation on 69 percent. That’s a big gap to have opened up so quickly, although bear in mind this is after the latter going through 16 months of battery wear, so a comparison between box-fresh samples would be closer.

The Series 2 can manage two days of use between charges comfortably, something that we struggled to achieve with the original Watch even when it was brand new. If you missed a night’s charging with the first-generation (perhaps you were staying away overnight and forgot to pack the charger), you had to grit your teeth, power down for the night and use the watch as little as possible and it would generally give up the ghost late on the second day, preferably after you’d closed your Activity rings and kept the streak going.

In a new test, we charged the Series 2 overnight and took it off the charger at 7am as usual. At the end of the second day – with no particular care taken to nurse the battery – the Series 2 was on 22 percent. The third morning, at 7am, it was on 14 percent, and it finally ran out of charge just after 1pm on the third day. That’s unprecedented in our experience with Apple wearables, and is a good effort by the standards of any fully fledged smartwatch with a colour screen.

Is the S2 a more power-efficient chip than the S1? Maybe – and remember it has a brighter screen to power, too. Impressive stuff.

Verdict

If you’re into fitness tracking with a sprinkling of notifications and superb integration with the iPhone, this is a near-perfect option. The Apple Watch Series 2 is a great wearable, and the only one we’ve seen that feels like it has any chance at all of taking wearables into the mainstream.