APPLE WATCH 6
More evolution than revolution, new sensors and better health tracking still make this the best yet From £379 apple.com
With a brighter display and blood O2 sensor, this flagship is better than ever
iven you’ve already read our Apple Watch SE review (p64), here we’re focusing on what makes the Watch 6 unique. And there’s plenty to justify its price, with a boosted screen and more health sensors than you can shake a stick at.
Starting with the screen, the main development is that the always-on display is now 2.5 times brighter than on the Series 5, which is a pretty damn significant increase. When you turn the Watch to face you, the always-on OLED display pushes itself to full brightness, which, as with the SE, is around 1,000 nits.
In terms of design, this new watch is marginally thinner and is in four new colours. You can now get the aluminium case in both blue and red, and both are pretty fetching. The stainless steel version comes in a new gold finish that replaces the old one, and a new ‘Graphite’ finish that replaces the old ‘Space Black’.
When it comes to new health and fitness features, only the pulse oxygen sensor is a major addition in the Series 6. Additional LED lights on the back of the Watch can sense how
Gwell-fuelled with oxygen your blood is. This can be of interest to those especially into fitness training, for tracking how quickly your body regains its oxygen. For the non-hardcore, it’s potentially useful as a way to check your health. As we’ve already mentioned in our Watch SE review, watchOS 7’s sleep tracking works reasonably well but is rather basic. The oxygen sensor again does take a couple of readings overnight, which could theoretically be beneficial for helping to spot sleep apnea, but this seems like too few to tell you much.
The health support in the Watch isn’t just limited to this, of course. The regular heartbeat sensor runs throughout the day, and can warn you if your heart rate is especially high or low, and can spot an irregular heartbeat, which you can more accurately check with the ECG.
The type of stats the heartbeat sensor records is enough for most people, but won’t be deep enough for those looking to really hone their triathlon time. This means that the Apple Watch is a do-anything fitness watch, but not a highly specialised one, and we’re good with that.
Ultimately, the Apple Watch Series 6 feels like more of a premium price than its predecessors, but the overall quality of its design, plus its screen quality and smooth operation, all leave it feeling worth the cost.