Keep a watch on your health
The first Apple Watch was a novelty. It told the time, made Siri more accessible and helped the fitness tracker evolve into something more useful. Though I found it somewhat stodgy performance-wise. Also, you couldn’t swim with it and the number of useful apps didn’t tempt me to replace my oldfashioned manual watch. The Series 2 watch, released last year, improved on some of that but Apple thinks the newly released Series 3 is the one to make the smartwatch mainstream at last.
The watch, and its silver aluminium case, is available in two sizes, 38mm and 42mm. It’s worthwhile trying it on in a store first, as I found the sizing generous. However, the included sport-band strap is adjustable but the 42mm watch does look big on a small wrist. It also comes with a magnetic charging cable and power adapter.
A discreet button on the side powers the watch up and you launch the watch app on your iPhone. Almost immediately, the phone identifies the watch close by. The watch screen displays a futuristic graphic and you point the phone’s camera at it. As simple as that, my watch was paired to my phone and ready to go.
The features I was most keen to try, were the workout healthmonitoring ones. As you exercise, active calories, total calories and heart rate are displayed on screen. Being able to pause the workout by pressing both side-buttons is a useful feature. The various modes available include indoor and outdoor cycle. For those used to running or cycling with a Garmin watch, the Series 3 compares well and instantly activates GPS tracking so you don’t lose a step.
But the heart monitor is perhaps its single best feature and helps
‘The heart monitor is its single best feature and provides a fascinating insight for users’
the Health app on iPhone become truly insightful. Reviewing workouts is one thing, but the holistic view of your health data over time, including distance covered, calories burned and average and resting heart rate, provides a fascinating insight for users.
The new watch is also swimproof and has an altimeter. Which means it’s great for hiking or long undulating cycles, but it also seems remarkably accurate indoors. Over a couple of days it seemed to measure my floors climbed accurately.
Of course, as well as the impressive fitness and health applications, the Series 3 is essentially an extension of your iPhone. If you’re using compatible apps, you can get a wrist notification when your bank account is debited and you also get email and calendar notifications on your wrist. As well as that, you can almost go the full Dick Tracy and answer calls or talk to Siri via your watch. Easily customised, you can buy different straps, change the watch faces with a few swipes and even play the odd game. Apple says the watch has an ‘allday’ battery life. That translates to 18 hours after an overnight charge. The problem is you need to get in to the habit of taking your watch off at night. This is something wearers of traditional fitness bands with sleep tracking may find hard to adjust to and really is something Apple needs to improve on. Overall, though the Series 3 is a dramatic improvement on the last model. However, I’m still unsure whether calendar appointments or SMS messages on your wrist are really that useful. While the cellular version isn’t available here yet, I’m not sure I’d upgrade even if it were. For me, this is worth the upgrade for its health and fitness use rather than as a productivity tool or fashion accessory.