Apple Watch Series 6
The world’s smartest smartwatch
The Apple Watch has long been the best smartwatch you can buy. Its advantage was hammered home by the Series 5 ( see
issue 303, p70), and no rivals have appeared over the past 12 months that challenged Apple’s position. With the Series 6, several improvements mean it’s even more firmly ensconced at the top of the wearables sector.
Android phone owners still aren’t catered for, despite the new Family Setup feature I describe below, but if you own an iPhone there’s nothing – in terms of capabilities – that even comes close.
From the front, the Series 6 looks no different from the past two generations. The digital crown is still there, with the side button below it, and the AMOLED display sticks to the same size and resolution as its predecessors: it measures 1.57in across the diagonal on the 40mm watch with a 394 x 324 resolution, while the 44mm watch has a 1.78in screen with a resolution of 448 x 368.
There are new colours: I found the dark blue ( right) finish particularly attractive, but you may prefer the stainless steel gold model or, and this is for those of a more exhibitionist bent, the Product Red version. Elsewhere, there are a couple of stretchy one-piece straps called the Solo Loop and the Braided Solo Loop along with yet more watch faces: Typograph, Chronograph Pro and Stripes. Note that both the straps and watch faces work with older models.
It’s only when you flip it over that you get your first signs of change, with a new configuration of eight LEDs and sensors at the rear, instead of a central sensor surrounded by a ring of LEDs. Inside, there’s the more efficient and powerful S6 chip, which is based on the A13 Bionic processor first used in the iPhone 11.
Catching up on sleep
What’s really interesting is how these changes affect the Series 6’s tracking capabilities, with sleep and SpO2 measurements the main headlines. Although Apple is late to the sleepover party, its features are cleverly implemented.
Rather than just track your sleep patterns, Apple ties them into a bedtime mode, which includes setting a daily alarm, a target number of hours for sleep and a wind-down period.
Once the mode is enabled – via a swipe up from the bottom of the screen – the watch goes into a low-power configuration where the display dims and notifications are disabled. You can still check the time in the middle of the night with a tap, but it won’t dazzle you when you do. And, when your alarm goes off and you clear it, you’re instantly presented with a summary of data about how you slept.
The downside is that the sleep analysis is light on detail compared with rivals. The Apple Watch will tell you how much time you spent asleep, your average this week compared with the previous week and that’s pretty much it. Rivals such as Fitbit provide far more data and an overall score.
Blood oxygen
SpO2 tracking is trickier to gauge but appears to be well implemented. It’s part of a trend among activity trackers that has gathered pace as Covid-19 has taken hold. With the
“The Series 6’s bedtime mode includes setting a daily alarm, a target number of hours for sleep and a wind-down period”
coronavirus’ ability to quietly starve the body of oxygen, keeping tabs on your SpO2 levels could help you realise that you’re unwell, even if you’re asymptomatic.
Apple is careful to point out that the SpO2 readings generated by the Series 6 shouldn’t be used in this way. And it doesn’t generate any kind of alert or offer assistance in interpreting the results, either.
Readings are relatively easy to take. For a spot check, all you do is fire up the Blood Oxygen app on the watch, place your wrist on a table or in your lap and sit still for 15 seconds. The watch will also take readings in the background from time to time to build up an overall picture of your blood-oxygen levels, so you should be able to spot any trends within the Apple Health app.
Alas, I don’t have a medical-grade SpO2 monitor to compare the Series 6 with, so I can’t speak to its accuracy, but I noticed that the readings varied depending on when I carried them out, the position of my arm and so on. While most of my readings were in the normal range of 95% to 100%, there were a few worrying occasions when it dipped down to 92%. I suggest that hypochondriacs steer clear.
Family Setup (and the rest)
The other big new feature is Family Setup, which lets you set up an extra Apple Watch for a relative or child who doesn’t need to be connected to an iPhone. It works on the cellular models of the Series 4 onwards, so it isn’t a Series 6 exclusive, but there are useful features here.
The Ask to Buy feature means you can screen and approve purchases from the App Store, while Location Sharing allows you to keep tabs on the wearer’s location. Finally, the Schooltime feature lets you set up a block of time (such as 9am to 3pm on weekdays) where access to apps and notifications is restricted.
While it’s not essential, you’ll probably want to purchase a data plan for any watch you set up in this way, or you’ll be severely restricting its functionality while out and about.
Other new features are more subtle. First up, the always-on screen is now considerably brighter than on the Series 5, to the extent that there now isn’t much of a difference between the live and always-on display modes.
The Series 6 has a more responsive “always-on” altimeter too: it can now read the altitude more frequently than it did before when it was restricted to polling once every 15 minutes or so.
The feature doesn’t manifest itself in the form of an app, though. Instead, you’ll see evidence of it in workout modes when you have the metric enabled, and on watch faces with the elevation complication enabled.
Lastly, the new, more sensitive optical heart rate reader means it can calculate VO2 max at lower ranges. It’s more accurate for less fit individuals, in other words.
For sporty types
The Series 6 will never give you the inworkout customisability of a Garmin Forerunner or one of Polar’s high-end watches, yet it does everything else pretty well. When running, you can set distance, time or calorie targets for each workout and it’s also possible to chuck in things such as pace alerts and customise the metrics shown on the watch face.
There’s a huge breadth of other activities you can track too. All of the core sports are here – cycling, walking, hiking and gym sessions, plus pool and open-water swimming – as well as more niche activities such as archery, kickboxing and crosscountry skiing.
Accuracy is excellent, both for heart-rate tracking and GPS. I compared the former against a Myzone MZ-3 chest belt and found the heart rate on the Series 6 to be almost perfect. It was rarely more than two or three beats per minute low or high. It was a similar story for
GPS accuracy.
“I was typically getting longer than 24 hours out of it, even with the always-on display enabled and an hour of GPS usage”
Battery disappointment
Perhaps the one area of disappointment is battery life, which hasn’t changed at all for the Series 6. Apple claims “allday battery life”, which is “based on 18 hours with the following use: 90 time checks, 90 notifications, 45 minutes of app use, and a 60-minute workout with music playback from Apple Watch via Bluetooth, over the course of 18 hours”. This is with a continuous Bluetooth connection to an iPhone.
For workout-tracking, battery life is quoted at up to 11 hours for indoor workouts, seven hours with GPS enabled and six hours if you use GPS and 4G together.
I found these claims largely tallied with my experience. Indeed, I was typically getting slightly longer than 24 hours out of it, even with the always-on display enabled and an hour of GPS usage. That’s still not stellar, though, as manufacturers such as Garmin are now producing wearables that last weeks on a
single charge.
Wallet watch out?
The battery life is a familiar complaint and my only major one. In all other respects, the Series 6 is a superb product. It isn’t a huge upgrade, so if you already own a Series 5 then there are no big reasons to drop another £379 on this. (Note that the 40mm model costs £409, while adding 4G to either watch costs £100 extra).You might also consider the Watch SE ( see p70) for £110 less. However, the Series 6 in its latest guise remains the best smartwatch iPhone owners can buy and a capable all-round fitness tracker to boot.
SPECIFICATIONS
40mm model: 1.5in, 312 x 390 OLED touchscreen 34 x 10.7 x 404mm (WDH) 31g
44mm model: 1.7in, 368 x 448 OLED touchscreen 38 x 10.7 x 44mm (WDH) 37g
Both: Dual-core Apple S6 processor 32GB storage 802.11n Wi-Fi Bluetooth 5 heart-rate sensor blood oxygen sensor ECG altimeter compass gyroscope
GPS water resistance to 50m watchOS 6 1yr RTB warranty