The Apple Watch Review
by Joshua Ho & Brandon Chester on July 20, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Wearables
- Apple
- Mobile
- Apple Watch
Prior to the launch of the Apple Watch, there had been rumors that Apple would make a watch for quite some time. In a broader sense, the wearables industry has become an area of significant interest as the next growth market after devices like tablets and smartphones as the high-end market became saturated and much of the growth that previously existed in the mobile space started to level out. This has resulted in a new alignment of markets and technology; the markets are ripe for a new device to recapture the wild growth of smartphones, and in the 8 years since the launch of the iPhone the inexorable march of Moore's Law has seen another 4 generations of improvements in technology. This time is finally right, it seems, to take a crack at something even smaller and more personal than the smartphone: the watch.
About two years ago, we put out our first wearable review, which examined Samsung’s Galaxy Gear. In the time since then, Android Wear has been launched, with numerous OEMs launching some form of wearable using Google’s wearable OS. However, Apple remained curiously absent from the field despite numerous rumors suggesting that Apple would soon launch a wearable. Last year, Apple announced the Apple Watch, but it wasn’t until just a few months ago that it finally went on sale.
Consequently, Apple didn’t get a first-movers advantage getting into wearables, though it remains to be seen whether that would even matter. As the creator of the iPhone and frequently on the cutting edge of technology and design, Apple had enough good will with the public to be late, and at the same time with all eyes on them they could not afford to screw up. The end result is that though by no means a slight towards Apple’s competitors, there is a clear distinction between everything that has come before the Apple Watch and everything that will come after. For the consumer market as a whole, the launch of the Apple Watch signifies that wearables have moved beyond the early adopter phase for techies, and are now being pitched at (and purchased by) the wider consumer market.
Normally, it’s easy enough to jump straight into what the device is and what’s new about said device, but in the case of the Apple Watch it’s really important that we explore the world in which this watch exists. The world is divided into people that wear watches, and people that don’t. Apple faces the distinct problem is trying to sell to both audiences, which have very different desires from a watch. The people that already have watches don’t want to give up the almost infinite battery life of conventional watches, high levels of water resistance, or anything else that is an accepted standard for watches.
The people that don’t wear watches are probably the closest thing to a clean slate that we’ll get when it comes to the wearable market. On a personal note, I fall into this camp, as I pretty much grew up in the age of widespread cellphone adoption. One of the convenient things about a phone is that they usually have the time on them, along with alarm and timer functionality. For me, this effectively meant that there was no point to wearing a watch. I also tended to have problems with the logistics involved in wearing a watch. In general, wristbands had an amazing tendency to either be too tight or too loose no matter how I adjusted the band. These issues were also compounded with any sort of physical exertion, as sweat tended to collect under the band which made wearing a watch noticeably more uncomfortable. These ergonomic issues, combined with the lack of functionality in a watch, ultimately made me stop wearing watches. Even before cellphones, wall-mounted clocks were more than sufficient for me when it came to checking the time, although I suspect I was far too young for time to really matter all that much.
Of course, I have been trying out various wearables over the course of the past few years. Although I didn’t try LG’s G Watch, I have been able to use the Pebble Steel and Motorola’s Moto 360. However, it was really a challenge for me to find anything to say about these wearables. They could definitely tell the time, and they had some extra functionality, but many of the same problems remained. The wearables I tested just weren’t all that comfortable to wear, and due to some technology limitations both weren’t really all that compelling to use. They could manage notifications, but other than that I found the functionality to be rather lacking. I often would forget to put them on at all before setting out for the day, and when I did I didn’t feel any particular need to go back to put it on my wrist. After a few months, I completely forgot about these wearables and stopped wearing them. At the time, I honestly felt like wearables could end up being another passing fad because it seemed most wearables faced similar barriers in terms of getting people to keep wearing them. Wearables like Fitbit suffered from a pretty significant abandonment rate, and given that I did the same for both the Pebble Steel and Moto 360 it increasingly felt like this would be a persistent problem.
In this context, it seems easy for Apple to fail. Generally speaking, no one has really figured out how to solve the problem of wearable adoption, chiefly because the functionality offered often wasn’t very compelling, and broadly speaking these wearables were often not well-designed. One of the first places we can start with the Apple Watch is the spec sheet. We can speak in empty platitudes about how specs don’t matter, but in the case of something like Apple Watch they definitely will. The right components won’t ensure success, but the wrong components can ensure a poor user experience.
| Apple Watch 38mm | Apple Watch 42mm | |
| SoC | Apple S1 520MHz CPU | Apple S1 520MHz CPU |
| RAM/NAND | 512MB LPDDR3(?) 8GB NAND |
512MB LPDDR3(?) 8GB NAND |
| Display | 1.32” 272x340 LG POLED | 1.5” 312x390 LG POLED |
| Dimensions | 38.6 x 33.3 x 10.5mm, 25/40/55/54 grams (Sport/Watch/Gold/Rose Gold) |
42 x 35.9 x 10.5mm, 30/50/69/67 grams (Sport/Watch/Gold/Rose Gold) |
| Battery | 205 mAh (0.78 Whr) | 246 mAh (0.93 Whr) |
| OS | WatchOS 1 | WatchOS 1 |
| Connectivity | 802.11/b/g/n + BT 4.0, NFC | 802.11/b/g/n + BT 4.0, NFC |
| Price | $349/549/10,000 (Sport/Watch/Edition) | $399/599/12,000 (Sport/Watch/Edition) |
As we can see, Apple has elected for some relatively conservative specifications. The SoC is relatively low power in nature, and the amount of RAM is probably about right for the kinds of tasks that a wearable will be used for at this time. The display is also of a decent resolution given the display size, and all the necessary wireless connectivity is present. It is notable that Apple is using a relatively small battery, but I suspect that this is necessary in order to fit all of the hardware into the casing of the watch. At least at a high level, it looks like Apple has put the right components into this wearable. However, it's going to take a deep examination of both technology and design to really figure out if Apple has avoided the pitfalls that I've discussed. One of the first and most obvious places to go first is the industrial and material design, which is what we'll talk about next.
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name99 - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
Regarding ARMv7k, check out the following story:http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/09/support-for-q...
Note the date --- Sept 2011. Further evidence that Apple plans these things a LONG time in advance,
(Relative to which, it is interesting to note that over the past month there has been a flurry of activity by Apple people on working LLVM targeting M-class processors. Maybe Apple are planning more IoT peripherals in a few years, or maybe they want to stick a small MPU in every Beats headset for some reason?
Or maybe they are moving from whatever they use today for PMU and sensor fusion on iOS/Watch to an M-class core?)
hlovatt - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
First, thanks for a great review. Excellent to have such detail.I don't wear a watch so won't be getting one. However I know 4 owners who are all very happy. They all previously owned smart watches, Garmin, Pebble, Fitbiz, etc. and universally prefer the Apple Watch. The tap thing sounds like a gimmick, but just try it - it's really well done.
Gripe: If you hate Apple so much that you can't be rational just leave Anandtech. There are plenty of places were you can have a mutual we hate Apple session. You are spoiling the site for others who want to discuss tech. If you prefer some other product just buy it, don't sling insults at others that disagree with you. Get real the reviewers said they wouldn't recommend the 1st gen device and you go off saying they have sold out etc. Totally unfair to them.
name99 - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
While investigating the CPU details in interesting (and thanks!!! for doing this) I think it's important to appreciate that the CPU is probably the least important thing about aWatch performance as it matters to the average person.There are IMHO three primary performance problems with aWatch today:
(a) There is far too little caching (in a very generic sense) so that third party apps (and some interactions with Apple apps) require communicating with iPhone. Much of this will disappear with WatchOS2; some of it may be an inevitable fact of life regarding how BT LE works and, in particular, the minimum possible latency when one side wants to talk to the other. But it's also possible that this latency could be reduced in future versions of BT by changing the rendezvous algorithm?
(b) The touch screen controller (I assume to save power) only seems to take initial sensor reading at around twice a second. The result is that the first time you touch the screen to scroll, there is an obvious halting until the system sort of "gets it" and starts smoothly scrolling. This is obviously a touch screen issue because using the digital crown (when that is feasible, so for vertical rather than horizontal scrolling) acts immediately and smoothly. The fix, presumably, is to ramp up the rate at which the touch screen controller does its initial sensing, but who knows what the power implications of that are.
(c) The heart rate sensor is on "full-time" (which means, I don't know, sensing once every 10 seconds?) when you are in the Workout app, but otherwise runs at a really low rate (once every ten minutes?) At least the way I use my aWatch, I'd prefer a higher rate.
I'm guessing that Apple was overly cautious about battery life in WatchOS1, and now that most people understand what to expect, and have about 40% battery at the end of the day, they can afford to bump up the sampling rates for all these different things (touch screen, heart rate, maybe even BT LE) and if that moves the battery life down to 20% battery at the end of the day, that's a pretty good tradeoff.
But nowhere in any of this is CPU performance actually an issue. I can't think of anywhere where CPU or GPU performance affect the experience.
name99 - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
A few comments about fitness:The primary thing using the Workout app does, as far as I can tell, is switch to ongoing (rather than coarse) monitoring of heart rate and position, which is useful but not essential. However it DOES also give you a nice display of whatever you consider important. My Pebble used to kinda sorta track steps and thus calories, but the fact that the watch tracks and displays heart rate on the Workout app screen is actually really useful. With the Pebble I'd kinda slack off when doing a run or step climbing being that's only natural, but when your heart rate is displayed you have more incentive to keep pushing.
The workout app is also nice if you're trying to hit your calorie burn goal every day. If you get to say 10pm or so and are 150 calories short, you can set a calorie goal (rather than say a time goal or a distance goal) and then just start stepping while watching TV or whatever.
Two useful facts to know (which I don;t think you mention). You can launch Workout (or any app) through "Hey Siri launch workout" rather than navigating to the app screen. (It's also useful to know that Hey Siri as a way to start speech ONLY works when the screen is lit up. If you don't know this, it's maddening at first as half the time it seems to work and half the time it doesn't.
Also double-clicking the digital crown toggles between the most recent app and the watch face. I use it a lot to toggle between watch and workout.
Finally most readers are probably young and think the stand up stuff is dumb or pointless. It really isn't, at least for older people. I've got to the stage where, when I stand up I can feel a kind of stiffness in the muscles, you know that old person sigh when you get up. And I've found that since getting the watch and heeding the stand notices, that has pretty much disappeared --- it really does help older muscles to not get locked into no motion for two or more hours.
(Also if you find the standing irritating, it's worth noting that the watch wants you to stand for a full minute, with some motion. At first I just used to stand then pretty much immediately sit down. That's not good enough and it won;t give you credit for that. But if you stand and pace for a minute or so, it will always give a little ding and reward you with credit for the stand.)
The one thing I wish (there is so much we can all want them to add to WatchOS2 and then WatchOS3) is a data broadcast mechanism. In particular, if the workout data could be displayed simultaneously on a phone (placed near a TV or on a step machine control panel) that would be much more comfortable than having to flick the wrist every minute or so to check one's heartbeat. Oh well, in time...
navysandsquid - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
I've never seen such a butthurt bunch of people. Almost every review on the internet give the apple watch a favorable review. Maybe you guys should stop letting you hate consume you. Anandtech has done one of the most indepth review of the apple watch. Which they do with most products. If you don't like apple products don't read the reviews. Your pathetic for even comments such ignorant things like "Watch under 9 days of battery life is unacceptable" Like please name a watch device with this much capability that runs longer then a couple days. oh wait you cant. I've had the watch for about 2 months and this review is spot on weather you like apple or not. Anandtech is a good review site. So just look in the mirror and say "Why do I hate them so much" Let me answer that for you. You don't like paying for what you get. Wait let me rephrase that. you do like paying for what you get your just to cheap to pay for quality. so p1ss of and buy yours self a Samsung smart watch for 149$ and let it collect dust lol I'm donename99 - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
"Glances are well-executed and a useful feature, but I don’t really get the point of integrating heart rate monitoring into a glance or similar cases of app information"The authors appear unaware that you can customize glances. Go to the Watch app on iPhone and look around. You can both hide glances you find unimportant, and rearrange those that you want to use. Once you've done this, you can basically prioritize so that the most important stuff is in complications, while second tier stuff lives in glances, and third tier stuff requires an app launch.
name99 - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
"Moving on to the saturation test, we can see that Apple has put a huge amount of effort into calibrating these displays, which is somewhat surprising given that one might expect wearables to not be all that critical when it comes to color accuracy."A persistent (and STILL not fixed) problem with the Apple ecosystem is that the faces of contacts display slightly differently on OSX vs iOS. There are outright bugs in the system (.psd photoshop files get incorrectly cropped on iOS, and different gamma is applied on OSX and iOS) but these may be fixed with the new Contacts framework of iOS9/OSX 10.11.
Point is --- your eye is actually remarkable sensitive to these apparently very slight deviations, at least when it comes to faces. So it makes sense for Apple to line up their hardware so that when they (at LONG FREAKING LAST!) get their software act together, the face photos do look identical across the line.
(And BTW how long will we have to keep typing in triples like iOS10/OSX 10.12/WatchOS3? At some point, and I think we're reaching that point, it's time to just refer to AppleOS 2015 followed by AppleOS 2016 followed by ...)
aryonoco - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
I am not an Apple hater, and I am very curious in the Apple Watch and the whole wearables category. However I agree with those who say that this review was below Anandtech's standards. Overly wordy, with too little information. I don't think I have ever said this about an Anandtech review before, but after reading this, I really don't think I learned a single thing that I didn't know going into the review.whiteiphoneproblems - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
Without wanting to "pile on," I agree that this review could have been 1/3 the length, and 3x as helpful. I usually look to AT for the "best" review of any mobile device, but I would not say that is the case with this particular review. Most other Apple Watch reviews I've read have been more useful. (I think it comes down to editing.)nrencoret - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
+1 on that. I think you nailed the fact that Anandtech's succes is after reading an article, you always come out at the end a bit (or a lot in some cases) smarter. This review breaks the trend.