Apple Watch Series 4 review

Apple Watch Series 4 fea­tures a screen that’s been enlarged by a third, a new pow­er­ful proces­sor, a new and more accu­rate opti­cal heart rate sen­sor, new col­ors, a new wheel… In short, there is real­ly a lot of new stuff, for­give us for the tau­tol­ogy. We sug­gest mov­ing on to the review of the Apple Watch Series 4 as soon as pos­si­ble and under­stand whether it is worth buy­ing to replace old­er ver­sions.

Content

Release date and start of sales

Offi­cial­ly, the new watch from Apple was pre­sent­ed on Sep­tem­ber 12. In a num­ber of coun­tries, they began to sell them already on Sep­tem­ber 21, but in EU the offi­cial start of sales was sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber 28. Despite the fact that a month has already passed, the nov­el­ty has not been deliv­ered to all stores. In some places, watch­es are more expen­sive than the man­u­fac­tur­er rec­om­mends, and in some places, those who are eager to buy a nov­el­ty as soon as pos­si­ble are wait­ing for fakes (yes, don’t be sur­prised, such infor­ma­tion is already there). The offi­cial price for a small­er ver­sion (40 mm) is 310$, for a large one (44 m) — 330$.

When it comes to such expen­sive pur­chas­es, it is bet­ter to con­tact trust­ed sell­ers. This is a guar­an­tee of obtain­ing orig­i­nal qual­i­ty prod­ucts. The Apple Watch Series 4 is already on sale at re:Store, which is offi­cial part­ner and reseller of Apple in EU and Europe. In total, there are 85 stores in EU with demon­stra­tion sam­ples of all Apple prod­ucts. If there is no out­let in your city, you can order online. Pro­fes­sion­al staff will help you make a choice, tell you about pro­mo­tions, the bonus pro­gram of the store and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of install­ments. All goods in the store are offi­cial, all receive legal Euro­pean firmware. And the most inter­est­ing. Prices for all prod­ucts are as rec­om­mend­ed by the man­u­fac­tur­er, because this is not an inter­me­di­ary, but an offi­cial deal­er.

What’s new in design?

The most inter­est­ing thing about the nov­el­ty is the design. The man­u­fac­tur­er man­aged to make the watch rec­og­niz­able, but, at the same time, com­plete­ly new. Once upon a time there were rumors that the body would become round, but these were just rumors. The body has a square shape with round­ed cor­ners — it will look great, and it is very con­ve­nient to use.

If you are famil­iar with the com­pa­ny’s smart­watch­es, you will imme­di­ate­ly notice the grown screen, but more on that lat­er. As expect­ed, the watch came out in two ver­sions: 40 mm (instead of 38 mm in the pre­vi­ous ver­sion) and 44 mm (instead of 42 mm in the third series of watch­es). In addi­tion, the watch has become a lit­tle thin­ner, but this is not par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing. If you are inter­est­ed in exact num­bers, then the mini ver­sion has dimen­sions of 40 * 34 * 10.7 mm and a weight of 30.1 g, and the larg­er ver­sion is 44 * 38 * 10.7 mm and weighs 36.7 g.

The watch is avail­able in alu­minum and stain­less steel cas­es. Of course, the sec­ond option will be stronger and more durable, but the price is also high­er. Unfor­tu­nate­ly or for­tu­nate­ly for our wal­lets, only the alu­minum ver­sion will be offi­cial­ly sold in EU. But all exist­ing col­ors are pre­sent­ed: sil­ver, space gray and gold (to match the new iPhone XS). The man­u­fac­tur­er has almost com­plete­ly redesigned the wheel, the back pan­el with sen­sors now looks dif­fer­ent, the micro­phone and speak­ers have moved. All this is for the sake of improv­ing the qual­i­ty of prod­ucts.

There is good news for old­er Apple Watch own­ers. With the new watch, you can use the old straps.

Apple Watch Series 4 display

The dis­play on the mini ver­sion is 35% larg­er (1.57 inch­es) and the maxi ver­sion is 32% larg­er (1.78 inch­es), the most impor­tant update in the line­up! Now the screen will fit much more infor­ma­tion, but the gad­get has not become more cum­ber­some. The screen in the mini ver­sion of the new watch is now even larg­er than in the maxi ver­sion of last year. It is made using OLED tech­nol­o­gy.

The bezels around the dis­play are very thin, bare­ly notice­able. The dis­play itself received a bend and now exact­ly repeats the shape of the case. The feel­ing of work­ing with the new screen is on top.

Since the screen has become larg­er, does it mean that the clock will be dis­charged faster? Prob­a­bly, this ques­tion slips in the mind of many. But the com­pa­ny claims to have used a new, larg­er bat­tery and equipped the dis­play with LTPO tech­nol­o­gy, which allows it to con­sume pow­er much more slow­ly.

New processor

The changes also affect­ed the insides, and now we are not talk­ing about sen­sors at all. The high per­for­mance of the nov­el­ty is pro­vid­ed by the 2‑core S4 proces­sor. The devel­op­er claims that it is twice as fast as the S3 proces­sor that was installed in the Apple Watch Series 3. Users should imme­di­ate­ly notice the increase in per­for­mance. Now all appli­ca­tions will open instant­ly (in the watch­es of the third series there were often slow­downs of up to sev­er­al sec­onds), and nav­i­ga­tion through the menu will be as com­fort­able and fast as pos­si­ble.

Besides, heart rate sen­sor, gyro­scope and accelerom­e­ter are new­er and bet­ter now. The stock of inter­nal mem­o­ry has increased to 16 GB, and the speak­ers have become loud­er.

Digital Crown

The wheel has hard­ly changed since the release of the first smart­watch from Apple. Dur­ing this time, users man­aged to dis­cov­er some of its short­com­ings. Grad­u­al­ly, dust and dirt accu­mu­lat­ed in the mech­a­nism, which led to jam­ming in oper­a­tion and the need to clean the mech­a­nism.

Now the wheel has a min­i­mum of mechan­i­cal parts, so the like­li­hood of break­age is min­i­mized. The wheel has become a lit­tle small­er and has received sup­port from the Tap­tic Engine. This means that when you turn the wheel, you will feel a slight tac­tile feed­back.

Heartbeat and ECG sensor

The heart rate sen­sor is installed even in the cheap­est fit­ness bracelets. There is noth­ing sur­pris­ing here. Apple decid­ed to equip the watch with the most advanced and accu­rate sen­sor, which received sev­er­al new fea­tures. First, it con­stant­ly mon­i­tors your heart rate and alerts you if your heart rate is too low or too high for 10 min­utes. This helps in ear­ly detec­tion of heart prob­lems. Sec­ond­ly, all-day heart rate data can be viewed in sta­tis­tics for­mat and down­loaded in PDF for­mat to a com­put­er.

The new watch can do an ECG. The func­tion works by means of elec­trodes at the bot­tom of the watch and a wheel that com­pletes the cir­cuit. To per­form an ECG, just launch a spe­cial appli­ca­tion and put your fin­ger on the wheel for 30 sec­onds. Amer­i­can doc­tors talk about the high accu­ra­cy of the data received and are already start­ing to cer­ti­fy the Apple Watch Series 4 as a med­ical device. On the ter­ri­to­ry of Europe, this func­tion does not yet work and is unlike­ly to work at all — the block­ing takes place at the region­al lev­el, so even watch­es bought in the USA in domes­tic open spaces will not be able to do an ECG.

Infograph watch face

This watch face is only avail­able on the Apple Watch Series 4. It was made pos­si­ble only by an increase in screen size. On the main screen, along with dis­play­ing the cur­rent time, infor­ma­tion about tem­per­a­ture, timer, time in oth­er time zones, etc. can be dis­played in the cor­ners of the dis­play. – up to 8 wid­gets in total. It turns out, you just have to glance at the watch dis­play, and all the impor­tant infor­ma­tion is avail­able to you. It will seem very con­ve­nient to some­one, but crit­i­cism of this deci­sion is already appear­ing — some users call this dial too over­loaded. But it’s still prob­a­bly a mat­ter of taste.

Breath watch face and watchOS 5 features

Anoth­er new watch face, the func­tion of which should be extreme­ly clear. In fact, it dupli­cates the tasks of the appli­ca­tion of the same name, but now it is much eas­i­er to get rec­om­men­da­tions. It is enough to raise your hand and get advice on prop­er breath­ing.

Now a few words about the updat­ed oper­at­ing sys­tem. New chips appeared in many old watch­es that received an update, but I want to believe that it is in the new prod­uct that their fea­tures will be revealed to the max­i­mum.

So watchOS 5 brings us these new fea­tures:

• the dials “Steam”, “Liq­uid met­al”, “Water and fire” — this is all pure­ly for aes­thet­ics. Now it will be espe­cial­ly pleas­ant to find out the time;
• “Racia” is some­thing like voice mes­sages in Telegram;
• Auto­mat­ic work­out recog­ni­tion. If you start­ed exer­cis­ing, but for­got to noti­fy the watch about it, they will be able to deter­mine your activ­i­ty and start read­ing the nec­es­sary indi­ca­tors;
• For run­ning work­outs, the func­tion of adding the pace of run­ning has appeared;
• New work­outs have appeared, incl. swim­ming in the pond, yoga and hik­ing;
• Week­ly com­pe­ti­tion with friends. Chal­lenge your friends and at the end of the week see which one of you was more ath­let­ic.

Some oth­er fea­tures have also been added, but the ones list­ed above seem to us the most inter­est­ing.

Fall detection function

The watch received an updat­ed gyro­scope and accelerom­e­ter. Their func­tion is not only and not so much in track­ing activ­i­ty, but in the abil­i­ty to rec­og­nize the fall of the watch user. As soon as you fall, a spe­cial mode is acti­vat­ed, and the dis­play will show a sug­ges­tion to call an ambu­lance. You can reject it, but if you do not press the can­cel but­ton with­in a minute, then the watch itself will call the emer­gency ser­vice, and at the same time send a mes­sage about the fall and loca­tion to your fam­i­lywhose con­tacts should be indi­cat­ed in advance. What can I say, a real con­cern for the user! Note that the func­tion can be dis­abled if nec­es­sary.

What else?

The Apple Watch Series 4 has a loud­er speak­er, so you can now hear noti­fi­ca­tions from under any clothes and in a noisy place. The changes also affect­ed the micro­phone. He moved to the oth­er side, so you can say “Good­bye!” echo effect and enjoy improved call qual­i­ty.

It is impor­tant to note that the watch received water pro­tec­tion and now can with­stand immer­sion to a depth of 50 m, so that drops of water from the tap and rain are def­i­nite­ly not afraid of them.

Anoth­er inno­va­tion is a more capa­cious bat­tery. In fact, the bat­tery life has not increased, but this fact can be con­sid­ered a vic­to­ry, because the screen has become larg­er, and the func­tion­al­i­ty has expand­ed. With­out recharg­ing, the watch will last up to 18 hours.

Outcome

The new Apple Watch Series 4 is very, very cool. They are pro­duc­tive, beau­ti­ful and func­tion­al. There is only one minus — they are expen­sive, but this is Apple, high-qual­i­ty and fash­ion­able equip­ment.