It’s been 10 years since the Apple Watch made its debut, and in between the ECG feature first introduced on Watch 4, measuring blood oxygen on the Watch 6, and the improved temperature sensor on the Watch 8 that tracks a woman’s menstrual cycle, Apple made its smartwatch an indispensable device over the competitors. With this year’s Apple Watch Series 10, the company has transformed it into a must-have fitness tool with top-notch health-related features for this user.
Sure, it might be a few years late, but better late than never.
Ever since the rumour started that Apple was intending to add sleep apnea detection into this year’s model, there was an underlying excitement prior to the announcement and once it was introduced, it became the top feature to watch out for with this user. Sleep apnea is a sleep-related breathing disorder where individuals have pauses or shallow breathing that can impact a person’s overall sleep and general well-being, leading to health issues and a general lack of proper rest. It normally occurs during sleep, which explains why some sufferers wake up coughing or gasping for air and it’s a common yet massively undiagnosed ailment that plagues a lot of people. But its speciality status means you need the expertise of a normally expensive ENT (Ear, Nose & Throat) doctor to diagnose.
But with the Watch 10, all you need is an accompanying iPhone and 30 days. That’s the length of time it takes for the Watch 10 on your wrist to track your daily sleep routine, to determine if you are suffering from sleep apnea. The company makes it clear though – like several other Apple Watch features, such as Blood Oxygen measurement, the device is not qualified as a medical instrument or diagnostic tool, but it provides the user with enough data to indicate if there is a cause to seek professional medical care.
For those of us of a certain age, or with aged parents, and want to find out if sleep apnea is something that they should be concerned about, do remember that the results take time and there’s a level of consistency to be had, in wearing your Watch 10 every night so once it detects sleep apnea-like conditions after 30 days of measuring your statistics, do seek the advice of a certified medical practitioner.
And after 30 days, and on my birthday of all days, the Health app indicated something that a follow-up with an ENT specialist also determined – I have sleep apnea. Given that the majority of sleep apnea sufferers remain unaware that they have the condition, the Apple Watch serves as a simple and effective tool to keep those concerned about their general well-being on the right track.
That said, Sleep Apnea detection isn’t unique to the Watch 10 or Watch Ultra 2 Black Titanium, and also available on the Watch 9 and last year’s Watch Ultra 2, as long as the software is updated to watchOS 11, which was rolled out on 17 September.
Follow-up appointments aside, it’s amazing how a wrist device that is already capable of detecting falls, loud audio, and measuring your heart rate, is now providing greater means to passively track a user’s vitals, and provide guided recommendations around a person’s health.
To call this Apple’s biggest Watch launch ever would be accurate, because even as Apple packs more into the tiny device, which has been made significantly slimmer this year, it has somehow also increased the screen size of its latest fitness tracker, which is in line with the company’s approach to an ever-expanding line-up.
The first Apple Watch came in two sizes – 38mm and 42mm, and the subsequent Series 4 bumped things up to 40mm and 44mm, and then to the 41mm and 45mm of the Series 7. The Series 10 is not only larger at 42mm and 46mm, but also thinner and instead of an Aluminium or Stainless steel finish, it’s now a choice between Aluminium (Silver, Rose Gold and Jet Black) and Titanium (Natural, Gold and Slate).
Still, anyone would be hard-pressed to easily identify a Series 8, 9 or 10 at first glance because the aesthetics of the square watch face hasn’t changed. There’s the crown on the right for navigation, and the addition of two speaker slots which now allows you to play music through the watch, and listen to calls. Our review unit, the Aluminium Jet Black might just look black, but we also have on hand the Watch Ultra 2 in Black Titanium, and as hard as we want to poke fun at consumers getting excited about a simple colour of a product, there is an elegant charm to the rich black that the Watch 10 offers, providing an all-round premium, aluminum, nano-particle finish alongside the matching black Ink Sport Loop band.
But it’s never the outside that matters because the Watch 10, and the black Watch Ultra 2, is now a multi-feature device that operates in the background even as it keeps tabs on my family. On any given day, the readings of my Watch 10 can be accessed by my wife if she wants to track my health, as long as the right permissions are set. We are also able to track the vitals of our children, and in some curious way, I know when my eldest is back from school because there has been renovation going on in a house behind ours, and her Watch 8 notifies me every time it detects loud noises, which is how I know she is home.
Worn on the hand, it doesn’t feel any lighter as the 36g of the 46mm Aluminium Watch 10 doesn’t differ greatly from the 39g of the 45mm Watch 9. The new thinness of the device makes the watch on your wrist look like less of a bulge but if you’re accustomed to accommodating its presence by not hitting the watch on corners of tables, you won’t have any issue here.
Where you’ll see a difference with the bigger screen is also a change in the way you read information off the Watch 10. Text is noticeably more readable from a wider angle, and brighter as well. It seems weird that the Watch 9 seemed bright enough the day before the Watch 10 arrived and in that instant when it’s turned on, you can see how the new OLED screen is just brighter.
As noted, a new feature is with speakers, where you can now play music through the Watch. It’s a good back-up to have, in case you don’t have portable speakers or don’t want to use your phone while working out. And sometimes, you can be in the kitchen preparing a meal, or cleaning around the house and it’s too much of a hassle to blast music from your HomePods or from your phone, but hey, music from your wrist for the next 20 minutes is just about what the speakers can adequately provide. That said, the speakers are small so don’t expect to host a small party at home from your wrist.
The thing about using the Watch to take calls is the new voice isolation that hones in on your voice, so we tried it out at the recent Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour at The Star Theatre, where the music was playing and we stepped out to take a call on the Watch 10, and the other party could hear us clearly, not knowing there was a live concert directly behind us. Yes, we could have used our phone to make the call, but maybe we were busy picking up snacks at the concession, or selecting merchandise at the store.
Function-wise, new to watchOS 11 is a Vitals app that compiles some of the key personal health information, such as your heart and respiratory rate, sleep duration, blood oxygen level and so on. Yes, you can seek out each piece of information individually, mostly from the Health app but having the key ones presented in one app, showing data across a period of seven days as a graph is more visually impactful, allowing you to note which day generated a different reading against your typical range that you should take note of.
So the question is, is the Watch Ultra 2 a better choice, or can the Watch 10 provide the most features at the best price? The thing is, the Watch Ultra came at a time where the Watch 8 had a battery life that demanded a daily charge, otherwise it failed to last throughout the day and at night. It was more of a lack of habit to charge the Watch 8 consistently, which was why the heavier and pricier Watch Ultra, with its larger battery life, was such a lifesaver. It could last longer and required a quick charge every other day, ensuring that you could wear it in the day and still go to bed with it, to track your sleep.
The Watch 10 now comes with a larger battery and significantly faster charging, due to the bigger charging coils in the rear. After draining the device after a day plus of use, the device went from 10 per cent to about 80 in less than 30 minutes, and if you’re in a pinch, a short 15-minute charge, which is about how much time it takes for a shower, gets you eight hours of use, which is more than enough to last you through the night. Just remember to charge it again the next morning when you’re getting ready for work.
In other words, those who are looking at the Watch Ultra 2 as their fitness tracker of choice purely for the larger battery no longer have any reason to ignore the Watch 10 as fast charging means casual, intermittent charging can power you through the next 12 hours, without worrying about a drained device. The lighter, more compact design more than makes up for the lack of an Action Button on the Watch Ultra, and the updated features and hardware now makes the Watch 10 a better casual watch for the majority out there.
But whichever you pick, there’s no denying that in the short span of a decade, the Apple Watch has elevated itself from being an accessory, to an indispensable device.
GEEK REVIEW SCORE
Summary
Apple has packed in so much into the small wrist device over the years such that after a decade, everyone can now find a little something within to tap on. With the latest new features, users can sleep easy knowing there is help, one ailment at a time.
Overall
9.1/10
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Aesthetics - 9/10
9/10
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Build Quality - 9/10
9/10
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Performance - 9/10
9/10
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Value - 9/10
9/10
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Geek Satisfaction - 9.5/10
9.5/10
Hsals needs more space in his house, and more money in his bank account to pay for all the toys, collectibles and other geek related items that companies are churning out. Free-time? Girlfriend? Who’s got time for those?
Kevin Low
Si Jia
