(intro music)
- Here it is. It's the
new Apple Watch Series 5.
It's-- you know what, it's great.
I've used a lot of different
smartwatches in my life,
and this one is the best.
If you have an iPhone
and you can afford the
$399 starting price,
there is nothing better.
So, like, I know.
I gave away the whole review
at the top of the video.
But keep watching because
I do want to tell you
what's new in the Series 5
and also what's new in watchOS 6,
but I also want to see
if we can just figure out
why no other smartwatch is even close
to catching up to this.
(intense hip-hop music)
All right. So, what is
new with the Series 5,
at least, compared to the
Series 4 from last year?
Honestly, it's not that much,
just three things, really.
Okay, well, four if you
count that Apple's offering
more material options for the casing.
You can get it in aluminum,
steel, titanium, and ceramic.
This one is aluminum, and physically,
it's identical to the Series
4, which was already great.
They have larger screens
than the older models of the Apple Watch,
and the screen is the second thing
that's really new with the Series 5.
It's always on.
Finally.
See, both the Series 5,
and actually the Series 4,
have a special kind of OLED
screen that Apple developed.
It's a low temperature,
polycrystalline oxide,
or LTPO for short.
What does that mean?
Well, it means, like,
pixel and screen stuff
like electron mobility.
What really matters is that the Series 5
has a bunch of other chips
that let it have a variable
screen refresh rate,
so the Series 5 can change
the pixels on the screen
as often as 60 times a second
or as little as once per second.
That lets this use radically
less power than other screens.
You know, your watch doesn't need
to be refreshing that often
when it's just sitting
there in ambient mode,
and that saves battery life.
So now, instead of the
screen just being off,
it shows a dimmed version
of your watch face,
and it actually even still has some color,
which other smartwatches don't do.
And the, of course, when
you raise your wrist up,
it goes ooh, full color, just
like any other Apple Watch.
But all this means is
you can check the time
without being, you know, that jerk
who obviously looks at his watch
in the middle of a
conversation with somebody.
Now, the big question is
does that always-on screen
hurt the battery life?
And my answer is that it
doesn't seem to hurt much.
Apple claims that this still gets
the same 18 hours of battery life
that every Apple Watch is supposed to get.
And it does for me, even
with kind of heavy usage.
But it doesn't get much more than that.
Last year, Series 4 actually outperformed
that 18-hour claim.
Bottom line, you should plan
on charging the Apple Watch every day.
And yes, I know that
there are smartwatches
that last weeks or even months,
but none of them can do
what the Apple Watch can.
The third new thing is a built-in compass,
and it works well and even gives you
this neat thing called a confidence cone
that gets narrower as it
becomes more confident
in where north is exactly.
Now, if you have a magnetic watch band,
that can mess with it a
bit, but, you know, magnets.
That's how they work.
The fourth new thing is that
there are more cellular bands
on the cellular version,
which means that it can
do emergency calling internationally.
Now, you should know that doesn't mean
that it'll work for regular
cell phone Apple Watch stuff, though.
Apple still needs to make
carrier deals for that to work.
So, new materials,
always-on screen, compass,
and international emergency calling.
All in all, that's a really
minor update, but you know what?
It doesn't matter because the Apple Watch
is so far ahead of the competition.
I think there's a few reasons for that.
One is the processor.
Apple is just way better
at making processors
for smartwatches than anybody else.
Another is integration.
Apple lets the Apple Watch do Apple stuff
with the Apple iPhone that
it won't let other companies
like Fitbit or Wear OS or
Samsung or Withings do,
like replying to iMessages.
Only the Apple Watch can do that.
But also, watchOS is just really good.
The new version here is watchOS 6,
and it's gonna land on every Apple Watch
except the very, very first one.
Now, inside this, there are
new watch faces, as usual.
I like that you can set more of them
to just be a single color.
I do wish that there
were more watch faces,
or, really, that there
were third-party options.
I could get a pretty
good face on this watch,
but I can't get the
perfect watch face for me.
The biggest new feature in
watchOS is the App Store,
which lets you install
apps without having to,
you know, pull out your phone,
except for the first time
that you use the App
Store on the Apple Watch,
where you have to enter
your password on your phone.
And then sometimes, you install
apps on the Apple Watch,
and it needs its, like,
parent app on the phone
in order to work for the first time.
It's not completely independent
yet, is what I'm saying.
Now, it is nice to be able
to install an app in a pinch
directly on your watch, I guess,
but this big-deal feature is
not really a big deal to me.
Maybe when the Apple Watch
gets a little bit more independent
from the iPhone, it'll matter more.
Then there's the cycles app,
which lets you log and
track menstrual activity.
Now, this app isn't for me,
but I will say that I wish
Apple had paid more attention
to women's health sooner.
Still, though, talking to people at Apple,
it's clear that they put
some care into this app.
It's scientifically cautious,
and it's thoughtful in its design.
So, it could help you track information
that could be useful for
you or for your doctor.
But look, fertility can
be a really hard thing,
so if you're using it with kids in mind,
you should talk to your
doctor before doing anything
with the information that it provides.
Let's see. What else?
Siri. Siri is here, and
it can identify songs.
It can also bring up
search results from the web
and lets you click into the webpages.
And my favorite thing
ever with the Apple Watch
is still that you can load
little tiny, itty bitty webpages on it.
It's kind of fun.
Oh, one other thing.
There is an option for the watch
to detect ambient noise levels
and warn you if it's too loud
for safety over a long period of time,
plus I just like watching the
noise meter go up and down.
It proves to me that the
train that I ride every day
is too damn loud.
The main thing that's missing
for me is sleep tracking,
which for me and my health
is much more important
than closing a standing ring or whatever.
There are third-part apps, though.
I use Sleep++, but it seems
like a pretty obvious thing
for Apple to add next year.
Okay, so, why is the
Apple Watch so far ahead?
It's not that it has an
LTPO screen or a noise meter
or really any one of the features
that I just mentioned in this review.
It's the fact that I'm talking
about features in this way at all.
With every other smartwatch,
and I'm not talking about
the Garmin, Wilderness,
Hiking, Sporting,
Mountaineering, whatever watches.
I mean, like, wrist computers.
With those things, I usually have to check
whether it can last more than 12 hours
or whether it can open apps
in less than 10 seconds
or respond to a text message
or if the software is buggy as hell.
All that stuff was actually pretty bad
in the very first Apple Watch,
but it quickly got turned around,
so now, Apple gets to work on filling out
more advanced features.
It's like the Apple
Watch is in high school
and is taking AP courses
while everybody else
is repeating the seventh grade
for the third time.
Sure, the Apple Watch hasn't
reached anything close
to its full potential yet,
but right now, this
thing is an overachiever.
♪ Ah, that's still going ♪
♪ Ah, can't take the watch to it ♪
♪ Ah ♪
(Laughing)
Hey, everybody. Thank
you so much for watching.
Let me know in the comments
if you're getting an Apple Watch,
and if you're an Android user,
let me know what you think you could do
'cause I don't have a good
smartwach answer for you.
Also, if you missed it, Neil and I
reviewed the iPhones yesterday,
and you should definitely
check those videos out.
