Apple Watch SE – Longterm Review – Warts & all

2 thoughts on “Apple Watch SE – Longterm Review – Warts & all”

1. To play devil’s advocate, when it comes to AW how do you square off these:

   • Daily battery life. I get 2-3 sleep cycles between the charges, but how about weeks you get on 6X and Enduro? In fact, I’m not even sure how much you can get with the latter watch. After 12 days of daily usage with hours upon hours of tracking, including GPS outdoors, I still have 60% of the battery remaining.
   • Tracking battery life. Apple says AW is supposed to last up to 7 hours for sports tracking outdoors, with GPS. If you were to throw in some music playback and/or maps, I’d say it’s safe to say we will be well under 5 hours. Enough to run a marathon, but what about a day long hike or ride? What about those icky situations when a charger back at your hotel has failed the night before and you are standing at the starting line with less than 50% of the battery left?
   • Music. I understand that Apple Music “ought to be enough for everyone” to paraphrase one Bill Gates, but how about Spotify? How about Amazon Music or other streaming services like Pandora, none of which are supported on AW for offline playback?
   • Data fields. Say what you want about CIQ, but it’s pretty cool to be able to grab a data field like Stryd running power or some graphic heart rate indicator and throw onto your data screen. Sure, AW’s got third party apps. Sure they kick ass: Stryd app there is fantastic. But what if I don’t want the whole app but just a bit of a functionality like a fat/carbs burning field?
   • Daily activity tracking. Disregarding those silly steps, floors, and intensity minutes, with Garmins you get your HR on a minute level granularity, and its daily stress feature is a very close proxy to HRV. How often does AW measure HR and HRV? How about breathing rate and SpO2 that are pretty handy in these trying COVID times?
   • Sleep tracking. There, I said it. Yes, Garmin’s sleep tracking, even with Firstbeat bits leaves a lot to be desired, but it’s better than nothing and does include generally useful info like how restful was your sleep, for example.
   • Recovery. Between a more trustworthy rest HR, as you are more likely to keep the watch on your hand at all times, to body battery to recovery timer taking into account your stress levels and training load, I’d argue it’s a fairly important feature even for a recreational athlete or a weekend warrior. WHOOP and Oura made the whole business around recovery.

   I could go on… all the way up to the amazing screen that stops being that amazing in really harsh noon daylight or touch interface that’s less than ideal for your sweaty sticky digits three hours into the long run.

   Apple Watch is the best smartwatch out there, no doubt about it. Yes, it can be a fairly competent sports tracking watch if you are fine with very un-Apple like solution of hodgepodge of apps from different vendors. Somewhere well down the line it will get to match Fenix and the likes, sure. Eventually. But before Apple gets there, it will have to destroy what’s left of Fitbit and perhaps low end Garmins up to the Vivoactive line. I think Garmin understands it. Hence, AMOLED screens and CIQ4 and far more aggressive courting of music providers and attempts at integrating LTE and now perhaps global rescue services. What I don’t think is Apple wants to be in hardcore fitness game to begin with. It doesn’t get hardcore fitness and in all years since the AW was introduced, it made no attempts to prove otherwise.

   1. hi
      I’d broadly agree with most of what you say eg “Apple Watch is the best smartwatch out there, no doubt about it. Yes, it can be a fairly competent sports tracking watch”. I could challenge you and nitpick on the individual points and where Apple might be in 2 years time on them or the flaws behind where garmin are with them as of today. I think you and I are both not in Apple’s target markets and probably are both nicely in the middle of garmin’s target markets.
      So long as you accept different market segments have different wants and needs then you understand a marketing perspective rather than simply arguing Tech A is better than Tech B.
      The markets for high-end sports watches that really NEED a garmin-fenix-like device are MUCH smaller than the mass markets for smart watches and low-end to mid-market fitness watches (I’d vaguely include FR245 there).
      Apple can never compete in a segment where the NEED outweighs what their tech can deliver.
      Garmin CAN and DOES compete in many segments where people WANT their product and their product is vastly over-specified for the job
      I don’t think Apple will EVER target 7-day hiking adventures but I would say it could be used for some ‘hardcore’ fitness uses as of today. depending on what you define as hardcore.
      But if it captures all the markets below that then suddenly Garmin has a revenue problem (its not quite so simple as that), a profitability problem, a stock price problem and an r&d problem. the whole shebang starts to crumble.

      so do i think people will use AWs for triathlon…yes (they do). but probably virtually no competing age-group trathletes.
      so do i think people will use AWs for adventures and hiking. yes (they do), weekend warriors with backpacks and a charger.
      so do i think people who run 5k in 18 minutes and train 4 times a week will use AW, yes they already do.
      so do i think tri club members and running club members will use AWs…yes they already do.

      Does swimsmooth’s latest app work on garmin ciq or an apple watch? [Stroke mechanics feedback]
      top level swimmers right? 😉

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