The Apple Watch, and smartwatches in general, are interesting devices. There’s so much potential in a computer you wear on your wrist, yet the market has shoved them into the “fitness tracker” category. Apple Watch Series 10 is another evolution of Apple’s first wearable computer, and it brings in some of the lessons learned from developing the Apple Watch Ultra, while maintaining a more subdued and, dare I say, fashionable aesthetic.

If you’re looking for a massive rethink of what an Apple Watch is, you will not find it with the Series 10. Nor will you find a sizable increase in battery life. If the standard watch has not been enough for you, this update isn’t going to fix that. Outside of those two caveats, the Series 10 is a strong update to consider if you’re coming from a Series 7 or older.

Design

From one perspective, the Apple Watch design hasn’t changed much since its inception. It’s still a rounded rectangle-shaped device with the Digital Crown, side button, and heart rate sensor on the bottom. Sometimes with different materials. Every three or four years, Apple applies another set of refinements to the Watch design.

This year, they were able to make the standard Watch thinner and a little wider. Apple has called this design “sleeker”, and I think that’s the right word. The updates here make both the previous design and the Apple Watch Ultra feel chunky and clunky.

The Series 10 feels like it’s sitting flatter on my wrist, which makes it feel more like a “real” watch, and much less like a smartwatch. I don’t pretend to be a watch person. Before the Apple Watch came out, it had probably been about five years since I’d worn one. And they’ve all been cheap, $50 or less. So this is the perspective I’m coming from.

The Series 10 thankfully maintains backwards compatibility for watch bands for another year. While it’s inevitable that one day Apple will find a reason to redesign the band connector, I appreciate that they’ve continued to resist doing that to this point.

It’s been noted that the bezels on the Series 10 are bigger than the previous design. In everyday use, I can’t tell the difference, and I probably couldn’t even if they were smaller. So many of the screens in watchOS are black which means the screen kind of blends in with the bezels. It’s not *really* a big deal either way, and the Series 10 still ends up looking pretty modern. But I know that in principle, some people are against bezels ever getting bigger for any reason.

The model I have is the 42 mm version, which, strangely enough, was the largest watch size when the Apple Watch initially launched. The max brightness of the display is up to 2000 nits, but I really haven’t seen a difference here from 1000 nits on my Series 7. The brightness levels have not been noticeably different in my everyday use.

I also haven’t seen any noticeable benefit yet from the wide-angle OLED display, but it’s possible that I may not notice the difference. Supposedly, the display will be easier to see off-axis, which will make it easier to check the time without moving your wrist as much.

The feature of the Series 10 display that I’ve actually seen benefit from is the moving second hand when in Always-On mode. The is currently only supported for select watch faces (Flux and Reflections). This wasn’t even something I was asking for, but just being able to glance down at my wrist and see the second hand moving makes the Series 10 feel more alive.

I chose the Natural Titanium color for the Series 10, and it doesn’t look much different than the Stainless Steel Series 7 I’m coming from. Really, if you told me this was a Stainless Steel watch, I wouldn’t have questioned you. For me, that’s a good thing, because I really just wanted another watch that looked the same. I appreciate the Ultra’s brushed Titanium look, but it would have been a bit of a compromise for me. Not quite the look I’m going for.

The Digital Crown feels smaller and stiffer than on my Series 7, although some of that resistance while scrolling has improved over the week I’ve been using it. Clicking the button is still kind of stiff, but that may work itself out over time.

Comfort

Moving to Titanium makes the Series 10 about 20% lighter than its predecessor, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but for something you wear, every gram matters (see: Vision Pro).

The comparison between this design to the previous design is more striking than I anticipated. The Series 10 makes the Series 7 feel heavy, which is something I’ve never really felt about an Apple Watch (and I’ve had both aluminum and stainless steel over the years). It’s really that drastic. This makes the Series 10, the most comfortable Apple Watch I’ve used to date.

For sleep tracking, it means you’ll no longer get that initial discomfort of the watch digging into your arm when you roll over onto it, because of the updated watch design.

I’ve read the perspective that the non-aluminum watches are too heavy to be comfortable for workouts. With the Series 7, it’s never felt too heavy, but I can definitely feel that it’s there. That goes away almost completely when wearing the Series 10. It’s not as light as the aluminum models when working out, but it feels close.

Functionality

Has the Series 10 had any improvements from a functionality perspective? Yes and no. Yes, because the S10 System In Package (SIP) absolutely performs better than the S7 chip in my Series 7. This makes pretty much everything on the watch zippier. No, because this chip has the same performance as the S9 before it, so the improvement is not specific to the Series 10.

The S10 SIP contains the same faster processor that came to the Series 9 last year, the entire device feels snappier, especially with watchOS 11. The tasks I use the watch for are things like using Siri, listening to music or podcasts, checking off reminders, or using the Home app. The S10 chip also has a 4-core Neural Engine, which means there are some machine learning tasks that can be offloaded from the CPU for improved battery life. Like Double Tap.

The Double Tap gesture isn’t new for the Series 10, but it’s new if you’re upgrading from an older watch. And what it’s done is make it so I can choose watch faces with few or no complications, but still be able to get to the information I care about quickly. The new Smart Stack in watchOS 11 is also contributing heavily. The Smart Stack feels like what the dearly departed Siri Watch Face was supposed to be, except it actually works.

The Series 10 also gets the ability to play media from the watch speaker, which had been limited to the Apple Watch Ultra up until now. While the speaker sounds “fine”, I still won’t be leaving home without my AirPods.

That being said, it’s kind of weird this wasn’t a thing from day one, right? The Watch has been the one Apple device where if you didn’t have headphones connected when you played media, nothing would happen. Every other device would just play the media through the speaker. Given that it took years to get Siri to respond through the Watch speaker, we can surmise there were reasons, battery life and/or speaker quality, that led Apple to hold off on this feature for so long.

Downsides

If you’re in the US, at the time of this post, we no longer have access to blood oxygen feature on this or any watch Apple currently sells. In upgrading from the Series 7, I’m actually losing a feature. You could argue how useful or accurate the feature is, but at the end of the day, I’m still losing something by upgrading to the Series 10.

Battery life remains the same for the Series 10, which is 18 hours of mixed use. If you’re using Apple Watch as more of a sports or fitness watch, it still doesn’t compare particularly well to something like a Garmin watch. Some people really don’t like the idea of having to charge their watch at all, let alone daily. The Apple Watch is not for you if this is the case.

By buying the smaller watch, I made a conscious choice to give up battery life for a better fit. So while I am fortunate enough to have a lifestyle that lets me charge whenever I need to, I don’t want to pretend that the battery life could still be better. And for those that prioritize battery life more than anything, the Apple Watch Ultra is there.

Verdict

If you’re using an Apple Watch Series 8 or 9, there’s not much here to entice you to upgrade, outside of a fresh battery. And that’s fine. The Apple Watch is mature enough that yearly upgrades generally don’t make sense for most people.

If you’re coming from a Series 7 or earlier, the list of features to justify your upgrade is pretty large:

• Larger Screen
• Thinner Design
• Faster SIP
• More Storage
• Double Tap
• Wrist Temperature Sensing
• Playing audio from speaker
• On-device Siri
• Crash detection
• Improved Always On Display

Losing blood oxygen detection definitely sucks, and if that’s a deal breaker for you, hold on to your current watch. Otherwise, if you’re in the market, the Apple Watch Series 10 is certainly worth your money to upgrade.