Apple Watch Series 6 — Full Review!

i'm renee ritchie and apple's got a brand new watch series six but is it the right apple watch for you that question actually has a couple of different answers one if you've never had an apple watch before and the other if you have up to and including last year's series five so i'm gonna break down everything that's new with the apple watch series six and then dive into everything that's critical if the apple watch in general is new to you and i'm gonna do it right now sponsored by brilliant i've got apple watch se and apple watch series 3 in 2020 reviews coming your way soon hit the subscribe button and bell so you don't miss any of them okay so real talk 99.9 of the tech chatter you're gonna hear this month is whether or not the apple watch series six is a worthwhile upgrade to the apple watch series five you're gonna hear it over and over and over and over and you get the idea but here's the thing most people and by that i mean the vast majority of people in this world still don't even have an apple watch like not at all and of the small amount that do most don't have the previous apple watch they have older apple watches and of the even smaller amount that do have the previous apple watch the ones talking about this are all enthusiasts and industry types who often upgrade every year regardless just to have the latest and greatest because the latest and greatest the rest the rest though maybe you probably some of your friends and family have been waiting on very specific features to either buy in for the first time or upgrade regardless of which model you have for me that was the always-on display for others it was fall detection or ecg meaningless to some critical to a few and this year the apple watch series 6 it's going to be exactly the same thing just with completely different features for very different people namely new red and blue aluminum and graphite and gold steel finishes a new sensor to measure blood oxygen levels a two and a half times brighter 500 nit always on display a new always on altimeter 5 gigahertz wi-fi u1 ultra wide band and faster charging now the new product red aluminum looks terrific way better than i expected it would it's a deep metallic red an iron man red and it's opinionated not neutral but that may restrict your band choice if clashing just isn't your vibe also aluminum series 6 still have ion exchange chemically hardened glass displays not sapphire displays like the steel and titanium models so what you gain in lightness you do lose in a bit of durability i've come to appreciate that trade-off but you have to decide you it's still the same overall design though from the apple watch series 4 going back a couple years there are no smaller models and no larger heavier models for people who prefer their watches decidedly more schwarzenegger also the displays are all still rounded rectangles which i prefer which are much better for computational sides of computational watches but other people while they express no desire for horse-shaped cars or banana-shaped mobile style phones really do seem to prefer the traditional mechanical dial shaped watches i haven't seen the blue series 6 in person yet justine unboxed it in her video and i like it a lot as well it's also deep and metallic a royal navy blue or of course like pepper potz's rescue armor in avengers end game john gruber is reviewing the graphite series 6 and has already written up a few thousand words on the differences between that and the space black steel because john gruber and it does indeed look less like something from krypton and maybe more like something from frank miller's gotham apple insider compared the new gold steel to the previous gold finishes and it does indeed look richer more 18k k is in carrot not as in cardassian and kardashian isn't kim not as in deep space nine i'm not sold on it at least not yet but let me know what you think about it and of all the other new finishes in the comments below for me the new health and fitness features are by far the biggest deals and differentiators for the series six but while i find them interesting and informative to test out i think for athletes especially extreme athletes they're going to be beyond compelling which is why i called up famed extreme adventurer ray zahab the man who literally runs across the sahara in 100 days or across the arctic circle or the amazon rainforest so he could share his far far more expert thoughts with us starting with vo2 max it's an indicator of overall health if you take into consideration um or fitness let's say um you know your lungs your heart your blood vessels uh your blood your capacity to move oxygen uh through your body at higher rates of exercise like how efficient are you how efficient are you at utilizing oxygen at higher rates of exertion whereas on the other end of it with the other thing that they're really emphasizing uh with apple watch is sp02 which is something that i have used a lot of and it also is an indicator and a measure but less of an emphasis sort of on your lungs and your heart directly like vo2 max is a calculation that brings all those other things into into the play um it's more looking directly at how much oxygen is carried in your blood versus how much oxygen is not there is my understanding exactly and i'll tell you the application so i've used sp02 uh over the years um in training with an out of an altitude machine that simulates being at high altitude because many of the deserts that i cross or when i went to the south pole for example you're at higher altitude and so i want to be able to perform at my best over long days when i'm not recovering as well we talked about last time how i use the apple watch to give me recovery information so i monitor my spo2 the higher in altitude i go or the harder we exert you don't have to be you can be at sea level and just running as hard as you can up a hill and when you get to the top of the hill your spo2 any person's spo2 will drop and the less it drops at the top of that hill the fitter you are you're able to uptake that oxygen from the surrounding air and use it what's the advantage to you as someone who does what you do to just having that with you all the time well it's super duper handy because now like going from racing ultra marathons to doing these long sustained efforts that could last up to 100 days um i just sort of forgot about vo2 i wasn't using it as much it was complicated number complicated to understand i was like yeah whatever i'll just kind of forget about that and i'll go on how i feel and um instead really focus on recovery now like with everything they do like you know you pick up your iphone it's super simplified right like everything it's just and it's easier for me now to access those numbers and now i'll probably start using them in my training again so i was telling you before when i was sick post sickness i was saying ah you know i'm not feeling so hot my spo2 is at about 94. doesn't seem like that much of a jump from 94 to 98 which is normal for me 99 but i could totally feel it i could totally feel it so having that now easily accessible and information on the go as more info is always good yeah you know so the other thing that they introduced is the always-on altimeter what is the difference between the periodic and the constant for you when it comes to altitude well that you know that's a really great question and it's something that's kind of timely for me my last um five years or so i've been training primarily based on elevation gain so how much i'm actually climbing when i'm running every day i live on the trails so i always run ninety percent of my time is spent on single track running or skiing in the winter um or mountain biking and fat biking in the winter and so i'm less concerned by the distance that i run in a training run and i'm more concerned by how much vertical can i get in a day and i set my training parameters and my programs around that number that amount of vertical so what's really nice about having a running elevation uh you know on your wrist is you're able to actually see are you at that high point how much am i actually getting because i am glancing down at my watch for sure when i'm running and so i'm able to sort of ascertain you know where am i what's my altitude how i am how high am i and am i am i gaining altitude quickly yeah you know and then as it relates back as well to training and fitness when you take all the numbers and you combine them you can you can see the results of that if you're into all that data you can totally see the results as compared to slope incline elevation gain etc and now the always on display is like 2.5 times brighter so i think if you are working out especially like you do outside it might be even easier to glance at when you do need it yeah well that and the fact that i'm 51 and i need reading glasses all the time so i can see it a lot easier when i'm out running you know for someone like you someone whose entire livelihood is based on measuring these things what how meaningful an upgrade is it to you to have vo2 max at this scale to have the pulse oxygen the spo well you know definitely anything that's added is a bonus to me any data like that that i can get it is awesome when they did the ecg thing that was amazing for me right but i'm also the guy and i told you the original story when they first came out with the apple watch i'm like no you know what i got everything i need i got the iphone i got the macbook i got all the stuff i need i don't need any more stuff and then i got the watch and i started using it and i thought how did i ever do anything before i had this watch so it just becomes it's just one of those things that's handy so it's always they've always got stuff well thought out right so there's no doubt that i don't even know it yet but that data will become more valuable to me in the things that i'm doing the more i investigate there's a lot more to it i think than just what you see in like one-minute sound bites it's how all that information ties together that i think gives you an overall view of your health you mentioned the sleep tracking i know from previous conversations that you're big on on using metrics for recovery as well but things like multiple complications per app or maybe map data is there anything else that's really got you interested this year the new uh apple fitness yeah thing that i saw yeah and i think that is going to be so awesome for people that uh potentially if there's a second wave with kovid whatever the opportunity to be able to just use the device that you probably already have for people that have devices uh is amazing like i mean it's just such an awesome concept to get people moving and um and i think that that that is really exciting for me too to see that now a few quick caveats on just all of that while the apple watch can now measure low range vo2 max the new low range cardio alert feature the one that warns you your vo2 max is falling into the lower range is only coming later this year for sp02 while the apple watch series 6 functions similarly to a fingertip reader instead of using transmittance to determine the color of your blood through your nail and your finger it uses reflectance to kind of do the same job but just on one side of your wrist and if you're interested in how all of those technologies work i covered them in my explainer video link in the description also unlike the ecg app which apple is still slowly rolling out region by region in coordination with local medical regulation authorities like the fda in the u.s or health canada apple isn't submitting the blood oxygen app as a medical feature at all instead they're putting it out as a wellness feature which means it can go out into pretty much every region pretty much immediately apple just can't say it's for medical use and can't send out alerts for low blood oxygen levels you can start the app whenever you want and it'll check periodically like during the day or at night if you're using the new sleep tracking feature but that's it it is totally pull for now not pushed not at all and likewise because wellness and not medical apple can't even legally say how accurate it is which is all shades of weird now i do really want that accuracy stated and those alerts sent my way but i also straight up hated having to wait for the ecg app to get approved in my country as well and for anyone outside of the us we often end up feeling like second-class citizens when we get features late or often enough just not at all so let me know what you think of the trade-off in the comments meanwhile i've asked around and the people i've spoken with seem to think the apple watch pulse ox is as accurate as the fingertip tools but i'll keep testing and comparing over the next couple of weeks and let you know how it holds up and how my measurements go in a follow-up review also sleep tracking in general is still a very mixed bag for me wind down low battery and charge alerts good morning all of that is fine great even but it just doesn't provide a lot of data for the actual sleep tracking itself just total time slept which is much less than apps that break it down by light heavy and rem sleep and i get that apple prefers to baseline new features rather than sherlock or obsolete completely whole app categories in general but sleep tracking for me at least just fits so well with the core services the mission of the watch that it should be as fully featured as possible battery life for me on the series 6 has been outstanding so much so that i don't even understand it apple says the slightly bigger battery and much better efficiency even with all the new features should give you the same general battery life as well as an hour of extra local music playback or workout tracking but i've been getting 36 hours on minimal load and what i mean by that is just charging it wearing it and seeing how long it'll last both during the day and with sleep tracking enabled at night and i didn't believe it at first i ran it again immediately but it was the same thing now when i start workouts more often it cuts into that of course more and more with each one but overall it's still been terrific i'm just worried that i have or am some kind of weird outlier right now though and it won't last but i'll let you know apple's also no longer including the 5 watt ac adapter brick in the apple watch box something they began phasing out a couple years ago and are phasing out completely this year which they say is an effort to reduce e-waste but others feel is just a cost savings measure that's not being passed along to them and while i have just stacks of those little bricks other people especially first-time buyers do not so the ideal at least for me would be for apple to provide an inexpensive way for people who really do still need the charging bricks to get them with their order the new faster charging though that i all caps love especially with sleep tracking i can just wake up put my watch on the charger go about all of my daily ablutions and half an hour later it's well past half full again it'll go from zero to about eighty percent in an hour and a full charge in about an hour and a half total and that just makes a lot of it just work and i know some people just can't wrap their heads around charging a watch like every day or so like it's a crime against nature and horology or something but here's the way i think about it it's no different to me than charging my phone every day because with phones or watches or just any kind of computerized gizmo at all the price you pay for features is power literally the more you can do the more battery it takes to do it it's the currency of mobile big bright display powerful chipset bluetooth ultra wide band wi-fi lte heart rate and blood oxygen sensors compass gyroscope accelerometers the list goes on and on and on take away features add size and the battery will last longer sure but honestly where some people can't understand can't grok why anyone would want to charge a watch every day even as they plug their phones in every night i can't for the life of me grock why anyone would be willing to give up life-changing even life-saving features like this just to get out of having to plug it in next to my phone every night your mileage or wattage whatever will of course vary this is how silly it's gotten apple is cramming silicon around the band grooves now basically into every nook and cranny they can get inside the series 6 casing like a kid just piping way too much custard into a donut joking there's no such thing as too much custard i mean they're seriously doing that with the s6 and it makes the system in package nine percent bigger and along with the new a13 derived processor cores a13 is in the iphone 11 chipset which still melts my brain a little bit makes it 20 faster even at greater efficiency and on the watch that's most noticeable in things like how fast apps launch and how much on device machine learning the core features can just crunch through but depending on which watch you're coming from if any it can be super noticeable and u1 is even more interesting apple debuted the ultra wide band spatial and location positioning chip last year with the iphone 11 but they totally kept it on the download broadly speaking they've said it'll enable more and better features on the apple watch in the future things like car key support so you can open and drive your car with just your watch like you're starting to be able to do with just your iphone but i think i think everyone's just sort of waiting for the next step in apple's find my network to go live at this point being able to precisely track down all of our stuff just using our watch is just super cool in concept we'll have to see how it is in execution along with all the new features if you don't already have an apple watch or a recent apple watch you get everything apple spent the last few years adding to the platform as well and that includes all the communication features like email imessage and facetime and if you get an lte model call an sms relay as well even emergency calling if you're in an accident or fall down and don't have or can't reach your phone international emergency calling even so if and when we travel again you get the same features no international roaming plan needed and there's also things like the heart rate monitor and notifications for low high or irregular heart rate rhythms and in some countries including the us and canada an ecg app so you can coordinate with your doctor and get much better data much more often and this stuff has literally been life-saving for a lot of people and then there are all the fitness features from activity rings that sort of coach and coach you into standing and moving and burning calories and working out every day to the workout app proper that measures pretty much everything you can imagine across an increasingly diverse array of indoor and outdoor exercise types and coming later this year the apple watch will sync you up to apple's new fitness plus subscription service as well where you can take classes and measure your progress on your iphone ipad or apple tv and of course of course none of these features are perfect none of them will be all things to all people some of them might have no value to you at all and that's totally fine not like dog drinking coffee in a burning office fine but legit totally fine the idea i think is to figure out if any or enough of them are valuable how valuable they are and whether or not in somewhere in part they make the apple watch valuable enough for you to want to get or to upgrade starting at 399 us and going up from there based on the size the material and wi-fi or lte options you're going to have to do the same sort of value calculation that i just did also compared to the less expensive but not quite as feature rich apple watch se and the entry level much less expensive but also much less feature rich series 3. i'll be doing reviews for both of those models as well as a comparison to help you decide so seriously make sure you're sub buttoned and build up and then i'll promise not to use all the fancy new machine learning features in the s6 to do the work for me i mean even if brilliance basically showed me how to do just that the neural networks course has this example of how like if you lost your keys in your room but need to find them even if you have no clear indication how to structure your guesses you can still get better round after round figuring out your strategy based on the feedback of things like wall tile color and find your keys in surprisingly few guesses brilliance a website and app with over 60 interactive courses in math science and computer science logic and deduction physics quantum mechanics game theory cryptocurrency and so much more it's based on problem solving and active learning it's about seeing concepts visually and interacting with them and then answering questions that get you to think and there are no tests no grades you just pick a course based on what you're interested in and you get started and if you make a mistake you just check out the explanations and keep going go to brilliant.org on a richie and sign up for free just click on the link in the description or go to brilliant.org richie and the first 200 of you can also level up with 20 off the annual premium subscription and clicking on that link just really helps out the channel for more much more on the new apple watches and all the new apple products this fall click on the playlist right here i'm doing all the unboxings first looks reviews and deep dives so click the playlist and i'll see you next video

Channel: Rene Ritchie

Views: 136,338

Rating: 4.8275962 out of 5

Keywords: Apple, Rene Ritchie, Apple Watch, New Apple Watch, Apple Watch 2020, Product RED, Blood Oxygen, watchOS 7

Id: e2taF4uV9Ek

Length: 21min 42sec (1302 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 25 2020