Well-tuned cog in the ecosystem

Review: Apple Watch Series 10 - Can Do More

The new Apple Watch takes its place as a now sharpened cog in your life, day and night.

Erik Mörner

Published 10 October 2024 - 10:10 Modified 24 January 2025 - 17:05

My day begins and the watch wakes me up by vibrating on my wrist. I turn off the alarm with a few taps and deactivate sleep mode, which also deactivates sleep mode on the iPhone the watch is connected to. I play some music by starting Spotify on the watch and choosing one of my wireless speakers.

An hour of jogging with e-sim, GPS, and Spotify streamed via mobile network to AirPods takes 28 percent of the battery.

During the night, the watch has monitored my sleep and possible sleep apnea, and I find out directly in the sleep app on the watch that I slept for 4 hours and 59 minutes, from 00:58 to 06:11. That matches quite well, as I know I turned off the light at 00:38. On the watch, I get a small chart showing sleep stages, if I woke up during the night, and how the trend looks over a longer period. However, I don't get a morning report compiled like in some other watches, with weather, sleep report, news, and calendar entries; I have to look that up myself. To some extent, app notifications from the night can act as a compiled report. For on the watch, I receive the app notifications I have chosen to be sent here.

Notifications even without an app

Apps I have installed on my iPhone that have a corresponding app adapted for the watch are automatically installed on the watch as well, but you can choose manually if you prefer. I can choose both which apps I want here and which notifications should come through, to avoid being disturbed too much. A notification on the watch interrupts what you're doing in a more intrusive way than a notification on the phone does.

When the watch vibrates, I can respond to an incoming message with voice recognition, a preset phrase, an emoji, or by writing characters with my finger. In English, you can also choose a keyboard, but that's not available in Swedish. However, I think the options available, especially voice recognition, work very well. It's also possible to respond to notifications even when the app that sent it is only on the phone and not on the watch. Quick actions are available, so when I get a news flash, I can, for example, choose on the watch to save the article to read later, and if I get a chat message from Google Chat, which doesn't have a watch app, I can still reply.

Can do more, but lacks in battery life

Apple Watch is a unique product that can offer you features no other smartwatch can. This is while it has several competent competitors. Given how Apple Watch integrates with Apple's own services, it can find your lost AirPods, your iPhone, and see where friends who have approved it are located. This is thanks to the Apple Find app. The watch can display and share your photos from the photo library in iCloud, it can send and receive iMessages even when you don't have your phone with you, and it can unlock your Mac computer without you needing to use a password or fingerprint. Additionally, there are some third-party apps so you can play music via Spotify, even in offline mode, control your smart home, get short news updates, listen to the radio, and so on.

Settings and health overview and management on iPhone.

Apple Watch comes in a version with e-sim, which works with constant connectivity even when you don't have your phone with you, and in another version with only Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Additionally, you can tap payments in stores directly from the watch using Apple Pay, exchange digital business cards by just holding the watch against another iPhone or Apple Watch, and you can get instant translation. The price for all this is battery life. Apple Watch can do a lot, but it requires you to use an iPhone, so you can't use it with an Android, and it practically requires you to charge it every day.

Charging without waiting time

Therefore, the charging speed is one of the more important upgrades in this year's watch. Apple Watch series 10 shows 27 percent charge when I put it in the charger and in 15 minutes it has charged to 66 percent. Another quarter of an hour later, the battery bar shows 93 percent, so if you put the watch on charge when you, for example, shower, you can easily use the watch extensively during the day, measure sleep every night, and then charge it at a convenient time.

Because, to truly benefit from your watch, you don't want it to be on charge but rather measuring what you do as much of the day as possible. You can extend the battery life by turning off the always-on display, as the Apple Watch is very responsive and when you lift your arm to look, the screen lights up so you see relevant information immediately, without exception. Even with that setting, I have to charge every day. It's a stark contrast to watches from Garmin or Huawei, both compatible with iPhone, but with battery life over a week.

Well-known foundation

If you have or have used an Apple Watch of a previous model, you know how it works, as not much has changed. In practice, there is so little difference between this watch and the Apple Watches of recent years that you probably won't notice any difference. I wonder if I'm imagining it when I think the watch, which is slightly larger now compared to before, is therefore more uncomfortable and bothersome when I wear it in bed, but the difference is only a millimeter in height and width, so I wouldn't say it makes a big difference in terms of how comfortable it is or how much extra screen space I get.

Besides the fact that the Apple Watch Series 10 is a millimeter thinner than its predecessor, we also have a depth gauge, so you can see how deep below the surface you are when snorkeling. Additionally, there is now the possibility to get warnings for potential sleep apnea, temporary breathing stops during sleep, but to get that, you need to use the watch every night for at least 30 nights and, of course, have sleep apnea, and I haven't received any such warnings, not yet at least. If you are considering buying a smartwatch and haven't had one before, there are a number of potential advantages. Apple often talks about how users have avoided serious health risks because the Apple Watch warned them and they sought medical attention to check their condition, but such things are difficult to evaluate before they actually happen.

In terms of health measurement, you should fill your rings every day, and they measure standing hours, movement, and exercise minutes. Most smartwatches work in a similar way. Here, you can also easily share your health status with other Apple Watch users, and if you want to receive notifications when they complete a workout or achieve a goal, so you can encourage each other.

Health over individual apps

Over the years, less and less of Apple Watch is about individual apps and more about health and fitness. Since Watch OS 10, which came out last year, there is a better overview directly on the watch face, with a bunch of available widgets where the function is adapted to what is needed at the moment, so you don't have to jump between apps and instead have the functions available directly.

There are many different types of workouts, and of course, Apple Watch syncs with Apple Health and, through that, with a wide range of different workout apps, so you can share your workouts and compare yourself with others there as well.