When I two years ago reviewed Apple Watch Series 10, I called them the same and yet different. Last year, at Apple Watch Series 11 The main role was played by better battery life, which was a relatively inconspicuous improvement at first glance, but I was able to appreciate it practically all the time in daily use. Apple Watch SeHowever, I think the 12s are a bit of a different story. Whereas with previous generations it was relatively easy to tell what was going on. AppWhat did it do well and what did it not do well, this year's model evokes significantly more conflicting feelings in me after a few days of testing, which intensify as the days I have it on my wrist increase.
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Design and processing
The larger 46mm arrived at my editorial office for testing. Apple Watch Series 12 in aluminum and a new dark bronze color. The color is definitely one of the things I have to praise. In my first impressions, I wrote that it is actually significantly darker than it looks in the product photos Apple, and after using it for a long time, my opinion hasn't changed. After piano black, it's one of the most beautiful colors I've seen. Apple for aluminum Apple Watch has offered in recent years. In addition to bronze, black, space gray and light gold are also available in aluminum.
The shape of the watch itself is no longer such a surprise. Apple It follows the design set by the Series 10, so if you've used a Series 10 or 11, you'll feel right at home here. Well, in a way. They're a millimeter wider than the previous generation (wider, not thicker), so they can feel more "square" on your wrist. Honestly, you won't really notice it - especially not if you don't have the opportunity to compare them face to face with the older generation.
In the case of the aluminum and titanium versions, the 46mm model has dimensions of 46 × 40 mm, a thickness of 9,7 mm and an aluminum GPS variaThe weight is 39,5 grams. Smaller variaThe case measures 42 × 37 mm and weighs 32,2 grams. Apple Watch Series 12. The watch is still pleasantly thin and light and feels great on the wrist. In terms of ergonomics, I don't really have any AppThere's too much to criticize.
Gallery
The display is (not) pleasing
Display Apple Watch SeThe ries 12 is again the absolute top in terms of display capabilities. Unfortunately, compared to previous generations, it looks a little worse or perhaps a little less joyful when using non-black dials. This is because the frames around it are more pronounced or, if you prefer, wider than what we were used to in previous generations, which in my opinion is the biggest design mistake of this generation.
Of course, you can largely ignore them with dark watch faces or apps with black backgrounds, as the OLED black naturally blends in with the bezel. But once you use a light watch face, the problem is immediately apparent. And I personally find it quite annoying.
It's not so much that I would lose any essential functional area because of a few millimeters. What bothers me most is the visual impression itself, which is simply worse and in this respect the watch makes you feel like you're going back a few years. Apple In recent years, it has taught us about displays with increasingly narrow bezels, which are gradually trying to optically expand practically to the edges of the device, and this is precisely what Apple Watch They've always been very good at that thanks to the curved OLED panel. Therefore, the Series 12 can paradoxically look a little outdated with its light dial next to the Series 11, and you simply don't want that with a new generation product for more than ten thousand crowns.
And honestly, it's pretty frustrating, because the Always-On LTPO3 OLED Retina The display is really good. It offers max2000 nits maximum brightness, miniThe minimum brightness is 1 nit and the refresh rate can drop to 1 Hz. Larger 46mm variaThe image has a resolution of 416 x 496 pixels. ProSo the problem is not the quality of the panel, but what is around it.
On the other hand, I have to praise the increased durability of aluminum models. Apple they use this year Ceramic Shield 2, which according to its tests is supposed to be 60% stronger than the Series 11's Ion-X glass. Of course, I didn't intentionally break the watch for the review, so I can't assess the percentage improvement. Apple Watch However, I wear them practically all the time and I know very well how easily they can get scratched on a coat, a table, or something while working around the house, so I take the higher durability with a grain of salt.
Performance that is truly noticeable
One of the things I had no doubts about after first launching the Series 12 was their speed, which paradoxically Apple Watch in recent years has been relatively difficult to assess given that they Apple The chip has not been updated in practice. The Series 11s were certainly not slow, and when I was using the system on a regular basis, I never felt like I needed something faster. But once you put the Series 11 and Series 12 side by side and start opening more demanding applications, the difference is noticeable.
I noticed this best with Maps, for example. The Series 12 can open them a second or more faster in some situations, which is no longer a difference that you would have to look for with a stopwatch in your hand. It is similar with other more demanding operations. I would not say that the performance alone would be a reason to throw away the Series 11 and run to the store for the Series 12, but in everyday use the higher speed is pleasant.
If you are then wondering what exactly Apple Watch Series 12 is powered by the S11 chip with a 64-bit dual-core processor and a quad-core Neural Engine, complemented by 64GB of storage. By the way, at the presentation Apple He boasted about this new product being based on the A20 Pro z iPhone, which is, I think, quite obvious. However, while with the iPhone, people mainly consider new generation processors for games, AI or demanding applications, with Apple Watch What's actually enough for me is that everything responds immediately. After all, these are devices that people usually communicate with for several seconds at a time, so every second saved here is paradoxically perhaps more noticeable than on a phone.
Health and Preparedness
The second big change in Series 12 is the redesigned health tracking system. Apple It used more powerful optical and electrical sensors and a redesigned green LED, which allows the watch to measure heart rate in the background significantly more often. Apple Specifically, it reports up to 60x more frequent heart rate detection and 24x more frequent HRV sensing compared to the Series 11. The Series 12 can monitor heart rate in five-second intervals and HRV every five minutes.
The result is not only more detailed data that tells you more about your body than before, but also a new Alertness app that combines recent activity, vital signs, and sleep to create a score each morning that updates throughout the day. To access the feature, your watch needs to collect 7 days of data, which in practice just means it's tracking your sleep and vital signs, which isn't that complicated. But if you're not a big fan of sleeping with your watch, like I am, it's going to take some getting used to.
Well, maybe not, because Readiness might not make as much sense to you as it does to me. And I say this quite honestly as someone who wanted to Apple Watch Series 11 to 12 just because of this application. Let's leave aside the fact that this is nothing new in the technological world and that competing smart watches or rings have a similar function under various names. It seems to me that the score simply does not correspond to how a person actually feels.
Of course, I don't know exactly what the watch uses to calculate your readiness score, or how well the watch can tell you where you are at the moment based on its measurements. But the whole time I was testing, it was telling me "You can do it" and showing a score of 7 or 8 out of 10. You would think that you should be feeling really good and ready to perform. But the reality is that I felt more tired and overtrained for practically the entire week.
As I have written in several articles recently, in recent months I have started to work on my physical condition quite a bit and in addition to regular floorball twice a week and brisk walks, I have also added running, which has completely absorbed me and I am clearing my head several times a week. As a result, I now regularly go to floorball twice a week and run at least 3 times a week for about an hour, and then spend the remaining days walking.
This week, my activity schedule was such that I went for a run on Tuesday, when I did a leisurely 12 km, then I played floorball on Wednesday and Thursday, and then on Friday evening I went for another run. At the beginning of the week, I was still recovering from a mild cold, so I didn't feel completely well. 100% fit and at the end of the week I felt tired again from my sports activity. However, the watch still told me that I could work hard, even though my head and body told me that it would be good to take a break.
So on paper, readiness looks like one of the main features of the Series 12, but in my opinion, it cannot automatically be an argument for buying the new generation. Its real benefit lies primarily in whether you start to change your behavior in some way based on this information and, in fact, in whether you somehow accept it as your own. Yes, I admit that longer-term testing would be appropriate for this feature, but on the other hand, I think that if a person does not see the point in it after the first few days of testing, I do not think that they will be able to build trust in it over time, let alone find a way to use it.
What I find much more interesting is the precision and significant increase in the frequency of health data collection. In addition to heart rate and HRV, the watch continues to offer ECG, oxygen saturation measurement, wrist temperature, sleep apnea alert, sleep score, and notifications about possible signs of hypertension. The Series 12 thus continues the trend of Apple Watch is gradually changing from a smartwatch with sports functions to a device whose health aspect is miniIt's almost as important as notifications or apps. So if you want to get an even more accurate picture of your heart rate, the Series 12 is ideal.
Sports
Sport is what I am looking for. Apple Watch has long been one of the most important areas, and the Series 12 benefits from more accurate and frequent measurements. In terms of the possibilities of the Exercise itself, there is already Apple offers so much that it would be a bit pointless to look for a revolution every year. When running, you have heart rate zones, cadence, stride length, ground contact time, vertical oscillation, running power, Pace Watch or a race on a known route. In addition, the Series 12 uses accurate dual-frequency L1 GPS and of course supports a whole range of other activities from cycling to swimming to strength training.
I went with Apple Watch 12 is primarily for running and honestly I wouldn't say that they measure anything fundamentally better than the Series 11 or older models. Heart rate, distance covered and other values are in line with what I'm used to from older models, so I wouldn't say that they are better. Apple moved somewhere. On the other hand, I don't actually think it's a shame, because in the area of monitoring sports activities, there are Apple Watch great in the long run.
Battery life
Last year, I dedicated a large portion of my review to the Series 11's endurance, as the move to an official 24 hours was their biggest practical innovation for me. However, the Series 12 doesn't offer a similar leap in this regard, and I feel like saying that's a shame, but more on that later. Apple so it still says up to 24 hours of normal use and up to 38 hours in low power mode. The battery should last up to 10 hours when exercising outdoors, but I think it could handle more, because during an hour of running monitoring without a phone, when the watch used its own GPS, the battery only dropped by about 10%, even with Spotify running in my headphones, which is not bad at all. On a shorter run of about 34 minutes, the watch only used 4%, even without Spotify.
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But I have to objectively say that this year I have the stamina Apple Watch The Series series just kind of stopped being enough. Apple has tried to make them even more indispensable devices that you should ideally have on your wrist more or less constantly. In addition to monitoring sleep, activity, vital signs, and so on, it has added the aforementioned readiness, which in essence does not require anything extra from the user, but on the other hand, it only works if you sleep with the watch on, in other words, you spend extra hours with it.
And that's what started to catch up with me. Apple This year, he came up with a device that only makes perfect sense if you wear it on your wrist as much as possible, but at the same time, he didn't extend its battery life. For me personally, the battery limitations, or rather the daily charging, are even more profound, which is actually starting to make me quite uncomfortable. Sure, you shower every day and sometimes do activities where it's nice to take off your watch, but damn, do you want to think about that all the time? ProWell, as someone who is used to showering with their watch on and washing it in the shower after training, maybe not.
The Californian giant's effort to make the device as comprehensive as possible, which the Series 12 certainly is, is starting to come up against the fact that 24-hour battery life is simply no longer enough for a similar product. And this year, for the first time, I'm seriously starting to toy with the idea of switching from the Series model to the Ultra, which doesn't really appeal to me with its features, but at the same time I know that the battery won't limit me that much and I won't have to constantly figure out when to take the watch off my wrist to charge it for the next activity monitoring.
The light at the end of this imaginary tunnel of inconveniences is at least fast charging, which is again very good. Apple It says it takes about 30 minutes to charge from 0 to 80%, with 15 minutes on the charger providing up to 12 hours of normal use and five minutes for up to eight hours of sleep tracking. So if you have to take the watch off your wrist, it's at least nice that you can charge it quickly. But as I wrote above, I'm more bothered by the fact that you have to actively think about charging and mistakes in this regard are not entirely forgiven. But if you want to take full advantage of the new features from Series 12, you have no choice but to accept these rules of the game.
Summary
Apple Watch SeI rate the Series 12 significantly lower than last year's Series 11, and that's not because they're bad. Technically, they're undoubtedly the best classics. Apple Watch, which Apple created so far. They are faster, collect significantly more health data, have a more durable glass, maintain the good durability of the previous generation, and I really like the new dark bronze color. As a result, however, it is also a rather controversial generation, because I do not see all the changes as a clear step forward.
In addition to all the improvements, there is the display and its wider frames, which you can consider a complete triviality. If you use dark dials, you may stop noticing them after a few days. But with light dials, they are visible all the time and I personally find them annoying. For a product whose display I look at dozens of times a day, the design of the display is really not a detail that I can just ignore. What is even more strange is that the new watch can appear optically more outdated than its predecessor in some situations due to the frames.
I am equally reserved about Readiness. The idea that Apple Watch I like that they take data on sleep, activity, and vital signs and simply tell me every morning how ready my body is for the next challenge. But in practical terms, I don't feel like Readiness has fundamentally changed the way I Apple Watch I use it and what's more, the score would match
And let's put aside the fact that I usually know quite well whether I slept well, how demanding the previous day was, or whether I feel like going for a run. But when I see that the score shows me a different "result" than how I really feel, it just seems strange to me. While it's nice to have all this information converted into one easy-to-understand number and I believe that it can be a very useful feature for some, I definitely don't see it as one of those new features that would make me want to upgrade from Series 11 to Series 12.
And I think Series 11 owners are having the hardest time of it this year. They're getting a faster watch, more advanced health tracking, and a few other improvements, but they're also moving from a watch that still works great and has subtler bezels. For older generations, the Series 12 is starting to make a lot more sense, as the changes over the past few years add up, from speed to display and battery life to health features.
So the Series 12 is a special generation. In some ways, it's an upgrade, where Apple took something that worked and improved it significantly on the inside. But at the same time, it took a step back in the place that is right in front of your eyes every time you raise your wrist. And that's why I couldn't simply call them a better Series 11 this time. They are technically more capable, faster and more health-advanced, but the upgrade from last year's generation doesn't automatically make sense to me because of that. However, if you're upgrading from older Apple Watch, you're already getting the sum of several generations of improvements, and the Series 12 is starting to look significantly more appealing. But whether it's also a more pleasant watch for everyday use will surprisingly depend on how much you dislike those damn bezels.
Well, the frames are behind me. Apple Watch 12 by moving forward and not because of the thickness but because of the unification of the appearance from the front. When the glass is stretched more to the edges and the rotary button is also more prominent because of this. And when compared to the light aluminum versions, they look more elegant Apple Watch 12.
good review.