EVERY year, I grow more convinced that an Apple Watch is one of the greatest health investments you can make.
I’ve been wearing them for about a decade and they’ve transformed from a fun timepiece into what might just be . Now there are two new models – the Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 – and I’ve been trying them out.
If you’re not familiar with the Apple Watch, it’s easily one of the best accessories, though calling it an accessory does it a disservice.
These hi-tech timepieces are so stuffed with tech that they can function as payment devices, music machines, fitness aids, and health monitors – and they don’t look bad either.
There are a few variants including the cheap ‘SE’ model, but what’s been upgraded here is the flagship Apple Watch Series range, and the more rugged and premium Ultra device.
Apple Watch Series 12, £369
Some of the biggest updates are shared, so I’m going to talk about what that means.
But to start, I’ll just go over what’s not shared.
APPLE WATCH SERIES 12 – NEW SPECS & FEATURES
Let’s start with the cheaper of the two: the Series 12.
It starts at £369 for the smaller 42mm version, rising to £419 for 46mm – plus an extra £100 on either option if you want cellular.
And the price rises dramatically if you want to swap the aluminium case out for tougher Titanium or Ceramic.
This is the quintessential Apple Watch and, as such, looks very familiar to fans of the series.
The big change this time around is the re-introduction of the polished ceramic case option, which has been absent since 2019’s Apple Watch Series 5.
Charging is slightly faster, getting you 12 hours of battery life versus 8 hours after a 15-minute charge.
And you have new case and strap options to enjoy.
Of course, the bulk of the magic of the Apple Watch retains.
You still get the large and bright wide-angle OLED display, and a relatively thin 9.7mm profile.
And it has all the great health tracking from before, including heart rate monitoring, single-lead ECGs, sleep apnoea detection, wrist temperature sensing, sleep tracking and more.
You also get the peace-of-mind emergency features like Fall Detection and Car Crash Detection.
It’s water-resistant so you can swim in it, and you can use it to play music even without your iPhone.
It still uses the Move rings to track your calories burned, exercise done, and “stand minutes”, which I think is one of the best and most motivating ways of tracking activity on the market.
And it looks great. It’s widely copied as a design, which speaks to the power of the Apple Watch more generally.
APPLE WATCH ULTRA 4 – NEW SPECS & FEATURES
By contrast, the Ultra 4 isn’t intended to be everyone’s smartwatch. It’s aimed at people who need that bit extra from their posh ticker.
One of the big upgrades for the Ultra 4 is the battery life, which rises up to about 50 hours.
That’s phenomenal, and makes this a great option for ultramarathoners, people who go on long hikes, or anyone who doesn’t want to charge their watch every day (marathon runners or otherwise).
There’s an optimised Max Extended Workout Mode that gets you 45 hours of tracking.
I’m easily going two days between charges (and I’ve been wearing it for much of the time since a few days after the ), which is encouraging.
And you still get the same 49mm ruggedised titanium casing, bright display, and all of the fitness features I’ve just mentioned above for the Series 12 in terms of health and fitness tracking.
I also personally prefer its larger aesthetic, so it tends to be my go-to watch each year.
This year, I’ve been trying it with the Translucent Gray Ocean Band, which is very cool.
It’s technically meant for diving (which I don’t do), but I think it looks great in basically all settings.
And it’s good to know that if I did need to go for a swim, I wouldn’t massively regret it.
APPLE WATCH SERIES 4 & ULTRA 4 FEATURES – THE SHARED UPGRADES
So what do they both get that’s new?
The first upgrade is the introduction of a new processor, which might not sound very exciting, but it’s what enables some of the other tricks.
And this new S11 processor is also more power-efficient, which links back to the battery gains I was talking about earlier.
Anyway, probably the biggest change – which is visible from the outside – is the new health-sensing system.
Apple has totally redesigned the sensor cluster on the back of the watch, which is the bit that faces your skin.
It means that Apple can now massively increase the rate at which it samples your heart rate.
And that means it’ll be checking it every five seconds versus what was closer to every five minutes.
This means you’ll get a much more accurate picture of your heart healthy and activity, because the data is significantly increased.
And Apple is used this to power a new tool called Readiness Score.
This will monitor you for seven days to create a baseline, and then it can help you work out how ready or fatigued you might be for a big event.
So if you’re hoping to run a marathon or even a 5K, it’ll give you a better picture of how on-track you are in the run-up.
Inside that S11 I was talking about earlier is a neural engine, which is used for processing complicated machine learning tasks.
And Apple has added two such tasks to the new Apple Watch models: Live Rewind and Siri Recap.
They’re closely linked features, but not exactly the same.
Live Rewind works as a kind of transcription tool for if you’ve missed what someone said to you.
You need to turn it on in your settings, and then you can double-click the Digital Crown to activate it.
It’ll show you the last 15 seconds of spoken audio as readable text on your screen.
And if you don’t take any action, it’ll disappear about 30 seconds after your watch display dims.
By contrast, Siri Recap is a kind of summarising tool for your conversations day-to-day.
This logs and summarises your conversations from a day, but it’s not actually generating a recording or transcript.
It’s basically creating a kind of high-level note that shows key takeaways from your day.
And again, you have to manually toggle this on.
Now for both of these, your privacy alarm bells may be going off.
Apple has gone to great lengths to try to make this as secure as possible.
There’s a 15-second rolling buffer where audio is chucked into a Secure Enclave in the new S11 chip.
That audio is constantly being overwritten, and can’t be accessed by the operating system, apps, Apple, or even you.
For Live Rewind, that audio is converted into text and then discarded.
And for Siri Recaps, it’s routed through Apple’s Private Cloud Compute system to generate a rough outline.
Of course, that still might not soothe you, and so you’re welcome to completely disregard the features.
There’s been significant debate online about whether you should tell people you’re using these features.
I think if you are worried, it’s probably better to be safe than sorry.
But as AI begins to process more of the world around us, we’re going to have to have more of these complicated conversations about features like this.
SHOULD I BUY NEW APPLE WATCH SERIES 12 OR ULTRA 4?
Firstly, if you’ve got last year’s model of either, the upgrade probably isn’t worth it.
That is, unless you’re very cash-flush, exercise is your life, and you could absolutely do with the improved heart-rate tracking or battery tweaks.
There may also be some of you who really want Live Rewind or Siri Recaps, so that’s something you have to decide for yourself.
But if you’re coming from an older model (say, three or four years ago) there’s probably enough here to warrant an upgrade.
I’m a big fan of the Apple Watch, generally.
I think that the health features are now so good, I can’t really imagine not wearing it.
Being able to generate such high-quality health data that I could take to a doctor is brilliant.
And you only have to do a cursory Google search to reveal the absolutely endless pile of stories of how the Apple Watch spotted the signs of a dangerous illness or saved someone in a life-threatening emergency situation.
For me, that’s enough to make the product itself worthwhile as a buy.
And if you are interested, both the Series 12 and Ultra 4 are absolutely brilliant.
I think the Series 12 is the smarter buy for most people.
It has a more universally attractive design, carries most of the Ultra’s features anyway, and is significantly cheaper.
And if you are the sort of customer that would want an Ultra 4, you probably already know that.
The Sun says: Another year, another round of stunning smartwatches in the form of the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4. These borderline essential gadgets are so much more than timepieces – and to me, worth every penny. 5/5
Apple Watch Ultra 4, £749
All prices in this article were correct at the time of writing, but may have since changed.
Always do your own research before making any purchase.
