Apple Watch Series 6 Review: It's Bait! By Marques Brownlee

Hey, what's up MHD here? First, welcome to October, and I've been wearing this red Apple Watch Series 6 every day since the impressions video now so been living with it. I've worked out with it. I've slept with it on pretty much everything, so this is the full review, oh by the way, if you're wondering like hey what about the video about this other thing or where's, your video on x or insert review here, there's a lot going on right now in the tech world. That's why we named them October and September, so we're catching up to a lot of it expect a lot of videos in October, but okay, so summary with this watch is there's really not a whole ton of massively new stuff, as you already knew like. Okay, some slightly brighter, always on display cool, slightly faster charging cool and also a slightly new sensor with the blood oxygen, but a lot of the stuff that makes the Apple Watch the Apple Watch and so good is, of course, in the software watchOS. That's going to make its way to other apple watches, but I think one of the biggest mistakes we make in the tech world so often in these mature categories is comparing the new thing to last year's thing.

When most people buying the new thing aren't upgrading from last year's thing, that's actually a pretty rare use case. Most people have three four-year-old, plus versions that are aging by the time they upgrade to this one. So yeah, surprise. If you already have an Apple Watch Series, 4 or 5, you don't need to upgrade, but if you don't have an Apple Watch yet well. This is the most complete ecosystem bait.

Yet so, let's just start with the head lighting new feature, which is actually the blood oxygen sensor uh. It's not actually the first smartwatch to add this, but they did add it now to the Apple Watch and well. It probably shouldn't be your reason to buy this watch now I mean for what it's worth. I've been getting pretty decent, accurate measurements. As far as I can tell you get it pretty snug slide it down your wrist near your hand and sit still for a few seconds.

Anything in the upper 90s is normal, and I've gotten like 98 to 100 every time I try it sitting down great, but if, for some reason I stood up or moved around a little or for whatever reason I didn't get 98, and I got 88 for some reason, which would be a concerning actual measurement. I wouldn't really be freaking out at all, because lots of people have gotten very inaccurate measurements or just had problems getting a good, reliable measure at all, but for a little background, a dedicated blood oxygen sensor is normally worn on your fingertip. Just like that, I actually learned this. While I was working with David Blaine on the ascension project uh, he needed one to be really accurate to actually tell if he was hypoxic or not, which would be dangerous, but you clamp it to your finger, and it just measures the blood oxygen saturation by shining a light through your fingertip and then reading it on the other side. So it's going through your finger now the Apple Watch is attempting to get the same reading, but obviously in a non-ideal place on the back of your wrist, so it's shining into your wrist, but obviously can't read from the other side.

So it's trying to read from the reflections and most blood oxygen sensors. Don't read this way for a reason: it's just much more difficult to get an accurate, reliable reading from this spot on your body. Now, actually, as Dave 2d points out in his video, you can actually take the Apple Watch off and put it on your fingertip to get much more consistent readings but yeah. If you're doing all that- and you care that much about accurate blood oxygen readings, you should just grab a 25 pulse oximeter from Amazon, and it will be way more accurate than any smartwatch so yeah. This is much more just like a casual extra sensor to give you some new readings in the health app.

If you want to gamify it and track it uh. So if you go for hikes and stuff, then cool you get to see. Oh, my blood oxygen's 94. Instead of 100, but you shouldn't be taking it to the doctor, um speaking of extra readings in the health app sleep mode, so there's sleep tracking built into the Apple Watch. Now it is actually a watch OS 7 feature again.

So it's not like it's exclusive to the series. Six but hey I tested it like. I said I've been wearing it every day. I've been sleeping in the Apple Watch because I guess that's the apple effect getting people to try things. So when you're about to go to sleep, you swipe up control center, hit that little bedtime icon and the screen goes black, and it starts sleep tracking and really what I found is it doesn't track that much hardcore information like basically it's whether it thinks you're, asleep or not heart rate, once in a while trends up and down things like that, pretty casual, but nothing really groundbreaking and people who already have been using third-party Apple Watch apps to track sleep already know way more about their sleep than this will tell you but, like I said it's just one more thing: that's plugging into the health app and giving you a pretty good basic look at what's going on here.

So, okay, it works and that's great and everything. But you know what the best part is. You know the best part of wearing an Apple Watch to sleep. Actually is its the alarm 100, it's the alarm! It just taps you awake just with a little haptic motor, no sound or anything and that's been massively underrated. I really don't like wearing a thing like this to sleep, but the fact that it just taps me awake, and I never have an actual alarm sound- has been uh, pretty sweet, but also apple.

I noticed it adds standing hours while I'm asleep, so I wake up every day with like two to four standing hours, which is kind of odd, because I don't know about you, but I sleep lying down, but the charging question. The charging question is interesting now, because if you wear the watch all day, and then you wear to sleep, when do you charge the thing? It does have slightly faster 90 minute, zero to 100 charging. But when do you actually get it on the charger? For me, I found two times during the day and neither of them are a full charge, but the first one is like right when I like go shower at night, but after a workout or something I'll pop it on the charger and that'll juice it up enough to last through the night and then when I wake up in the morning, so it taps me awake, and I just take it off and put it on the charger and go through my morning routine. So it's just sitting on the charger juicing up for the day, so it never actually gets to 100, I'm just kind of always bouncing between 20 and 85 percent, which is actually better for battery health. On the watch and yeah, I never got it to die in a day again.

So battery life on the watch is still good. It's still about what it's been for series four and five, and I also do have the always on display going to me the real best feature of the Apple Watch Series.6 is just the new s6 chip inside, like that's. What's giving you the great efficiency to last all day. That's what's giving you the brighter always on display uh, if you disable, the Oregon display, you'll, probably get even better battery life, and then it's enabling the faster charging that chip is giving you the great performance through watchOS 7, which now has faster snappier animations throughout the whole thing, which is great, oh and also the handwashing detection in watchOS.7 is kind of hilarious. Like it'll pick up that.

Yes, I am washing my hands through the microphone and the movement. It's sensing, and then it'll start some countdown timer based on when it thinks you started, and if you get to the end of the 20 seconds, great little soapy thumbs up thing, but if you don't get to the end of the 20 seconds it just kind of quietly disappears like reminding you to do it better next time. The shame but yeah all this stuff, pretty minor. I think the biggest literally the biggest change most people notice with this new watch is the colors which, by the way, I'm going to be switching back to my black series 5, because it does look sometimes cool, but I don't need a red watch every single day, but also the other new thing they made alongside the new watch is the new solo loop bands, and they are a great idea. I love the simplicity of just stretching a band to put it on no Velcro or magnets or buckles or anything you just put it on, get your size right, which can be a little finicky but get it snug, and it's spotless.

The only weird thing is they seem to fit the watch a little worse than all the other bands like see how it doesn't go quite all the way to the edge of the watch, and you can kind of see some metal inside instead of it sitting flush with the red of this watch kind of weird. If you find that important, I personally don't, but it's worth noting, so you can see it here, but you know these are 50 to 100 watch bands order them. If you dare so there, you have it pretty short list again. The thing to keep in mind is they're, make they're not making this for people with an Apple Watch Series, 5 or even series 4. I think people with a series, 3 or older will just have this as the new version to upgrade to around the holiday season.

Conveniently, but the truth is most people don't even need this newest version with all the bells and whistles and extra sensors there's also the new Apple Watch, SE, which has the new s6 chip, but hey, there's no electrocardiogram and there's no blood oxygen sensor and there's no always on display, but it is a much lower price and that's fine for most people getting their first Apple Watch. So if it ain't broke, don't fix it and Apple absolutely did not fix anything that wasn't broken. They didn't change the shape or offer a circular version or anything like that. They didn't add QI charging. Furthermore, they didn't, you know, open up a watch face store for third-party watch faces.

Furthermore, they didn't change anything drastic that wasn't broken with the Apple Watch, so it's series six for 2020 conveniently available for the holidays, well played apple and that's pretty much it for the review. Like I said, I'm going back to series 5. Either way. That's been it thanks for watching and October rolls on catch, you guys very soon in the next one peace.

Source : Marques Brownlee