The Apple Watch 6 is one of the greatest smartwatches you can buy for your iPhone. It comes in two sizes, 40 or 44mm, with a range of case materials and colors. It performs with an incredible smoothness, offers plush haptics, and is simple to set up. You’ve got the always-on OLED display, a new S6 processor, and therefore an 18-hour promised battery life.

It has better integration with the iPhone and is fast, fluid and responsive in a way that many rivals simply aren’t. It is extremely comfortable to wear and received meaningful software and feature updates, and will do for an extended period of time. Third-party app support is also pretty healthy.

Fitness and health features include motion sensing sensitive enough to detect falls, and ask you if you’re okay, as well as to calculate how hard you’re working out, a heart rate sensor with warnings for high and low heart rates, an ECG for accurate sensing of irregular heart rhythms, and a new pulse oxygen sensor for seeing how well-saturated with oxygen your blood is.

Great Design

The Apple Watch 6 looks as svelte as the last few Apple Watch models. For a difference, it comes in exclusive blue and Product Red casings. You’ve still got the same rounded square shape, with the Digital Crown on the side, along with a single button, acting as a scroll wheel to make moving through long lists or messages much less hassle than swiping on the small screen.

Better always-on display

The Series 6 screen has an always-on mode that allows you to quickly see the time. In comparisons indoors, it definitely appears sharper than the Series 5 when Apple claims the always-on setting is more than twice as bright this time.

The way the always-on display works is that, when you turn the Watch to face you, the OLED display pushes itself to full brightness, which is around 1,000 nits; the same as a pretty high-end TV. This makes it perfectly visible even in bright sunlight.

New watch faces and third-party complications

New watch faces from Apple, including Typograph, Stripes, Memoji, and Artist, are available. The improved modular faces result from the addition of third-party complications support. Seven new watch faces were added with WatchOS 7, and users may now share the settings for the pre-installed watch faces.

In some circumstances, you can add “Complications” to numerous faces, which function somewhat like widgets.

They can show you useful information such as the current likelihood of rain or what time your next calendar appointment is, or can act as shortcuts to open an app you like to use often.

Comfortable to wear

A wide variety of strap alternatives are available for the watch, including two new designs called Solo Loop and Solo Braided Loop, which are sized bands without a buckle or clasp that stretch to fit over your hand.

Blood oxygen sensors

In addition to the electrocardiogram (ECG) and heart rate sensors from the Series 5, the Series 6 contains a new sensor on the back that detects the blood’s oxygen saturation, or SpO2.

You must manually activate it on the Series 6 and remain motionless with your wrist resting on a table for 15 seconds in order to measure it. Although you cannot guarantee its precision in comparison to proper, medical SpO2 monitors that clip to the end of your finger, it functions dependably and constantly provides readings.

Your blood’s oxygen saturation level can be determined with blood oxygen sensors. The Apple Watch 6’s SpO2 monitoring, a type of pulse oximetry, will provide users with regular background checks and 15-second on-demand readings of their blood oxygen levels.

According to Apple, a measurement between 95% and 100% is optimum. Low blood oxygen levels are frequently a sign of underlying health problems such sleep apnea and silent hypoxia. The additional LED lights on the watch’s back can detect how well-oxygenated your blood is.

Theoretically, the watch displays your blood’s oxygenation level and, inferentially, your lungs’ or body’s ability to adapt to high altitudes, which is where SpO2 sensors are often utilized in a wellness context.

Other health features

ECG and blood oxygen monitoring are just two examples of the health support. The regular heartbeat sensor operates continuously throughout the day and can alert you if your heart rate is unusually high or low. It can also detect a potential irregular heartbeat that the ECG can more precisely detect.

Although the heart rate sensor is accurate enough for the majority of users, the more dedicated users will still need a chest strap. Similar to how its numbers won’t be detailed enough for individuals wanting to improve their triathlon times, but will be sufficient for the rest of us.

Fall detection is another essential function of the Apple Watch, since it perfectly encapsulates the notion of the device acting as a discreet defender. It will inquire about your well-being if you experience a severe fall; you may either respond that you are alright or use the device to contact for help right away.

A 4G model will make a direct call, otherwise it will connect to your iPhone and make the call through it. After a predetermined length of time if you don’t answer the inquiry, it phones automatically and basically pings them with your location and an automated distress signal. Additionally, it alerts the person who will help you in an emergency.

You can also call the emergency services and notify your contact at any time on the Watch by pressing and holding the side button for a fixed period.

Fitness modes

From the standard running, walking, hiking, cycling, and swimming to yoga, tai chi, dance, football, badminton, hockey, table tennis, and even fishing, the Apple Watch Series 6 features an extensive array of sports modes to track your activities.

The watch additionally scans for various workouts automatically. When it comes to fitness, not much has changed compared to previous Apple Watches. There are more workout types than ever, with specific tracking for different exercise options, which is great to see.

Faster performance

Apple’s most recent S6 chip, which powers the Series 6, is swift and fluid and outperforms even the finest performance from competing smartwatch manufacturers. In fact, everything in the watchOS is extremely smooth and responsive.

Standard battery life

Battery life is solid if not class leading. With the always-on display active and sleep tracking on overnight, the Series 6 lasts more than 36 hours between charges, including with two manual ECG recordings, two manual blood oxygen recordings, lots of notifications and a 25-minute run. Sleep tracking overnight consumes between 10% and 12% of battery life, while a 25-minute outdoor run consumes about 4-5% of battery life.

Other activities will drain this faster, of course, e.g, tracking long workouts where the GPS is running the whole time, such as an outdoor run or cycle, will make a colossal difference. For all but the most extreme users, it should still be more than enough to get you through the day. It also has fast charging. You also get a notification on your iPhone when the Watch reaches 100% charge, usefully.

Hand-washing feature

The software update also added a very useful handwashing feature, which uses on-device AI to detect when you are washing your hands using your motions and the sounds of water and soap timing you 20 seconds and logging it in the Health app. It can also remind you to wash your hands when you get home.

Seamless connection

The watch must be within Bluetooth range of the iPhone, connected to wifi, or have a 4G eSIM in order to connect to the internet and use apps to their maximum potential. Everything, including notifications from your phone, works once you are linked via one of those three.

Faster speech-to-text conversion

The new software of the series 6 also adds full, on-device voice dictation, so that your speech is converted to text faster, with greater privacy and without requiring an internet connection. This includes message replies, when talking to Siri, and other bits.

Notification handling

The series 6 does a good job of handling notifications, including calls, texts, and message replies. Better than any other wristwatch with an iPhone is the Apple Watch’s close connectivity with the phone.

Siri and Apple Pay are included in this. Although there are a good variety of third-party apps available, such as Spotify, Google Maps, and Strava, there is no dedicated WhatsApp app, so you can only respond to notifications rather than initiate new chats from your wrist.

The major point, however, is that you receive notifications on the Watch’s screen, many of which you may react to in helpful ways with a short tap. You may customize the Watch notifications you want to get based on your needs, but it is incredibly helpful to get little reminders when your phone isn’t nearby or to be able to view a text and choose whether to answer right away or not without taking your phone out of your bag.

Siri smart assistance

The Apple Watch Series 6 comes with Siri as well. To activate it, either raise your wrist and say “Hey Siri” followed by a request, or hold down the Digital Crown. With the help of the smart assistant, you can do anything from set a timer for food you’re cooking to write a text to someone. When the timer expires, your Watch will tap you on the wrist.

Lots of apps

Numerous apps are also available for the Watch to provide it additional capabilities as needed; for instance, outdoor mapping apps for a hike or some apps for managing smart devices can be quite helpful. The ecosystem of third-party apps for the Apple Watch is fantastic right now if you haven’t looked into it in a while.

There are third-party apps for many of the things you would want on your watch, including bike ride tracking, trail maps, Google Maps, and more detailed weather apps.

Ambient volume monitoring

The Apple watch series 6 can alert you if the background noise in your area is louder than is safe. This way, it also safeguards your hearing.

Offline function

The majority of the watch’s features, like tracking your exercise and health, are also fully offline. This means that even if you run without a phone, it can still track your location and provide you with the necessary metrics. However, unless you have a 4G subscription for your watch, you won’t be able to receive messages or see where you are on Apple Maps. But using Spotify while running comes with some restrictions. While Spotify cannot be used to listen to music offline, the watch can download tracks from Apple Music to its 32GB of total storage.

Family Setup

The Apple Watch Series 6’s Family Setup feature, which enables you to configure a cellular Apple Watch for a child or parent as a controlled device, is the most exciting new feature. The main downside is that, unless you spend a lot of time setting up things as a parent, you’re essentially giving a child an entire Apple Watch with all of its capabilities and complexity, which seems like a lot.