Is the Apple Watch series 10 really worth buying?

Apple Watch series 10 design

Apart from the Apple Watch ultra, all Apple Watches have a recognisable industrial design. A rectangle with curved corners, with a digital crown on the right edge. But over the years, things have changed hugely. Not just the display size but the curvature of the front crystal, the shape of the buttons, the size of the speaker.

While this year’s look is clearly cut from the same cloth, this one, the fourth distinct design, is the most successful, offering a thinner profile than ever and a lighter weight.

The other big change is in the material used in the case. Previously, all Apple Watches had a ceramic back. That’s been replaced with metal. While aluminium has always been the metal in the case for the most affordable Apple Watches and still is, the next step up has previously been stainless steel. The premium Apple Watch edition cases have over the years been made from gold, ceramic and titanium.

This year, polished titanium has replaced stainless steel, offering something sumptuous but lightweight. There are three colours; gold, natural and slate grey. All look opulent and inviting.

The more affordable aluminium has also been glammed up with a case which, Apple says, has been polished with nano-particles, whatever that means, and anodised. It also looks gorgeous.

Apple Watch series 10 display

Series 10 has an all-new OLED display technology, designed to be easier to read from wider angles. It’s also brighter when you’re looking at it from an angle (like surreptitiously glancing down at your wrist on your lap in a tedious business meeting).

A different screen technology is more power-efficient, so that when the always-on display is in standby mode, with the screen darker but still visible, it updates each second rather than once a minute, so on some new Watch faces, the second hand continues to tick round. One of these is called “reflections”, which is a classic-looking face, based on dials found on traditional watches. It is easily customised and has a beautiful shimmer to it.

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Speaking of Watch faces, I love the Wayfinder face that’s exclusive to the Apple Watch ultra and ultra 2. It’s one of the main things I miss on the series 10. Now the displays are the same size, I hope there’s no reason why Apple couldn’t bring it to Series 10.

There’s another new face, Flux, a bold digital face where the seconds are represented by a rising line that changes colour and looks like the minute filling up the screen.

Apple Watch series 10 health features

The big new feature is sleep apnoea monitoring, a condition which Apple says impacts over 1 billion people in the world, of whom four fifths are undiagnosed. For the Watch to discover if you suffer from sleep apnoea, you need to wear the Watch while you sleep, and it analyses the results every 30 days. The Watch hasn’t been around long enough at the time of writing, but it’s a simple system to set up. I look forward to finding out what it says.

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It joins a bunch of other health features which set the Apple Watch apart. It can track your sleep, take an ECG and alert loved ones or the emergency services if you have a hard fall and can’t get up. It can also notify you if it repeatedly sees your heart rate has gone surprisingly high or low. And then there’s blood oxygen monitoring. Last year, in a patent dispute, Apple had to disable this metric, but only for Apple Watches sold in the US, so Watches bought in Britain still have this useful capability.

Apple Watch series 10 Apps, performance and battery life

Series 10 is slick and fast, with apps opening fast and key elements like Apple Pay working reliably. There’s now a new Translate app which lets you say a phrase in one language and hear it spoken, and see it written in another. This is snappy and effective, with a series of languages available to download.

Depth is an app that was already on the Apple Watch ultra and now comes to series 10. When you’re underwater, it tells you how deep you are (whether that’s “Ooh, almost two metres in the local swimming pool or all the way down to six metres, its maximum depth). It can launch automatically when it senses water. It can also measure the water’s temperature – though dipping your toe in before you dive is still a good idea. A new Tides app plus third-party apps like Oceanic+ and Paddle Logger suggest Apple is keen to get us all in the water, one way or another.

Then there’s Vitals, a new app to measure key health metrics while you sleep, including blood oxygen, heart rate, wrist temperature and sleep duration. It’s a neat app that provides useful information. It needs seven sleep sessions before it delivers results, so again I’ll have to report back on this.

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For features like sleep apnoea monitoring, you also need to wear the Watch at night. Battery life for the series 10 is like previous Watches, that is, a good day but not much more.

So, Apple has introduced much faster charging this time around. It means that if your Watch battery is low when you’re turning in, you can charge it for eight minutes to have enough sleep tracking for eight hours.

Previously, it would take 45 minutes to charge to 80 per cent, now it takes half an hour. Apple says the larger charging coil makes it the fastest-charging Apple Watch ever.

Apple didn’t replace the Apple Watch ultra 2 this year, but instead introduced a new colour, black. It looks fantastic, especially with the titanium Milanese loop strap, or the exceptional black titanium band from the premium Californian brand, Nomad. Should you consider the ultra 2 instead?

There are some key advantages. The action button lets you quickly launch a workout, or customise it for one of several other functions such as stopwatch, torch or diving. This is a highly useful button and I miss it on the series 10.

I’ve already mourned the absence of the “wayfinder” Watch face on series 10. And the other big difference is battery life, which is a full two days or more on the ultra 2. But apart from that, the series 10 is the standout: it’s lighter, so better if you wear it at night, has a more elegant look and a newer processor.

Until today, I’ve been mad about the ultra from the second it launched. Now, I’m back to enjoying the regular Watch with series 10.