Apple Watch preview review: the smartwatch won't make sense until you try it on

It might seem obvious that you need to try on a watch. But you really need to try on the Watch.

Previews of the Apple Watch began today in its shops — only previews, which means you can't buy it and can only try it with an appointment — and will run until it comes out on the 24th. As well as the normal stores, Apple has set up special fashionable pop-ups in Selfridges and similarly stylish places, and that's where I tried the Watch.

There, in Selfridges' posh watch hall — among the Rolexes and the Tags — the Watch makes more sense than you'd expect.

It's a computer, of course, among things that use technology almost entirely invented before the Internet. But it's a computer — encased in lush, light steel and bound by thrillingly-magnetised straps straps — that does the best impression of a beautiful watch that it can.

Other smartwatches have felt like toys — lots of phones feel that way too, but you don't have to strap them to your skin or wear them on dates.

But it's also great as a computer.

The light vibrations of what Apple calls the Taptic Engine, which gives you little buzzes on your wrists as alerts, have to be felt. When they are, it's entirely new — similar technology is headed for the MacBook, and it seems entirely believable that it'll become as important as sound as a way for your phone to get your attention.

And it makes clear how close the Watch is to your skin. It uses that intimacy not just to tell you things, but to take things from you too — the sensors in the back of the watch are reading your heartbeat and movement to know where you are and what you're doing at all time.

It uses that to power the health and fitness tracking, which are always measuring your activity, and chiding you if you're not doing enough.

This, perhaps like the Watch in general, sounds some combination of terrifying and boring when you hear about it in the abstract. But you strap on the watch and it all starts to make sense.

Again, this is isn't new and is in other smartwatches. But the others have felt like enthusiastic but wearisome PE teachers; the Apple Watch feels like a lithe, beautiful personal trainer (who's still fun to go out with after the session).

I've only tried the Watch for a short while — and in the gloriously lit world of its pop-up store in Selfridges. That first blush of fascination isn't enough to say anything for sure, especially when the Watch wants to live with you through your whole life and strap itself to your wrist.

But our short time together went well. Life together in the real world, outside of Apple's closely-controlled and finely-decorated trial area, might be very different. These things take time.